Aaron Beck was a pioneering psychiatrist who developed cognitive therapy. He was born in 1921 and had a difficult childhood that influenced his later work. Beck developed cognitive therapy which focuses on identifying and disputing dysfunctional thoughts and beliefs. Cognitive therapy has been successfully applied to many disorders and is now one of the most influential psychotherapy approaches.

1. •AARON TEMKIN BECK (b. 1921) was born in
Providence, Rhode Island.
•His childhood was characterized by adversity.
•Beck used his personal problems as a basis for
understanding others and developing his theory.
•A graduate of Brown University and Yale School of
Medicine, Beck initially practiced as a neurologist,
but he switched to psychiatry during his residency.
•Beck is the pioneering figure in cognitive therapy,
one of the most influential and empirically validated
approaches to psychotherapy. His conceptual and
empirical contributions are considered to be among
the most significant in the field of psychiatry and
psychotherapy
BIOGRAPHY OF AARON T. BECK

2. •Beck joined the Department of Psychiatry of the University of
Pennsylvania in 1954, where he currently holds the position of
Professor (Emeritus) of Psychiatry.
•Beck’s pioneering research established the efficacy of cognitive
therapy for depression. He has successfully applied cognitive
therapy to depression, generalized anxiety and panic disorders,
suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse, eating disorders, marital and
relationship problems, psychotic disorders, and personality
disorders. He has developed assessment scales for depression,
suicide risk, anxiety, self-concept, and personality.

3. COGNITIVE THERAPY

4. Aaron T. Beck developed an approach known as
cognitive therapy (CT) as a result of his research on
depression
SIMILARITIES OF COGNITIVE THERAPY, BEHAVIOR
THERAPY AND REBT
ACTIVE STRUCTURED
DIRECTIVE EMPIRICAL
TIME-LIMITED MAKE USE OF HOMEWORK
PRESENT- CENTERED
COLLABORATIVE
REQUIRE EXPLICIT IDENTIFICATION OF PROBLEMS AND
THE SITUATIONS IN WHICH THEY OCCUR.

5. Cognitive therapy perceives psychological problems as stemming
from commonplace processes such as faulty thinking, making
incorrect inferences on the basis of inadequate or incorrect
information, and failing to distinguish between fantasy and
reality.
THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF COGNITIVE THERAPY
1. people’s internal communication is accessible to
introspection
2. 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

6. The goal is to change the way clients think by using their
automatic thoughts to reach the core schemata and
begin to introduce the idea of schema restructuring. This
is done by encouraging clients to gather and weigh the
evidence in support of their beliefs.
AUTOMATIC THOUGHTS- personalized notions that are
triggered by particular stimuli that lead to emotional
responses.

7. COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
1. ARBITRARY INFERENCES- refer to making
conclusions without supporting and relevant
evidence. This includes “catastrophizing,” or
thinking of the absolute worst scenario and
outcomes for most situations.
2. SELECTIVE ABSTRACTION consists of forming
conclusions based on an isolated detail of an event.
In this process other information is ignored, and
the significance of the total context is missed. The
assumption is that the events that matter are those
dealing with failure and deprivation.

8. OVERGENERALIZATION is a process of holding extreme
beliefs on the basis of a single incident and applying
them inappropriately to dissimilar events or settings.
MAGNIFICATION AND MINIMIZATION consist of
perceiving a case or situation in a greater or lesser light
than it truly deserves.
PERSONALIZATION is a tendency for individuals to relate
external events to themselves, even when there is no
basis for making this connection.

9. LABELLING AND MISLABELLING involve portraying one’s
identity on the basis of imperfections and mistakes
made in the past and allowing them to define one’s true
identity.
DICHOTOMOUS THINKING involves categorizing
experiences in either-or extremes.

10. In cognitive therapy, clients learn to engage in more realistic
thinking, especially if they consistently notice times when they
tend to get caught up in catastrophic thinking.
After they have gained insight into how their unrealistically
negative thoughts are affecting them, clients are trained to test
these automatic thoughts against reality by examining and
weighing the evidence for and against them.
This process of critically examining their core beliefs involves
empirically testing them by actively engaging in a Socratic
dialogue with the therapist, carrying out homework
assignments, gathering data on assumptions they make, keeping
a record of activities, and forming alternative interpretations

11. Cognitive therapy is focused on present problems,
regardless of a client’s diagnosis. The past may be
brought into therapy when the therapist considers it
essential to understand how and when certain core
dysfunctional beliefs originated and how these ideas
have a current impact on the client’s specific schema
The goals of this brief therapy include providing
symptom relief, assisting clients in resolving their most
pressing problems, and teaching clients relapse
prevention strategies.

12. SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CT AND REBT
REBT CT
REBT is often highly directive, persuasive,
and confrontational; it also focuses on
the teaching role of the therapist. The
therapist models rational thinking and
helps clients to identify and dispute
irrational beliefs.
CT uses a Socratic dialogue by posing
open-ended questions to clients with the
aim of getting clients to reflect on
personal issues and arrive at their own
conclusions. CT places more emphasis on
helping clients discover and identify their
misconceptions for themselves than does
REBT
Through a process of rational disputation,
Ellis works to persuade clients that certain
of their beliefs are irrational and non-
functional.
Cognitive therapists view dysfunctional
beliefs as being problematic because
they interfere with normal cognitive
processing, not because they are
irrational

13. The Client–Therapist Relationship
Macy (2007) states that effective cognitive therapists strive to
create “warm, empathic relationships with clients while at the
same time effectively using cognitive therapy techniques that
will enable clients to create change in their thinking, feeling, and
behaving”
The therapist functions as a catalyst and a guide who helps
clients understand how their beliefs and attitudes influence the
way they feel and act. Clients are expected to identify the
distortions in their thinking, summarize important points in the
session, and collaboratively devise homework assignments that
they agree to carry out

14. Cognitive therapists emphasize the client’s role in self-discovery.
The assumption is that lasting changes in the client’s thinking and
behaviour will be most likely to occur with the client’s initiative,
understanding, awareness, and effort.
Cognitive therapists aim to teach clients how to be their own
therapist

15. Applications of Cognitive Therapy
Cognitive therapy initially gained recognition as an approach to
treating depression, but extensive research has also been devoted
to the study and treatment of anxiety disorders
Cognitive therapy has been successfully used in a wide variety of
other disorders and clinical areas, some of which include treating
phobias, psychosomatic disorders, eating disorders, anger, panic
disorders, and generalized anxiety Disorders, posttraumatic
stress disorder, suicidal behaviour, borderline personality
disorders, narcissistic personality disorders, and schizophrenic
disorders, personality disorders; substance abuse ,chronic pain
,medical illness, crisis intervention , couples and families therapy,
child abusers, divorce counseling, skills training, and stress
management.

16. TREATMENT OF DEPRESSION

17. Depression-prone people often set rigid, perfectionist goals for
themselves that are impossible to attain. Their negative
expectations are so strong that even if they experience success in
specific tasks they anticipate failure the next time. They screen out
successful experiences that are not consistent with their negative
self-concept. The thought content of depressed individuals centers
on a sense of irreversible loss that results in emotional states of
sadness, disappointment, and apathy
Beck’s therapeutic approach to treating depressed clients focuses
on specific problem areas and the reasons clients give for their
symptoms.

18. APPLICATION TO FAMILY THERAPY
Some cognitive behavior therapists place a strong emphasis on
examining cognitions among individual family members as well as
on what may be termed the “family schemata”. These are jointly
held beliefs about the family that have formed as a result of
years of integrated interaction among members of the family
unit. It is the experiences and perceptions from the family of origin
that shape the schema about both the immediate family and
families in general. These schemata have a major impact on how
the individual thinks, feels, and behaves in the family system