Premium Essay

Aaron T. Beck's Psychodynamic Research

Submitted By
Words 405
Pages 2
Aaron T. Beck Aaron T. Beck, a graduate of Yale University, is famous for his cognitive therapies and treatment for the depressed individual. Although many view his work as a therapy rather than a theory, his research is greatly appreciated. Essentially, he focused how the cognitive triad impacted depression in individuals.
In his works, Beck describes how cognitive therapy is based on the theory that personality results from the way one feels and behaves as a reaction to thoughts. Hence, this allows an individual to form schemas, one's fundamental cores and beliefs, of how the world operates. During psychological distress, cognitive distortions arise when events fail to cohere with determined schemas leading to unrealistic schemas. In reality, all people possess those idiosyncratic predispositions that predispose them to unique psychological distress. However, personality structures and levels of cognitive schemas determine the reactions.
To clarify his findings, Beck elaborated on the cognitive triad. The cognitive triad stresses on three aspects of negativity—the self, the world and the …show more content…
With the incorporation of some psychodynamic and behavior therapies, Beck introduced the Cognitive Therapy. Mainly, the cognitive therapies work on reconstructing thoughts to remove systematic biases that produce faulty information; as a result, the treatment will remove maladaptive behaviors and emotions. Thus, the critical point in the treatment is to challenge dysfunctional beliefs and promote more realistic thinking. In the process, the client must experience effective arousal or hot cognition, which occurs when the simultaneous experiencing of arousing emotions and reality testing. Subsequently, this experience allows the client to alter inner attitudes and beliefs. Additionally, Beck stressed on several techniques to prepare for anticipated consequences and deal with

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Cognitive Therapy

...of goal-oriented, explicit systematic procedures. The name refers to behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and to therapy based upon a combination of basic behavioral and cognitive principles and research. CBT is thought to be effective for the treatment of a variety of conditions, including mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse, tic, and psychotic disorders. Many CBT treatment programs for specific disorders have been evaluated for efficacy; the health-care trend of evidence-based treatment, where specific treatments for symptom-based diagnoses are recommended, has favored CBT over other approaches such as psychodynamic treatments.[1] CBT was primarily developed through an integration of behavior therapy (the term "behavior modification" appears to have been first used by Edward Thorndike) with cognitive psychology research, first by Donald Meichenbaum and several other authors with the label of cognitive-behavior modification in the late 1970s. This tradition thereafter merged with earlier work of a few clinicians, labeled as Cognitive Therapy (CT), developed by Aaron Beck, and Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) developed by Albert Ellis. While rooted in rather different theories, these two traditions have been characterized by a constant reference to experimental research to test hypotheses, both at clinical and basic level. Common features of CBT procedures are the focus on the "here and now", a directive or guidance role of the therapist, a structuring of the psychotherapy...

Words: 5278 - Pages: 22

Premium Essay

Reaserch Doc

...authors and advance notification of White Hat Communications Abstract Increasing numbers of clinical social workers use cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in their practice. This article analyzes how CBT fits with social work values and in particular with social justice. We propose that CBT is a good fit with the values of the profession and make suggestions for areas of improvement. Keywords: cognitive-behavioral therapy, social work values, social justice, social work practice 1. Introduction In a day when evidence-based practice has become so important to the social work profession, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has become one of the most frequently used forms of psychotherapeutic intervention. Extensive research supports the effectiveness of CBT approaches for a wide range of psychosocial issues (Dobson & Dobson, 2009; Granvold, 2011). It is one of the most widely researched and published models of therapy, with more than 325 published outcome studies that validate its efficacy (Butler, Chapman, Forman, & A. Beck, 2006). This empirical validation has made CBT a popular choice for social work practitioners seeking evidence-based treatments. For the purpose of this paper we use CBT as a generic term that encompasses theoretical and practice approaches that emphasize that a person’s thinking is the prime determinant of emotional and behavioral responses to life events (A. Beck,...

Words: 8138 - Pages: 33

Premium Essay

Personality Analysis

...Table of Contents Conditioning 3 Memory 14 Thought 21 Perception 25 Sensation 33 Personality Theory 39 Abnormal Behavior 49 Psychotherapy 56 Emotion 59 Motivation 62 Social Psychology 70 Intelligence 75 Physiology 78 States of Consciousness 84 Statistics 88 Human Development 91 Conditioning What are the laws of learning? What are the things that glue in our knowledge of the world? We are talking about the role of experience in shaping our lives. The rules of learning give us great adaptability. There are three basic types of learning. They are habituation, classical conditioning, and instrumental conditioning. Imagine a worm. When the tide is in, it comes out. It has extensions from its head, getting particles from the outside. So it comes out of its hole to snatch these particles. It has one fear though: seagulls. The worm is delicious to them. They see him and they eat him. The worm has a detection system wired in though. When there is a shadow, he ducks. It is a hard-wired reflex. Sometimes, however, shadows don’t mean a darn, like on a cloudy day. If it doesn’t come out because of the shadows, it will get nothing done and starve to death. Therefore, if the shadows are too frequent, it will ignore them. There...

Words: 43085 - Pages: 173

Premium Essay

Mahek

...Chapter 1 SIGMUND FREUD AN INTRODUCTION Sigmund Freud, pioneer of Psychoanalysis, was born on 6th May 1856 in Freiberg to a middle class family. He was born as the eldest child to his father’s second wife. When Freud was four years old, his family shifted and settled in Vienna. Although Freud’s ambition from childhood was a career in law, he decided to enter the field of medicine. In 1873, at the age of seventeen, Freud enrolled in the university as a medical student. During his days in the university, he did his research on the Central Nervous System under the guidance of German physician `Ernst Wilhelm Von Brucke’. Freud received his medical degree in 1881and later in 1883 he began to work in Vienna General Hospital. Freud spent three years working in various departments of the hospital and in 1885 he left his post at the hospital to join the University of Vienna as a lecturer in Neuropathology. Following his appointment as a lecturer, he got the opportunity to work under French neurologist Jean Charcot at Salpetriere, the famous Paris hospital for nervous diseases. So far Freud’s work had been entirely concentrated on physical sciences but Charcot’s work, at that time, concentrated more on hysteria and hypnotism. Freud’s studies under Charcot, which centered largely on hysteria, influenced him greatly in channelising his interests to psychopathology. In 1886, Freud established his private practice in Vienna specializing in nervous diseases...

Words: 155674 - Pages: 623