matt1981
18-02-08, 15:08
Hey guys doing my psychology homework, came across this. Thought it might help. BIt wordy though; dictionaries at the ready!!
Aaron Beck 1934 -
School of Psychology: Cognitive Psychology
Key Words: Cognitive Reconstructuring, Negative Cognitive Triad (For Depression)
Beck Institute (http://www.beckinstitute.org/)
Cognitive Therapy
Like Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck also turned his back on psychoanalytical techniques. Psychodynamic theory saw depression along motivational-affective considerations, in other words, as misdirected anger, or swallowed anger, or "bottled up anger". In his session work, Beck found that his clients reported their feelings of depression in ways differing from these psychoanalytical conceptulations of depression. Like Ellis, Beck found his clients illustrated evidence of irrational thinking that he called systematic distortions. The basic premise of Beck's Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy concerns these disortions, and follows the philosphy of Epictetus: It is not a thing that makes us unhappy, but how we view things that make us unhappy. Therefore, if we avoid struggling to change things, and instead change our own interpretations of things, we change how we feel and how we act in the future.
What is a cognition?
What are you, some kind of idiot? Ok, fine. Cognitions are verbal or pictoral representations, available to the conscious, which form according to the interpretations we make about the things that happen to us. These interpretations and assumptions are shaped by a bunch of unconscious presuppositions we make about people, based on past experience - and when I say past experience, I mean experiences going all the way back to birth.
How Cognitions Form
Basically, when we are infants, we take in the whole world in a rather naive and unthinking fashion. William James saw this as the stream of consciousness.
In order to make any real sense of this, we form cognitive filters, schemas, or a set of assumptions and expectations of how events will transpire, and what they mean to us. And we begin by making the most illogical and irrational assumptions. It's years before we can even make the simplest logical inferences. (For more, see Piaget, or see my logic page for the fallacy section.)
You can also refer to all of this as Appraisal Theory.
Beck's Spin on Epictetus
Beck's therapy seeks to uncover instances where distorted, illogical thoughts and images lead to unwanted or unproductive emotions. We say unproducitve emotions, because these emotions can be either good or bad, for either can lead to unproductive behaviors.
What, precisely, is a Cognitive Distortion?
Beck's typology of cognitive distortions is somewhat like Ellis's irrational beliefs, they all represent evidence of emotion subsuming the logical thought process - i.e. logical fallacies. It's helpful for clients to just read about this stuff, so I list the distortions here:
Catastrophizing or Minimizing - weighing an event as too important, or failing to weight it enough.
Dichotomous Thinking - commiting the false dichotomy error - framing a phenomena as an either/or when there are other options.
Emotional Reasoning Feeling that your negative affect necessarily reflect the way a situation really is
Fortune Telling Anticapting events will turn out badly
Labeling This occurs when we infer the character of a person from one behavior, or from a limited set of behaviors. I.e. a person who forgets something one time is "an idiot
Mental Filter - We all have mental filters, but this distortion refers to specific situations where we ignore either positive or negatives to one issue.
Mind Reading - Believing that we can know what a person thinks solely from their behaviors.
Overgeneralization - One event is taken to be proof of a series or pattern of events
Personalization - Assuming that a person is at fault for some negative external event.
Should Statements - Statements that begin with "Shoulds" or "Musts" are often punishing demands we make on ourselves. Generally, the assumption that we Must or Should do something is absolutist, and therefore most likely false. Beck ripped this off from Ellis.
Guiding Principles For Cognitive Therapy
Short Term Therapy
Beck's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is short term. It focuses on symptom reduction. Yet, before the psychoanalyst in you begins to cry out, recognize that symptom reduction has been shown by empirical research to be an effective long term help - i.e. focusing on symptoms does help effect "core" character changes.
Therapist's Stance - Active
The therapist is active, didactic and directive. He tells you what he is doing, the reason why he is doing it, and and even teaches you how to do it for yourself. For example, if he assigns homework for a client, he tells the client the reasoning behind the homework. This also has the additional benefit of allowing the client to practice new behaviors in the actual environment where they will occur. The cognitive behavioral therapist can point to research that supports the efficacy of all of this.
The CB therapist uses systematic cognitive and behavioral techniques.
Patients recieve a toolkit of self help techniques from the therapist. The client himself becomes a specialist in dealing with his own problems. This can only help the client become more independent. So, unlike some other therapies, cognitive behavioral therapy helps clients free themselves from the need for therapy and actively plans for this event.
Typical Problems that CBT Addresses
Major Disorders treated by CBT include: Depression, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoid personality disorder, somatoform disorder. The treatment of depression often serves as the paradigm of the cognitive approach.
Structured Sessions
Sessions are structured and problem oriented. The therapist knows in advance the schedule of events for the session, and he shares this information with the client. This helps the therapist and the client make the most of each session.
Present Focus
Present and future focused. Yes, past events shape who we are, but cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what we can do now to change this.
Collaborative Relationship
Therapeutic relationship is collaborative, as opposed to authoritarian, adversarial or neutral. The cognitive behavioral therapist starts out as the authority - the teacher, but actively transfers the power of the relationship
Experiential Therapy
Use of self help homework, premack principle, for transfer of learning from the office to everyday life. Clients will see real life changes before therapy ends. They will experience successes early on.
Structure of Sessions
One thing that annoys me about any discussion of a therapy is how little time is spent discussing how therapy actually works in a session. The next section corrects this common problem.
Beck created a model for a typical initial session:
1) Set an agenda
2) Review self-report data
3) review presenting problem
4) Identify problems and set clearly definable and measurable goals
5) Educate patient on the cognitive model
6) Discuss the patient's expectations for therapy
7) Summarize session
8) Elicit feedback from the patient
What a thorough approach, right?
In later sessions, the above model is changed a bit. There, there is only an agenda setting period, a review of the presenting problem, and then work on the agenda, including reviewing homework, and eliciting feedback.
Cognitive Restructuring
While the CB therapist uses many techniques to aid his client: psychoeducation, relaxation training, coping skills, exposure, response prevention, cognitive restructuring is often the heart of the therapy.
If you've read my entry on Ellis, you have learned that he tends to focus his work on the client's core evaluative beliefs of himself. In this light, Ellis tends to remain truer to his roots as a psychoanalyst - he is still seeking out unconscious conflict, but with cognitive tools.
Beck, however, is a bit more empirical, and more concerned with working with observable behaviors. He therefore focuses more on what he refers to as "automatic thoughts".
Now, automatic thoughts are held to link back to core beliefs, but Beck chooses to work on changing these thoughts, rather than attacking the core belief directly , as Ellis does.
Here is how Beck views the mind:
We have automatic thoughts" - which, while unconscious, are directly accessible with some attention to them. Beck therefore does not view them as unconscious in a Freudian sense so much as he sees them as operating without our notice, hence the term "automatic."
Now, automatic thoughts occur, because of underlying assumptions and rules we make up concernin the world. These are more unconscious than automatic thoughts, because they require a great deal of work to elucidate. Typically, only philosophers and deep thinkers such as you, gentle reader, tend to be aware of them.
Finally, there are core beliefs about ourselves and others. These are highly emotionally charged, rigid views. They are unconscious roughly on a level with Freudian unconsciousness.
Collaborative Empiricism
In cognitive restructuring, Beck seeks to correct the cognitive distortions that appear in automatic thoughts, that point back to self defeating core beliefs. He does this by disputing the client's beliefs inherent in the automatic thoughts in a scientific manner: guided discovery, hypothesis testing, supporting through evidence, looking for alternative theories.
This is how the chain works:
Automatic thought: I can't do this, it is too hard.
Assumption: I will fail.
Core Belief: Because I am a loser.
Beck would look at the client's statement "I can't do this." and work with the client to see, for example, if the client has real evidence of his inability to perform the task. Often, the statement is not literally true - the client has performed the task, or he's having trouble because he's trying to do too much at once.
In the cognitive conceputalization of the client's conundrums, the cognitive caretaker cares for the client by considering these following common clinical concerns:
The patient's diagnosis is made through his or her identifiable symptoms
Current problems are the focal point - how did they develop and how are they maintained?
Their cognitions - automatic thoughts, assumptions and core beliefs, are key focus of change.
Core Beliefs
Beck tended to think there were only a few types of core beliefs.
Cognitive Restructuring
In the most general sense, we can discuss cognitive restructuring in the following fashion:
Perception and experiencing in general are active processes that involve both inspective and introspective data in that the clients's cognitions represent a synthesis of internal (mental filters) and external stimuli (the world about him.)
How people appraise a situation is generally evident in their cognitions (thoughts and visual images).
These cognitions constitue their stream of consciousness or phenomenal field, which reflects their configuration of themselves, their past and future, and their world.
Alterations in the content of their underlying cognitive structures affect their affective state and behavioral patterns.
Through psychological intervention, clients can become aware of their cognitive distortions. Correction of those faulty dysfunctional constructs can lead to clincal improvement.
According to cognitive theory, cognitive dysfunctions are the core of the affective, physical and other associated features of depression. Apathy and low energy are results of a person's expectation of failure in all areas. Similarly, paralysis of will stems from a person's pessimision an feelings of hopelessness. The cognitive triadof depression is a negative self-perception whereby peole see themselves as inadequate, deprived and worthless. They expereince the world as negative and demanding. They learn self-defeating cognitive styles, to expecte failure and punishment, and for it to continue for a long time.
The goal of cognitive therapy is to alleviate depression and to prevent its recurrence by helping clients to identify and test negative cognitions, to develop alternative and more flexible schemas, and to rehearse both new cognitive and behavioral responses. By changing the way people think, the depresssive disorede can be alleviated.
Strategies and Techniques
Goal: Identify and alter cognitive distortions that maintain symptons.
Three components of Cognitive Restructuring
Didactic aspects
The therapy begins by explaining to the client the theoretical concepts of CBT, focusing on the belief that faulty logic leads to emotional pain. Next, the client learns the concept of joint hypothesis formation, and hypothesis testing. In depression, the relationship between depression and faulty, self defeating cognitions are stressed, as well as the connection of affect and behavior, and all rationales behind treatment.
Eliciting automatic thoughts
Every psychopathological disorder has its own specific cognitve profile of distorted thought, which provides a framework for specific cognitive intervention. In depression, we see the negative triad: a globalized negative self view, negative view of current experiences and negative view of the future. Here are some examples of cognitive profiles for other disorders:
In hypomanic episodes we see inflated views of self, experience and future.
In anxiety disorder we see irrational fear of physical or psychological danger.
In panic disorder we see catastrophic misinterpretation of body and mental experiences
In phobias, we see irrational fear in specific, avoidable situations
Paranoid personality disorder: negative bias, interferene by others
Conversion disorder: concept of motor or sensory abnormality
Obsessive-compulsive disorder: repeated warning or doubting about safety and repetitive rituals to ward off these threats
Suicidal behavior: hopelessness and deficit in problem solving
Anorexia nervosa: Fear of being fat.
Hypochondriaseis: attribution of serious medical disorder
Testing automatic thoughts
Acting as a teacher, the therapist helps a clent test validity of automatic thought. The goal is to encourage the client to reject incurate or exaggerated thoughts. Clients often blame themselves for things outside their control. "Self defeating attributions". Alternate explanations are considered.
Identifying maladaptive thoughts
As client and therapist continue to identify automatic thoughts, patterns usually become apparent. The patterns represent rules of maladapive general assumptions that guidea client's life. "In order to be happy, I must..."
Primary assumption: If I am nice, suffer for others, bad things wont happy to me
Secondary assumption: It is my fault when bad things happen to me, because I was not nice (or nice enough) SO, Life is unfair, because I am nice and still bad things happen
Automatic thoughts: I caused my loved one to behave badly/Why dont I have a nice loved one?
Such rules inevitably lead to disapointment, depression, and ultimately, depression.
Depression: Causes and Treatment (1967)
Beck first presented a model of depression, but it now represents how psychopathology works in general.
Emotional disorders are the reults of a distorted thinking or unrealistic cognitive appraisal of life events. How an individual structures reality determines his emotional state. a reciprocal relation exits beteween affecta nd cognition one reinforces the other, resulting in esculations of emotional and cognitive impairment.
Schemata - cognitive structures that organize and filter incoming data, acquired in early development, according to one's epistemology. Too disconsonant distortions lead to malajustment.
Negative cognitive triad: view of self, world and future in a negative manner.
cognitive therapy applies empirical procedures to cognitive, behavioral and affective processes - a model that is pervasive today.
Treatment goals are as with REBT. Therapy involves learning experiences for the client that allow them to monitor distorted thinking to realize the relation between thoughts, feelings and behavior and to test the validity of automatic thoughts tosubstitute more realistic cognititions and to learn to identify and later the underlying assumptions that predispose the client to the distorted thoughts in the first place.
You will often see Beck's list of Cognitive Distortions, which comprises a list of logical fallacies. However, Beck, like Ellis, also presented a list of the components of Mature Thinking a set of ways of thinking about yourself, the world, and the future, that lead to cognitive, emotional and behavioral success in life. Here they are:
Beck's "Primitive thinking" Vs. "Mature thinking"
Primitive thinking is Nondimensional and global:
I am the living embodiement of failure
Mature thinking is multidimensional and specific:
I make mistakes sometimes, but otherwise I can be clever at many things.
Primitive thinking is absolutistic and moralistic:
I am a sinner, and I will end up in hell.
Mature thinking is relativistic and nonjudgemental:
I sometimes let people down, but but there is no reason I can't make amends.
Primitive thinking is invariant:
I am hopeless
Mature thinking is variable:
There may be some way...
Primitive thinking enters into "character diagnosis":
I am a coward
Mature thinking examines behaviors - behavior diagnosis:
I am behaving like a coward right now
Primitive thinking is irrevesrible and sees things as immutable:
There is just nothing I can do about this Mature thinking is reversible, flexible and amerlioritive:
Let's see what I can do to fix this...
Aaron Beck 1934 -
School of Psychology: Cognitive Psychology
Key Words: Cognitive Reconstructuring, Negative Cognitive Triad (For Depression)
Beck Institute (http://www.beckinstitute.org/)
Cognitive Therapy
Like Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck also turned his back on psychoanalytical techniques. Psychodynamic theory saw depression along motivational-affective considerations, in other words, as misdirected anger, or swallowed anger, or "bottled up anger". In his session work, Beck found that his clients reported their feelings of depression in ways differing from these psychoanalytical conceptulations of depression. Like Ellis, Beck found his clients illustrated evidence of irrational thinking that he called systematic distortions. The basic premise of Beck's Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy concerns these disortions, and follows the philosphy of Epictetus: It is not a thing that makes us unhappy, but how we view things that make us unhappy. Therefore, if we avoid struggling to change things, and instead change our own interpretations of things, we change how we feel and how we act in the future.
What is a cognition?
What are you, some kind of idiot? Ok, fine. Cognitions are verbal or pictoral representations, available to the conscious, which form according to the interpretations we make about the things that happen to us. These interpretations and assumptions are shaped by a bunch of unconscious presuppositions we make about people, based on past experience - and when I say past experience, I mean experiences going all the way back to birth.
How Cognitions Form
Basically, when we are infants, we take in the whole world in a rather naive and unthinking fashion. William James saw this as the stream of consciousness.
In order to make any real sense of this, we form cognitive filters, schemas, or a set of assumptions and expectations of how events will transpire, and what they mean to us. And we begin by making the most illogical and irrational assumptions. It's years before we can even make the simplest logical inferences. (For more, see Piaget, or see my logic page for the fallacy section.)
You can also refer to all of this as Appraisal Theory.
Beck's Spin on Epictetus
Beck's therapy seeks to uncover instances where distorted, illogical thoughts and images lead to unwanted or unproductive emotions. We say unproducitve emotions, because these emotions can be either good or bad, for either can lead to unproductive behaviors.
What, precisely, is a Cognitive Distortion?
Beck's typology of cognitive distortions is somewhat like Ellis's irrational beliefs, they all represent evidence of emotion subsuming the logical thought process - i.e. logical fallacies. It's helpful for clients to just read about this stuff, so I list the distortions here:
Catastrophizing or Minimizing - weighing an event as too important, or failing to weight it enough.
Dichotomous Thinking - commiting the false dichotomy error - framing a phenomena as an either/or when there are other options.
Emotional Reasoning Feeling that your negative affect necessarily reflect the way a situation really is
Fortune Telling Anticapting events will turn out badly
Labeling This occurs when we infer the character of a person from one behavior, or from a limited set of behaviors. I.e. a person who forgets something one time is "an idiot
Mental Filter - We all have mental filters, but this distortion refers to specific situations where we ignore either positive or negatives to one issue.
Mind Reading - Believing that we can know what a person thinks solely from their behaviors.
Overgeneralization - One event is taken to be proof of a series or pattern of events
Personalization - Assuming that a person is at fault for some negative external event.
Should Statements - Statements that begin with "Shoulds" or "Musts" are often punishing demands we make on ourselves. Generally, the assumption that we Must or Should do something is absolutist, and therefore most likely false. Beck ripped this off from Ellis.
Guiding Principles For Cognitive Therapy
Short Term Therapy
Beck's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is short term. It focuses on symptom reduction. Yet, before the psychoanalyst in you begins to cry out, recognize that symptom reduction has been shown by empirical research to be an effective long term help - i.e. focusing on symptoms does help effect "core" character changes.
Therapist's Stance - Active
The therapist is active, didactic and directive. He tells you what he is doing, the reason why he is doing it, and and even teaches you how to do it for yourself. For example, if he assigns homework for a client, he tells the client the reasoning behind the homework. This also has the additional benefit of allowing the client to practice new behaviors in the actual environment where they will occur. The cognitive behavioral therapist can point to research that supports the efficacy of all of this.
The CB therapist uses systematic cognitive and behavioral techniques.
Patients recieve a toolkit of self help techniques from the therapist. The client himself becomes a specialist in dealing with his own problems. This can only help the client become more independent. So, unlike some other therapies, cognitive behavioral therapy helps clients free themselves from the need for therapy and actively plans for this event.
Typical Problems that CBT Addresses
Major Disorders treated by CBT include: Depression, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoid personality disorder, somatoform disorder. The treatment of depression often serves as the paradigm of the cognitive approach.
Structured Sessions
Sessions are structured and problem oriented. The therapist knows in advance the schedule of events for the session, and he shares this information with the client. This helps the therapist and the client make the most of each session.
Present Focus
Present and future focused. Yes, past events shape who we are, but cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what we can do now to change this.
Collaborative Relationship
Therapeutic relationship is collaborative, as opposed to authoritarian, adversarial or neutral. The cognitive behavioral therapist starts out as the authority - the teacher, but actively transfers the power of the relationship
Experiential Therapy
Use of self help homework, premack principle, for transfer of learning from the office to everyday life. Clients will see real life changes before therapy ends. They will experience successes early on.
Structure of Sessions
One thing that annoys me about any discussion of a therapy is how little time is spent discussing how therapy actually works in a session. The next section corrects this common problem.
Beck created a model for a typical initial session:
1) Set an agenda
2) Review self-report data
3) review presenting problem
4) Identify problems and set clearly definable and measurable goals
5) Educate patient on the cognitive model
6) Discuss the patient's expectations for therapy
7) Summarize session
8) Elicit feedback from the patient
What a thorough approach, right?
In later sessions, the above model is changed a bit. There, there is only an agenda setting period, a review of the presenting problem, and then work on the agenda, including reviewing homework, and eliciting feedback.
Cognitive Restructuring
While the CB therapist uses many techniques to aid his client: psychoeducation, relaxation training, coping skills, exposure, response prevention, cognitive restructuring is often the heart of the therapy.
If you've read my entry on Ellis, you have learned that he tends to focus his work on the client's core evaluative beliefs of himself. In this light, Ellis tends to remain truer to his roots as a psychoanalyst - he is still seeking out unconscious conflict, but with cognitive tools.
Beck, however, is a bit more empirical, and more concerned with working with observable behaviors. He therefore focuses more on what he refers to as "automatic thoughts".
Now, automatic thoughts are held to link back to core beliefs, but Beck chooses to work on changing these thoughts, rather than attacking the core belief directly , as Ellis does.
Here is how Beck views the mind:
We have automatic thoughts" - which, while unconscious, are directly accessible with some attention to them. Beck therefore does not view them as unconscious in a Freudian sense so much as he sees them as operating without our notice, hence the term "automatic."
Now, automatic thoughts occur, because of underlying assumptions and rules we make up concernin the world. These are more unconscious than automatic thoughts, because they require a great deal of work to elucidate. Typically, only philosophers and deep thinkers such as you, gentle reader, tend to be aware of them.
Finally, there are core beliefs about ourselves and others. These are highly emotionally charged, rigid views. They are unconscious roughly on a level with Freudian unconsciousness.
Collaborative Empiricism
In cognitive restructuring, Beck seeks to correct the cognitive distortions that appear in automatic thoughts, that point back to self defeating core beliefs. He does this by disputing the client's beliefs inherent in the automatic thoughts in a scientific manner: guided discovery, hypothesis testing, supporting through evidence, looking for alternative theories.
This is how the chain works:
Automatic thought: I can't do this, it is too hard.
Assumption: I will fail.
Core Belief: Because I am a loser.
Beck would look at the client's statement "I can't do this." and work with the client to see, for example, if the client has real evidence of his inability to perform the task. Often, the statement is not literally true - the client has performed the task, or he's having trouble because he's trying to do too much at once.
In the cognitive conceputalization of the client's conundrums, the cognitive caretaker cares for the client by considering these following common clinical concerns:
The patient's diagnosis is made through his or her identifiable symptoms
Current problems are the focal point - how did they develop and how are they maintained?
Their cognitions - automatic thoughts, assumptions and core beliefs, are key focus of change.
Core Beliefs
Beck tended to think there were only a few types of core beliefs.
Cognitive Restructuring
In the most general sense, we can discuss cognitive restructuring in the following fashion:
Perception and experiencing in general are active processes that involve both inspective and introspective data in that the clients's cognitions represent a synthesis of internal (mental filters) and external stimuli (the world about him.)
How people appraise a situation is generally evident in their cognitions (thoughts and visual images).
These cognitions constitue their stream of consciousness or phenomenal field, which reflects their configuration of themselves, their past and future, and their world.
Alterations in the content of their underlying cognitive structures affect their affective state and behavioral patterns.
Through psychological intervention, clients can become aware of their cognitive distortions. Correction of those faulty dysfunctional constructs can lead to clincal improvement.
According to cognitive theory, cognitive dysfunctions are the core of the affective, physical and other associated features of depression. Apathy and low energy are results of a person's expectation of failure in all areas. Similarly, paralysis of will stems from a person's pessimision an feelings of hopelessness. The cognitive triadof depression is a negative self-perception whereby peole see themselves as inadequate, deprived and worthless. They expereince the world as negative and demanding. They learn self-defeating cognitive styles, to expecte failure and punishment, and for it to continue for a long time.
The goal of cognitive therapy is to alleviate depression and to prevent its recurrence by helping clients to identify and test negative cognitions, to develop alternative and more flexible schemas, and to rehearse both new cognitive and behavioral responses. By changing the way people think, the depresssive disorede can be alleviated.
Strategies and Techniques
Goal: Identify and alter cognitive distortions that maintain symptons.
Three components of Cognitive Restructuring
Didactic aspects
The therapy begins by explaining to the client the theoretical concepts of CBT, focusing on the belief that faulty logic leads to emotional pain. Next, the client learns the concept of joint hypothesis formation, and hypothesis testing. In depression, the relationship between depression and faulty, self defeating cognitions are stressed, as well as the connection of affect and behavior, and all rationales behind treatment.
Eliciting automatic thoughts
Every psychopathological disorder has its own specific cognitve profile of distorted thought, which provides a framework for specific cognitive intervention. In depression, we see the negative triad: a globalized negative self view, negative view of current experiences and negative view of the future. Here are some examples of cognitive profiles for other disorders:
In hypomanic episodes we see inflated views of self, experience and future.
In anxiety disorder we see irrational fear of physical or psychological danger.
In panic disorder we see catastrophic misinterpretation of body and mental experiences
In phobias, we see irrational fear in specific, avoidable situations
Paranoid personality disorder: negative bias, interferene by others
Conversion disorder: concept of motor or sensory abnormality
Obsessive-compulsive disorder: repeated warning or doubting about safety and repetitive rituals to ward off these threats
Suicidal behavior: hopelessness and deficit in problem solving
Anorexia nervosa: Fear of being fat.
Hypochondriaseis: attribution of serious medical disorder
Testing automatic thoughts
Acting as a teacher, the therapist helps a clent test validity of automatic thought. The goal is to encourage the client to reject incurate or exaggerated thoughts. Clients often blame themselves for things outside their control. "Self defeating attributions". Alternate explanations are considered.
Identifying maladaptive thoughts
As client and therapist continue to identify automatic thoughts, patterns usually become apparent. The patterns represent rules of maladapive general assumptions that guidea client's life. "In order to be happy, I must..."
Primary assumption: If I am nice, suffer for others, bad things wont happy to me
Secondary assumption: It is my fault when bad things happen to me, because I was not nice (or nice enough) SO, Life is unfair, because I am nice and still bad things happen
Automatic thoughts: I caused my loved one to behave badly/Why dont I have a nice loved one?
Such rules inevitably lead to disapointment, depression, and ultimately, depression.
Depression: Causes and Treatment (1967)
Beck first presented a model of depression, but it now represents how psychopathology works in general.
Emotional disorders are the reults of a distorted thinking or unrealistic cognitive appraisal of life events. How an individual structures reality determines his emotional state. a reciprocal relation exits beteween affecta nd cognition one reinforces the other, resulting in esculations of emotional and cognitive impairment.
Schemata - cognitive structures that organize and filter incoming data, acquired in early development, according to one's epistemology. Too disconsonant distortions lead to malajustment.
Negative cognitive triad: view of self, world and future in a negative manner.
cognitive therapy applies empirical procedures to cognitive, behavioral and affective processes - a model that is pervasive today.
Treatment goals are as with REBT. Therapy involves learning experiences for the client that allow them to monitor distorted thinking to realize the relation between thoughts, feelings and behavior and to test the validity of automatic thoughts tosubstitute more realistic cognititions and to learn to identify and later the underlying assumptions that predispose the client to the distorted thoughts in the first place.
You will often see Beck's list of Cognitive Distortions, which comprises a list of logical fallacies. However, Beck, like Ellis, also presented a list of the components of Mature Thinking a set of ways of thinking about yourself, the world, and the future, that lead to cognitive, emotional and behavioral success in life. Here they are:
Beck's "Primitive thinking" Vs. "Mature thinking"
Primitive thinking is Nondimensional and global:
I am the living embodiement of failure
Mature thinking is multidimensional and specific:
I make mistakes sometimes, but otherwise I can be clever at many things.
Primitive thinking is absolutistic and moralistic:
I am a sinner, and I will end up in hell.
Mature thinking is relativistic and nonjudgemental:
I sometimes let people down, but but there is no reason I can't make amends.
Primitive thinking is invariant:
I am hopeless
Mature thinking is variable:
There may be some way...
Primitive thinking enters into "character diagnosis":
I am a coward
Mature thinking examines behaviors - behavior diagnosis:
I am behaving like a coward right now
Primitive thinking is irrevesrible and sees things as immutable:
There is just nothing I can do about this Mature thinking is reversible, flexible and amerlioritive:
Let's see what I can do to fix this...