Limitations of Cognitive Therapy
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ScribdTranslationsLimitations of Cognitive Therapy
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ScribdTranslationsDEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY
Applied behavioral analysis
Bernardo Polidura Cárdenas
515719921
Act 3.2 Rehearsal. “Cognitive Therapy: Limitations and Scope”
Teacher Ivette González Rivera
Mexico City, July 31, 2019
Cognitive Therapy: Limitations and Scope
Introduction
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“It is not the things themselves that disturb us, but the opinions we have
about things” (Epictetus, 1st century).
Albert Ellis is considered the father of Cognitive Therapy, in his book
Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (Ellis, 1962), he develops rational-emotive
therapy which is based on the ABC scheme, A being an antecedent or activating
event, B a series of rational or irrational beliefs about the event and the behavioral
consequences that these beliefs or thoughts will have. Ellis seeks to change these
irrational ideas and beliefs with more adaptive ones to change the patient's
behavior through therapeutic contact, empathy and being active-directive in his
relationship with the patient.
Cognitive therapy is based on the essential statement “as you think, so you
feel and act”, this principle highlights that thoughts are the root of our behavior.
The social changes that occurred in the second half of the 20th century
potentiated the development of some emotional disorders such as depression. This
essay presents the scope and limitations of Beck's Cognitive Therapy, which offers
a treatment for depression. Beck, like Ellis, sought an alternative to psychoanalysis
since they considered that it presented certain limitations as an intervention
technique due to that did not provide empirical evidence of its effectiveness.
Development
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Beck's Cognitive Therapy was developed for the treatment of depression.
This technique highlights that people suffer more from the interpretation they give
to life events than from the events themselves. When a person's thoughts are very
negative, they affect their emotions and consequently their behavior.
One of the main concepts of Beck's theory is the Cognitive Triad which
highlights that the depressed patient presents an alteration in their cognitive
patterns regarding:
A negative view of oneself – one constantly underestimates oneself, criticizes
oneself and feels worthless; one believes that one lacks the qualities or elements
necessary to be happy or successful.
A negative view of his experiences – The patient tends to feel that he does not
have sufficient tools to face life and that people and life itself conspire against him.
A negative view of the future – One of the main symptoms is hopelessness, a
depressed person sees the future as dark, that worse things will come and that
there is no way they can improve their situation.
On the other hand, Beck highlights that depressed patients tend to suffer a
series of cognitive errors or errors in information processing, these errors are:
a) Arbitrary inference : It consists of drawing conclusions from a situation that
are not supported by the facts, even when the evidence is contrary to the
conclusion.
b) Selective abstraction : This involves paying attention to a single aspect or
detail of the situation. The positive aspects are often ignored, giving more
importance to the negative aspects.
c) Excessive generalization : It consists of developing general rules,
extracting a general conclusion from several isolated facts without sufficient
basis and applying them in unrelated situations.
d) Magnification and Minimization : Tendency to go to extremes when
interpreting facts, exaggerate the negative of a situation, an event or one's
own quality and minimize the positive.
e) Personalization : Refers to the habit of attributing the facts of the
environment to oneself, appearing susceptible.
f) Absolutist and dichotomous thinking : Events are valued in an extreme
way: good/bad, white/black, everything/nothing, etc... without taking into
account the intermediate points.
Finally, Beck's Cognitive Therapy highlights the presence of automatic
thoughts, which are internal dialogues, thoughts or images that appear in a given
situation, and patients usually consider them to be true, undistorted statements.
Scope and advantages
Beck's Cognitive Therapy is structured in a manual that allows us to follow
the treatment with the patient step by step. One of these steps is the daily record of
thoughts and activities where the patient is asked to rate quantitatively (from 0 to
10 or from 0 to 100) the performance obtained during it. On the one hand we can
highlight that the simple act of writing how we feel or some activity that we have
done during the day will have a therapeutic effect on our mood, and on the other
hand this will serve as a guide for the therapist to see the evolution of the patient.
Another advantage of this treatment is that it is not a quick therapy , since
between 12 and 15 sessions (even 20) are recommended, which allows
establishing a good bond with the patient, monitoring the record of activities and
finally teaching the patient how to do it. evaluate and correct negative thoughts and
replace them with more adaptive ones.
Limitations
Although Beck's Cognitive Therapy was developed for the treatment of
depression, these can be multi-causal including biological causes. This being the
case, the effectiveness of the therapy will depend on the patient accompanying
their treatment with a drug that helps them regulate. neurotransmitters since during
depression there is usually a functional deficit of serotonin, norepinephrine and
dopamine. It will be the therapist's job to determine the causes of depression to
indicate if the drug is necessary, since a misdiagnosis could have consequences
such as addiction.
Another criticism that this therapy may have is when the cause of
depression is due to an isolated event such as a loss, separation or relocation (life
problems). In these cases the patient must grieve and the improvement will be due
to the natural cause of the process and not due to the treatment. It is important to
highlight that even if this is the case, the therapist's accompanying work will help
make the process more bearable and simpler for the patient.
Treatments with empirical support (TAE) require not only guides or
techniques for their application, it is necessary that the therapist have specific
training, this is the case of Beck's Cognitive Therapy, the treatment cannot be
reduced to following certain steps In a certain order and time, the therapist's
training and experience in this area will be decisive for the success of its
application.
Conclusions
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Depression along with anxiety are the two great psychological evils of the 21st
century. Depression is a disorder that, if not treated correctly, can lead to suicide; under no
circumstances should it be taken lightly. The worst advice that can be given to a person
with depression is “just try hard” or “you have everything to be happy”, when a person is
depressed they should seek professional help with a therapist.
In a world where everything is fast and temporary, we expect depression to pass in
the same way. This can lead people to consume a drug looking for an easy and quick
solution to the problem. Beck's Cognitive Therapy offers a treatment for depression that,
according to Elkin (1994), obtained better results than pharmacotherapy.
Finally I want to highlight what I consider to be a philosophical error in Beck's
Cognitive Therapy, according to this treatment depression is caused by a series of
negative thoughts of the patient, but it could be the case that the negative thoughts were a
consequence of the depression (which came first, the chicken or the egg). Depressive
symptoms can become very complex; they cannot be reduced to negative thoughts or
cognitive errors. In many cases, it will be necessary to follow a complete psychoanalytic
process to find out if there are no childhood problems or traumas that are the root of these
thoughts.
References
Elkin, l. (1994). The NIHM treatment of depression collaborative research program:
Where we began and where we are. In A.E. Bergin and SL Garfield (Eds).
Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change . New York: Wiley.
Ellis. TO. (1962). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy . Secaucus. NJ: Citadel.
Iglesias, E., & Guadalupe, L. (2010). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Background,
Techniques . Retrieved on August 1, 2019, from Revistaliberabit.com Website:
http://revistaliberabit.com/es/revistas/RLE_03_1_terapia-conitivo-conductual-
antecedentes-tecnicas.pdf
Camacho, J. (2003). The ABCs of Cognitive Therapy . Recovered on August 1,
2019, from Fundación Foro Website:
http://www.fundacionforo.com/pdfs/archivo23.pdf
Moriana, J., Primero, G. (2011). Treatments with empirical support. An approach to
its advantages, limitations and proposals for improvement. IIPSI Magazine, 14, pp.
271-276. Website:
http://sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe/bvrevistas/investigacion_psicologia/v14_n2/pdf/
a12v14n2.pdf
