Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be described as a goal-oriented psychotherapy treatment that typically takes a practical approach to problem-solving. Its short term nature and overarching goal is to adjust patterns of thinking or behaviour that may be contributing to an individual’s worries, and so change the way they feel. CBT is one of the major orientations of psychotherapy (Roth & Fonagy, 2005) and represents a unique category of psychological intervention because it derives from cognitive and behavioural psychological models of human behaviour.

Just as some knowledge of a client’s background can be helpful in understanding their current state, an appreciation of how CBT developed can help us to understand its modern form. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy has its modern origins in the mid 1950’s with the work of Albert Ellis, a clinical psychologist who …show more content…
The reason for having this structure is that it helped to use the therapeutic time most efficiently. It also makes sure that there is a solution based focus, important information isn’t missed out and that both therapist and client think about new assignments that naturally follow on from the session.

The core idea of any therapy calling itself ‘cognitive’ is that people’s emotional reactions and behaviour are strongly influenced by cognitions (in other words, their thoughts, beliefs and interpretations about themselves or the situations in which they find themselves. However, it cannot be quite that simple. If an event automatically gave rise to an emotion in such a straightforward way, then it would follow that the same event would have to result in the same emotion for anyone who experienced that event. What we actually see is that to a greater or lesser degree, people react differently to similar events.

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