CBT is one of the fastest growing psychotherapies since its development in the 1960s by Aaron Beck. It is a widely recognized evidenced based practice known for its success in treating a number of mental health disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy is often the go to model of treatment used among mental health practitioners and has undergone several adaptations over the years. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy aims to treat the dysfunctional or negative thought patterns in patients and reframe this pattern of maladaptive thinking.
Philosophical Roots
The development of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be traced back to the 1900’s with the development of Behaviorism from the work of John Watson, …show more content…
They examined the way in which human behavior is formed through association, reward, punishment, experience, etc. The social learning theory, a theoretical approach that expanded on the early work of Watson, Thorndike, and Pavlov was developed by Clark Hull in 1943 (Robbins et al, 2012). Hull focused on the internal or external variables that may elicit behavioral responses and how this behavior is shaped. Hull proposed that behavior is not contingent on simply observable factors but internal processes including the thoughts, ideas, and emotions of human beings. (Robbins et al, 2012). Hull expanded on the classic behavioral theory in which he illustrated that there can be other …show more content…
In 1972, Beck published Depression: Causes and Treatment that incorporated three additional components including the cognitive triad, schemas, and cognitive errors (Dryden, 1996). The cognitive triad focused on a pattern of thinking, specifically in depressed patients in which the individual has a negative view of themselves, the world around them, and the future (Dryden, 1996). The concept of schemas was adapted from the early work of Jean Piaget and adapted by Beck to address the cognitive schemas found in depression. Beck describes cognitive schemas as structures that are used by an individual to evaluate what they are experiencing or the stimuli they are being exposed to. Schemas can be viewed as the thoughts individuals