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person1960s-2021

Aaron Beck

Disciplines:
psychology
psychiatry

Summary

American psychiatrist who developed cognitive therapy — the most empirically validated psychotherapy — as a treatment for depression and subsequently for anxiety, personality disorders, and psychosis.

Core Contribution

Cognitive therapy: depression is maintained by automatic negative thoughts and cognitive distortions (overgeneralization, catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking). Cognitive restructuring: identifying and challenging distorted thoughts. The Beck Depression Inventory: a standard clinical assessment tool. The foundation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Developed cognitive therapy partly by noticing that his depressed patients reported streams of negative thoughts alongside what they were telling him — the automatic negative thought was not part of orthodox psychoanalytic theory.
  • Was still actively researching and publishing at 99 — one of the longest productive research careers in the history of psychology.

Notable Works & Achievements

Depression: Causes and Treatment

Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders

Cognitive Therapy of Depression

Historical Influences

Albert Ellis Freud

Intellectual Lineage

Psychoanalysis Behaviorism

Contemporaries & Peers

Albert Ellis Martin Seligman

Minds Influenced

Clinical Psychology CBT

Intellectual Posterity

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Clinical Psychology

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