W10: Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy

Question 1

What are some assumptions of CBT?

Answer 1

1. How a person interprets events predicts how they will respond to those events
2. Patients use maladaptive information processing strategies
3. CT helps patients to identify maladaptive beliefs and assess accuracy of those beliefs
4. Use of ‘experiments’ in the real world to test accuracy of maladaptive information processing
5. Tends to be v. structured and very active and problem focused
6. Provides patients with clear model of how their difficulties/disorder works
7. Encourage self-monitoring and assessment of progress (scores on disorder scales)
8. Short-term, time limited (20 sessions - actually a longer term)
9. Uses Socratic method and comparable to scientific method
10. Homework assignments are critical

Question 2

Describe Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Therapy (ABC Theory).

Answer 2

A: You have some event
B: You have a thought in relation to the event
C: You have an emotional consequence of the belief/thought
Ex. Loss of job → I’m worthless → Depression OR Loss of job → My boss is a jerk → No Depression

Question 3

Describe Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy.

Answer 3

• Developed form his clinical experience with depressed patients
• Depressed People have negative views of themselves, the world and the future
• Distressed people have negative schemas/cognitive structures through which they perceive and interpret their experiences.
• Active, directive, time-limited, structured
• Based on notion that individual’s affect and behavior are determined by way in which one structures the world (more psychodynamic)

Question 4

READING: DiGiuseppe et al. [Cognitive Therapies]

What does CBT focus on?

Answer 4

focus on changing the content and the process of what and how people think that arouses emotions and maladaptive behaviors to reduce psychopathology
and promote human growth.

Question 5

READING: DiGiuseppe et al. [Cognitive Therapies]

What is Self-Instructional Training (SIT)?

Answer 5

The therapist identifies the client’s maladaptive thoughts (e.g., “Everybody hates me”) and models appropriate behavior while giving spoken constructive self-instructions (or self-statements).

A flexible intervention that can be used across people of all ages and applied to a variety of problems, from impulsive classroom behavior and aggression to anxiety,
depression, and pain management.

Question 6

READING: DiGiuseppe et al. [Cognitive Therapies]

What is Problem Solving Therapy (PST)?

Answer 6

PST involves a process
that defines and formulates the problem, generates
a variety of response alternatives for resolving problems,
considers the possible consequences for the
alternatives, and chooses the most likely successful
plan of action.

Question 7

READING: DiGiuseppe et al. [Cognitive Therapies]

What’s the difference between Ellis and Beck’s cognitive theories/therapies?

Answer 7

Despite the similarity in their perspectives, these
two pioneers approached the change process in different ways.
Ellis focused on the irrationality of his
patients’ beliefs and used logic and argumentation
or rhetoric to help them see the error of their thinking
and to adopt more rational philosophies.
Beck saw his patients’ beliefs as being more inaccurate
than illogical and used empirical disconfirmation

Question 8

READING: DiGiuseppe et al. [Cognitive Therapies]

What’s Evolutionary epistemology?

Answer 8

Evolutionary epistemology.
This term reflects the fact that different types of cognitive process and information are extracted from the environment to promote adaptation for organisms in different situations or cultures or of different species.