Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy

Philosophical Roots and the Primacy of Meaning

Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy shares roots with CERT but has different nuances.

It is founded on the Stoic premise that "it is not things that disturb us, but the view we have of them."

Beck emphasizes that the meaning we assign to events is more determinative than the event itself.

For Beck, pathology arises from faulty information processing where the individual constructs a distorted subjective reality.

The objective is not only to debate philosophically, but to correct this information processing so that the patient learns to interpret reality in a more objective and functional way, acting as a researcher of his own psyche.

Hierarchy of Levels of Thought

Beck's model structures cognition in three layers of depth. At the surface are automatic thoughts, which are rapid, involuntary, situational streams of consciousness (e.g., "She didn't say hello to me, she's probably angry").

Below these, we find the intermediate beliefs, composed of rules ("I must work hard"), attitudes ("It is terrible to be unpunctual") and conditional assumptions ("If I make an effort, I will succeed").

At the deepest and most rigid level lie core beliefs, which are absolute truths about oneself ("I am incompetent").

Therapeutic work usually begins at the surface and gradually deepens.

Conceptual Differences between Ellis and Beck

Although both models seek cognitive change, their approaches differ. Ellis (TREC) focuses on the philosophical and dogmatic nature of "demands" or "shoulds" (musturbatory thinking). For Ellis, the root of evil is absolutist rigidity.

Beck, on the other hand, emphasizes specific cognitive distortions (such as tunnel vision or generalization) and the specificity of schema content according to the disorder (e.g. loss in depression, threat in anxiety).

While Ellis vigorously debates life philosophy, Beck guides the patient through guided discovery and reality testing to correct errors in data processing.

Summary

Beck postulates that the meaning assigned to events is more determinative than the event itself. Pathology arises from faulty information processing that distorts subjective reality.

The model structures cognition in three hierarchical levels. At the surface are automatic thoughts, followed by conditional intermediate beliefs and, deep down, rigid core beliefs.

Unlike Ellis' philosophical debate, Beck uses guided discovery. He focuses on correcting specific distortions through reality testing and experiments, acting as a researcher of the psyche.