Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

The earliest form of what would eventually become Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy was developed in 1955 by Dr. Albert Ellis, a prominent American psychologist. This early stage of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy was called rational emotive behavior therapy. Using rational emotive behavior therapy, Ellis believed that people’s thoughts and beliefs had a great effect on their emotions, and as a result, the way the behaved. Ellis believed that how one view themselves and how they interpreted the world viewing them coincided with how they as an individual lived their life. The most basic example of this being an individual who is down in the dumps and depressed is likely to interact with others using that same mindset and behavior. Between the late

Beck is considered not only a pioneer of cognitive therapy, but as the father of cognitive therapy. Beck was able to develop his theory on CBT while conducting research on his patients who were battling depression. In Beck’s theory, the role of the therapist was extremely important in helping their patient overcome whatever disorder they were struggling with. This is one of a couple differences between Beck and Ellis’ theories. Ellis believed that the role between therapist and patient wasn’t essential, more so viewing it as teacher-student relationship, whereas Beck believed in a therapeutic alliance. It was the therapist’s job to make their patients realize why they were thinking the things they did, and how because of that, that they would feel a certain way. He also believed that if a person had a certain thought, one that may be negative or disturbing, that it could lead to abnormal behavior. It was then in 1967, where Beck identified three mechanisms that he thought were responsible for depression. These three mechanisms were: negative view of self, negative view of the world, and negative view of the future; Beck referred to these three mechanisms as the “Cognitive Triad”. Beck believes that as these three connected with each other that our cognitive abilities, such as memory and problem-solving would be diminished, and as a result we would become filled with

According to Beck, you are more likely to be depressed if you were able to develop a negative self-schema at some point in your life, whether it be as a child or in adolescence, but more than likely it being when you were a child. A negative self-schema is a traumatic or troubling event. An example of a negative self-schema: getting beat up in front of the whole student body. Individuals who have negative self-schemas tend to not think logically and will focus on only certain aspects of situation, while ignoring the aspects that matter. Lastly, in Beck’s theory of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy there are errors in logic. Errors in logic are self-imposed distortions of thinking that will cause depression and anxiety. There are six errors in logic, selective abstraction, arbitrary interference, magnification, minimization, overgeneralization, and personalization. Selective abstraction is solely focusing on aspect of a situation, while ignoring all the other important ones; an example being that you felt your team lost the soccer game because of you, even though if it wasn’t for your two goals, the team wouldn’t have even been in the game. Arbitrary interference is jumping to a conclusion on something without having proper evidence, or a basis for your claims; an example being that the first Padres game you ever went to was game 7 of the World Series, and that they ended up