Aaron Temkin Beck's Theory

Aaron Temkin Beck "The Father of Cognitive Behavior Therapy" is an American profound psychiatrist who is currently a professor Emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is known for founding Cognitive therapy which is a treatment for Clinical depression. Beck also developed Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) a way to self-measure depression and anxiety. He has earned many honors and awards in the field of Psychology for findings and treatments of depression and anxiety. He has written over 600 articles and 25 books. He is also known as one of the five greatest psychotherapists of all time. Aaron Temkin Beck the youngest of five children was born in Providence, Rhode Island, US, on July 18, 1921. Both of his parents were

A person who is depressed will see everything in a negative way, the person won’t have any pleasure in life and the person will be counterproductive having trouble completing the simplest of tasks. The depressed patients will be extremely self-critical as they seem to view themselves as a looser and that no one likes them or the feeling of being undesirable to another person and that they are unable to be loved. The depressed patients will also have Masochistic Dreams where the themes would be the same as their waking life and they were distorting situations from this belief that they had about themselves that they are a looser or inadequate. When the depressed person believes this about themselves it leads to misinterpretations, and when they change these misinterpretations, by looking for the evidence to see if the way they view themselves is logical or by looking for alternative explanations the person would normally see the flaws in their thinking and gradually get better. Cognitive therapy is a psychotherapy that is based on the cognitive model: the way that the individual perceives a situation is more closely connected to their reaction than the situation itself. Cognitive behavior therapy is used usually to help the patients change their

The binocular test is where there is a set of binoculars with a different image depicted in each of the eye sights, on one side there will be a picture of people that are standing around a table, and on the table there will are vases filled with flowers and the people will be smiling. In the other eye sight of the binoculars there will also be a picture of people standing around a table but instead of flowers placed in vases on the table there will be a coffin, and the people will look sad or upset. Each of these pictures will have the same density so they will be extremely similar to one another. When the subjects look into the binoculars the depressed people will only see the picture with the sad people and the coffin on the table, they wouldn’t see this image by choice but automatically due to their mind set because at the most primitive level people who are depressed will see things negatively. Normal people would see the picture with the happy people standing around the table covered in vases and flowers, due to that they were not focusing on the negative unlike the people who are depressed. After the people who are depressed are treated successfully, and look into the same binoculars they will not see the picture with the coffin, but they will see the picture that has happy people and flowers in it, because they themselves are not depressed and are no longer are