Table of Contents
What are the Beck’s cognitive therapy techniques?
Beck developed cognitive therapy with the belief that a person’s experiences result in cognitions or thoughts. These cognitions are connected with schemas, which are core beliefs developed from early life, to create our view of the world and determine our emotional states and behaviors. In the 1960s, Aaron Beck developed cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or cognitive therapy. Beck developed a cognitive explanation of depression which has three components: a) cognitive bias; b) negative self-schemas; c) the negative triad. Beck’s model of anxiety begins with an under- standing of the adaptational aspects of anxiety. With all of its emotional, physiological, behaviour- al, and cognitive components, the normal anxiety response provides an innate survival mechanism. The cognitive model posits that the way people perceive their experiences influences their emotional, behavioral, and physiological reactions. Correcting misperceptions and modifying unhelpful thinking and behavior brings about improved reactions (Beck, 1964).
What was Aaron Beck’s contribution to cognitive therapy?
Beck (1997) discovered key ideas in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, he explains different disorders were associated with different types of distorted thinking. Distorted thinking has a negative effect on our behavior no matter what type of disorder (Beck, 1997). CBT explores the relationship between feelings, thoughts, and behaviours, and evolved from two distinct schools of psychology: behaviourism and cognitive therapy. Its roots can be traced to these two approaches. The practice of cognitive behavioral therapy was first developed in the 1960s. Dr. Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania designed and carried out experiments to test psychoanalytic concepts and found some surprising results. Cognitive behavioral therapy exercises are designed to intervene on all three components simultaneously. For instance, when uncontrollable worry is the problem, CBT exercises can help people to identify more effective and grounded thoughts, which lessens anxiety. Weaknesses of the cognitive theory as an explanation for depression. A link between negative thinking and depression does not mean that one has necessarily caused the other, so cause and effect cannot be established – it may in fact be the case that depression causes negative thinking and not the other way around.