Cognitive Therapy Theory: Aaron T. Beck's Theory

Aaron T. Beck develops a therapy known as cognitive therapy after he explore more on depression. Beck’s conclusion from his depressed clients is that they had a negative bias in their interpretation of some life episodes. This contributed to their cognitive distortions. Cognitive therapy sees psychological problems as derive from commonplace. For example faulty thinking, making false inferences on the basis of false information and fail to differentiate between reality and fantasy. The theoretical assumptions of cognitive therapy are (1) that people’s internal communication is accessible to introspection, (2) that clients’ beliefs have highly personal meanings, and (3) that these meanings can be discovered by the client rather than being taught or interpreted by the therapist. The main theory of CT holds that to understand the nature of an emotional episode or disturbance it is important to focus on the cognitive content of an individual’s reaction to the upsetting event or stream of thoughts. The goal is to change the way clients think by using their automatic thoughts to reach the core

Freeman and Dattilio (1992, 1994; Dattilio, 2001) do a good job of debunking the myths and misconceptions about cognitive therapy. Weishaar (1993) concisely addresses a number of criticisms levelled at the approach. Although the cognitive therapist is straightforward and looks for simple rather than complex solutions, this does not imply that the practice of cognitive therapy is