[.ca] Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond (ISBN 0898628474)

Missing the Target!:
This is an excellent text on cognitive therapy. And it should be good reading for the layman or laywoman as well as mental health professionals. Unfortunately, the subject matter needs serious surgery. When we try to smear a "rational" reference point over a reference point, we are still left with the whole problem. A reference point! People with mental problems (as if there is anyone without "mental problems"), have too many reference points. As the author explains to us, our pain is caused by "cognitive distortions." That we lost our job or our spouse is highly undesirable. But it is not "terrible." We can still go on. Life is still worth living. And so on. This is substituting a sandwich full of nails for a sandwich full of paste. We are still left with too many sandwiches and way too much paste. His Holiness the Dali Lama is the head of the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition of Gelukpa Buddhism. In these teachings, it is stated that one did not lose either a job or our spouse. These are just labels! And they are cognitive distortions within themselves. In the former case, we were informed that we would no longer be coming to a place and receiving money. In the latter case, someone stopped breathing. By taking out our Label Maker and creating new and apparently more 'rational' labels, we are saying that words are real. And this is the entire problem with the neurotic and the psychotic (not including the fact that someone labeled them a "neurotic" or a "psychotic"). The cure is seeing through all labels. Then we can relax and feel friendly in a harshly defined universe. There is not one interpretation that we can make of anything that can't be shown as invalid when we view it from another angle. So why interpret phenemona as anything unless it serves a utilitarian purpose?

Excellent book for the literate patient:
I was introduced to cognitive therapy by a therapist who recommended David Burns's popular "Feeling Good Handbook". That is certainly a good book to start with, but I wanted to learn more so I went to a bookstore and found this book by Judith Beck. It is actually a textbook for therapists and is not addressed to patients at all. Nevertheless I have found it very useful because it is much more structured than Burns's books. I particularly found her schema of automatic thoughts (also found in Burns), intermediate beliefs and core beliefs (the latter two not found in Burns) to be very helpful. My personal conclusion is that Burns's less disciplined approach is probably helpful for simpler kinds of problems, whereas Beck's formalism is going to be more relevant once you discover that you want or need to get down below the surface. The strength of Burns's book is he provides lots of exercises. Since Beck's book is a text for the therapist, it does not have exercises for the patient reading it as self help. If you are reasonably dedicated you can (and must) create your own exercises. If you think you can make that bridge from text to self help, then this may be a good book for you. \o By the way, I think that Burns's discussion of communication techniques in his "Feeling Good Handbook" is the single most useful treatment of that subject I have found for the single person (he doesn't consider how committed couples can work on their communication issues together, but there are lots of couples books for that).\c

Great Introductory Resource:
Cognitive therapy/cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is exploding in application to many clinical populations, however there is a need for a basic introduction to its principles. So far, this is the best text for this purpose. I use it in my class of doctoral clinical psychology students, and then have them pick one of the many other population-specific CBT texts. They find Beck to be easy reading, and it helps to talk about the simple cases described in Beck before moving to more complex cases.

Excellent reference:
This is an excellent introductory source for anyone who is interested in learning Cognitive Therapy. I am a Master's level Professional Counselor in training, and therefore, needed to learn the basics of Cognitive Therapy. The book progresses from the basics of Cognitive Therapy to using advanced techniques. One of the greatest challenges for a Cognitive Therapist is to "teach" the client how to practice Cogntive techniques on their own. Dr. beck does a great job of explaining the rationale, as well as ways to empower the client to be their own therapist.

Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond:
Judy Beck's Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond is an excellent text for graduate students and clinicians beginning to learn Aaron T. Beck's system of cognitive therapy. It is highly readable and includes lots of examples of dialogue between therapist and client. J. Beck also addresses common problems that arise in cognitive therapy, such as failure to do homework and suicidality. In addition, Dr. Beck includes a number of valuable forms to use in cognitive therapy. I've been using this book for practicum students for several years now and am very pleased with the results.