Determinist Proposal Essay

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Criticisms First criticism that can be applied on the theory of imagery rehearsal therapy is that it is based on the notion that chronic nightmares in PTSD are a learned behavior. This was explained by the classical conditioning theory of learning. This theory is often perceived as too simplistic and deterministic. People are more complicated than animals (Pavlov’s dogs), there are certain typical cognitive schemas that are one of the major characteristics of human beings and some other learning theories take into account the human complex nature; e.g. classical conditioning model can be upgraded by the reinforcement and punishment model. The trauma is therefore the cause of the negative cognitive schema. Furthermore, this model is deterministic, which means that it makes us, humans, unable to influence our learning processes and for example that phobias and other learned behaviors could not be unlearned. But on the other hand, IRT is based on the fact that a learned behavior can be unlearned. It has to be noted that since the CBT is based on cognitive and behavioral paradigm. Some criticisms of the cognitive paradigm should be discussed. The cognitive approach usually explains mental illnesses as bad cognitive schemas, but never answers the question from where the schema came from (Davison & Neale, 1994), which is not …show more content…

problem-solving therapy and others (Cuijpers, van Straten, Andersson, & van Oppen, 2008). Again for CBT it is stated that it might be deterministic, because there is always cause-and-effect relationship and that leaves us to almost no free will. CBT takes into account that human beings are without free will and that we are defined only by the external stimuli, which trigger cognitive processes (Slife & Williams,

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