Aaron Beck

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Aaron Becks Cognitive Therapy
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Key concepts

• Cognitive Model of Development
• Early childhood experiences lead to basic beliefs
  about oneself and ones world
• Automatic Thoughts
• Automatic thought is a significant role in
  perceived distress.
• Cognitive Schemas
• How individuals think about their world
• Schemas develop early in life from personal
  experience and interaction with others.

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Key conceptscognitive Distortions

• All or nothing thinking
• Unless I get A, I have failed.
• Negative prediction
• Form conclusions without any supporting evidence
• A person has done well on exams, but predicts
  that he/she will fail an exam
• Selective abstraction
• Form conclusions based on just one event

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Key conceptscognitive Distortions

• Mind reading
• We think that we know what another person thinks
  of us
• Catastrophizing
• Exaggerate our concerns
• Overgeneralization
• Based on one single event and applying it to
  future events
• Because I did poorly on my first math exam, I
  cant do math.

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Key conceptscognitive Distortions

• Magnification and minimization
• Magnify imperfections or minimize good points
• Personalization
• Relate external events to themselves even when
  there is no basis for the connection.
• Labeling and mislabeling
• A negative view of oneself is based on
  imperfections or mistakes made in the past

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The goals of Therapy

• Observe automatic thoughts, identify cognitive
  distortions, and ask for evidences for reality
  testing the cognitive distortions
• Use automatic thoughts to reach the core schema
  and introduce the idea of schema restructuring
• Focus on specific goals

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The Therapeutic Relationship

• Therapeutic relationship is necessary, but not
  sufficient for therapeutic effect
• Educate clients about how thoughts influence
  their emotions and behaviors
• Teach client how to be their own therapist
• Use homework to test their beliefs in daily-life
  situations

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Therapeutic Techniques

• The three-question techniques
• What is the evidence for the belief?
• How else can you interpret the situation?
• If it is true, what are the implications?
• Specifying automatic thoughts

Situation Automatic Thoughts Emotions Alternative Response Outcome

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Therapeutic Techniques

• Understanding idiosyncratic meaning
• What does it mean to be a loser?
• What-if technique (good for overreact clients)
• If..what would happen?
• Listing advantages and disadvantages
• Challenging absolutes (everyone, always, never.)
• Everyone at work is smarter than me.

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Therapeutic Techniques

• Reattribution
• attribute responsibility to the situations and
  not persons
• Cognitive Rehearsal
• Use of imagination in dealing with un-coming
  events
• Challenging all or nothing thinking
• Scaling from a dichotomy to a continuum
• Labeling of distortion
• Labeling distortion to increase awareness

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Cognitive TriadPattern that triggers depression

• Clients hold negative view of themselves and
  blames themselves
• What is the evidence for the belief?
• Client has a tendency to interpret experiences in
  a negative manner
• How else can you interpret the situation?
• Client has a gloomy projections about the future
• If it is true, what are the implications?

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Research on cognitive therapy (CT)

• More research on depression, followed by
  generalized anxiety (GA), OCD, and other
  psychological disorder.
• Meta-analyses indicate that CT for dealing with
  depression and GA is superior to wait list or
  control groups
• CT works better for those who are less depressed
  than for those who are more depressed
• CT works better than behavior therapy for GA

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From a multicultural perspective---Contributions

• Diverse populations appreciate the emphasis on
  cognition and actions
• Some studies on CBT approach with minority groups

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From a multicultural perspective--limitations

• Exploring core beliefs is important in CBT ?needs
  to be sensitive to cultural background and
  context
• Value working hard?feel ashamed for not living
  up to the expectations
• divorce?bring shame to her family

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Summary and Evaluation

• contributions
• research support that CT is a empirically
  validated treatment
• Limitations
• denying the past
• being too technique-oriented
• failing to use the therapeutic relationship
• working only to reduce symptoms
• failing to explore the underlying causes of
  difficulties
• ignoring unconscious factors and emotions