BEHAVIORAL COGNITIVE THEORY BIOGRAPHY Aaron Beck Providence, Rhode Island the youngest child of four siblings.

. Beck's daughter, Judith S. Beck, is also a researcher in the field of cognitive therapy and President of the Beck Institute He is married with four children, Roy, Judy, Dan, and Alice. He has eight grandchildren. Beck attended Brown University, graduating magna cum laude in 1942. At Brown he was elected a member of the Phi Betta Kappa Society, was an associate editor of The Brown Daily Herald, and received the Francis Wayland Scholarship, William Gaston Prize for Excellence in Oratory, and Philo Sherman Bennett Essay Award. Beck attended Yale Medical School, graduating with an M.D. in 1946. Aaron T. Beck, M.D., is the President Emeritus of the non-profit Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, and University Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Psychopathology Research Unit (PRU), which is the parent organization of the Center for the Treaatment and Prevention of Suicide. Beck developed cognitive therapy in the early 1960s as a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania. He had previously studied and practiced psychoanalysis. A researcher and scientist at heart, Beck designed and carried out a number of experiments to test psychoanalytic concepts of depression. Fully expecting research would validate these fundamental precepts, he was surprised to find the opposite. This research led him to begin to look for other ways of conceptualizing depression. Working with depressed patients, he found that they experienced streams of negative thoughts that seemed to pop up spontaneously. He termed these cognitions automatic thoughts, and discovered that their content fell into three categories: negative ideas about themselves, the world and the future. Beck (1997) explains people accept these thoughts as valid and don't take time to reflect. He began helping patients identify and evaluate these thoughts and found that by doing so, patients were able to think more realistically, which led them to feel better emotionally and behave more functionally. Beck (1997) discovered key idea's in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, he explains different disorders were associated with different types of distorted thinking.Distorted thinking has a negative effect on our behaviour no matter what type of disorder (Beck, 1997). Beck (1997) explains that successful interventions will educate a person to understand and become aware of their distorted thinking and how to challenge its effects. Beck (1997) discovered that frequent

negative automatic thoughts reveal a persons core beliefs. He explains core beliefs are formed over lifelong experiences; we feel these beliefs to be true. Some of his most recent work has focused on cognitive therapy for schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder and for patients who are repeat suicide attempters. Beck has published over 540 articles and authored or co-authored twenty-two books.He has been named one of the Americans in history who shaped the face of American Psychiatry and one of the five most influential psychotherapists of all time by The American Psychologist (July 1989). Dr. Beck is the Honorary President of the non-profit Academy of Cognitive Therapy, an organization of over 500 cognitive therapists worldwide. As part of its mission, the Academy supports continuing education and research in cognitive therapy, provides a valuable resource in cognitive therapy for professionals and the public at large, and actively works towards the identification and certification of clinicians skilled in cognitive therapy.

THEORY Aaron Beck, a famous psychiatrist with a background in psychoanalytical training, further explored the untouched arenas of human personality, like depression and procrastination. If Ellis was supposedly the founder of cognitive behavioral theory, Aaron took a leap ahead and explored more into this theory and came up with cognitive behavioral therapy for treating patients suffering from depression and anxiety. He has stated that many a times, people tend to suffer from depression and anxiety disorders because of a pre formed negative assessment of themselves. Such an assessment could be attributed to various reasons such as a prolonged mental trauma, social aloofness and low self esteem. His theory has been used for devising the modern day cognitive behavioral therapies. Beck also asserts that there are three main dysfunctional belief themes (or "schemas") that dominate depressed people's thinking: 1) I am defective or inadequate, 2) All of my experiences result in defeats or failures, and 3) The future is hopeless. Together, these three themes are described as the Negative Cognitive Triad. When these beliefs are present in someone's cognition, depression is very likely to occur (if it has not already occurred). According to Dr. Aaron Beck, negative thoughts, generated by dysfunctional beliefs are typically the primary cause of depressive symptoms. A direct relationship occurs between the amount and severity of someone's negative thoughts and the severity of their depressive symptoms. In other words, the more negative thoughts you experience, the more depressed you will become. From Beck's research, he contended: people with emotional difficulties tend to commit characteristic "logical errors" which slant objective reality to the path of self-deprecation. Corey emphasizes: Beck challenged the notion that depression results from anger which is then turned inward. Beck also challenged the idea of having the focus on the content of the depressive's negative thinking and biased interpretation of events. Beck's cognitive therapy consists of the many approaches lessoning psychological suffering through therapy. Therapy aids in helping clients self-signal to correct faulty conceptions. This decisive approach permits the therapist and practitioner to value the integrative nature of cognitive behavior therapy.

CRITICISMS As more research focuses on CBT, more studies are published on CBT. This reinforces the logical error that CBT is superior and this has a direct negative effect on other forms of therapy, which are well documented but have smaller bodies of research. People who get therapy improve substantially, regardless of the type of therapy they get. When therapies are compared to one another, they usually appear to be equally effective. Excessive spending on CBT and discouraging other forms of therapy hurts the public.