good

2. Aaron Temkin Beck
 (born July 18, 1921) is an American psychiatrist and a
professor emeritus at the department of psychiatry at
the University of Pennsylvania.
 Beck is known as the father of Cognitive Therapy and
inventor of the widely used Beck Depression Inventory
(BDI), Beck Hopelessness Scale, and Beck Anxiety
Inventory (BAI)

3. Aaron Temkin Beck
 Aaron Beck was born in Providence, Rhode Island on July 18, 1921
as the youngest child of his three siblings.
 Beck’s parents came over from Russia as Jewish immigrants.
Beck’s birth followed the death of his sister to an influenza
epidemic.
 After her daughter’s death, Beck’s mother became severely
depressed; this depression was lifted when Beck was born.
 Beck claimed this is where his need for control rooted itself.
Beck had feelings of stupidity and incompetence after a near
fatal illness caused from an infection from a broken arm.
 However, Beck taught himself how to work through his fears
and problems cognitively; this is what sparked the development
of his theory and therapies in later years.

4. Aaron Temkin Beck
 Beck attended Brown University, graduating magna
cum laude in 1942.
 At Brown he was elected a member of the Phi Beta
Kappa Society,
 was an associate editor of the Brown Daily Herald, and
received the Francis Wayland Scholarship, William
Gaston Prize for Excellence in Oratory, and Philo
Sherman Bennett Essay Award.
 Beck attended Yale Medical School, graduating with
an M.D. in 1946. Beck received a Lasker Clinical
Research Award in 2006.

5. Aaron Temkin Beck
 Beck is the director of the Center for the Treatment
and Prevention of Suicide.
 Beck believed that depression is due to negative views.
He believed that these negative views were towards the
self, world, and future in particular.
 These negative views are "idiosyncratic."
 Depressed people say things like "I can't do my job" or
"Nobody cares about me."
 These negative views would in turn trigger depression
in a person.

6. Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT)
 Insight-focused therapy
 Emphasizes changing negative thoughts and
maladaptive beliefs
 Theoretical Assumptions
 People’s internal communication is accessible to
introspection
 Clients’ beliefs have highly personal meanings
 These meanings can be discovered by the client rather
than being taught or interpreted by the therapist

7. Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT)
 Cognitive therapy seeks to help the patient overcome difficulties
by identifying and changing dysfunctional thinking, behavior,
and emotional responses.
 This involves helping patients develop skills for modifying
beliefs, identifying distorted thinking, relating to others in
different ways, and changing behaviors.
 Treatment is based on collaboration between patient and
therapist and on testing beliefs.
 Therapy may consist of testing the assumptions which one
makes and identifying how certain of one's usually-
unquestioned thoughts are distorted, unrealistic and unhelpful.
 Once those thoughts have been challenged, one's feelings about
the subject matter of those thoughts are more easily subject to
change.

8. Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT)
Beck initially focused on depression and developed a list
of "errors" in thinking that he proposed could
maintain depression,
 including arbitrary inference,
 selective abstraction,
 over-generalization,
 and magnification (of negatives)
 and minimization (of positives)

9. Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT)
A simple example may illustrate the principle of how CT works:
 having made a mistake at work, a person may believe, "I'm useless and can't do
anything right at work."
 Strongly believing this then tends to worsen their mood.
 The problem may be worsened further if the individual reacts by avoiding
activities and then behaviorally confirming the negative belief to himself.
 As a result, any adaptive response and further constructive consequences
become unlikely, which reinforces the original belief of being "useless".
 In therapy, the latter example could be identified as a self-fulfilling prophecy or
"problem cycle", and the efforts of the therapist and client would be directed at
working together to change it.
 This is done by addressing the way the client thinks and behaves in response to
similar situations and by developing more flexible ways to think and respond,
including reducing the avoidance of activities.
 If, as a result, the patient escapes the negative thought patterns and
dysfunctional behaviors, the negative feelings may be relieved over time.

10. Prepared by: JC de Egurrola
jeelchristine@i.ph