Background and Development of Cognitive Psychotherapy Pt5
Just as strictly behavioural therapies are not cognitive-behavioural, so cognitive therapies are also not really cognitive-behavioural though they are closely allied. The cognitive-behavioural therapist would not accept the concept of long past traumas causing or contributing to current disturbance. He would work only with current behaviour, emotions, and what he could elicit as the underlying assumptions leading to those actions and feelings. The cognitive therapist may consider such past traumas and target their memory for change. However, the names given to the different varieties of cognitive therapy are often interchanged. What a therapist actually does in his work may not always match the type of therapy he claims to use. Dryden (1987) points out that the behaviour therapist may use more of a cognitive approach than he would readily admit, and the reverse can also be true.
IÂ consider Cognitive Hypnotherapy as a strategy where underlying automatic thoughts can be more readily identified, particularly if there is repression, so past traumas can be ventilated and new rational thoughts better reinforced.
References
Beck, A. T. (1963).    Thinking and Depression.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 9, 324-333.
Beck, A. T. (1976)Â Â Â Â Â Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders.
New York:Â International Universities Press.
Dryden, W. (1987).    Counselling Individuals: The Rational-Emotive Approach.
London:Â Taylor and Francis.
