clinical progress. Although clients must come to see how their cognitions
affect their emotions and behaviors, the therapist plays an active role in theprocess.
In addition to addressing current issues, cognitive psychologists often teach
clients how to deal with future and recurring problems (Meichenbaum &Deffenbacher, 1988). One cause of recurring problems is self-defeating think-
ing(Meichenbaum & Cameron, 1983). A man who suffers from shyness
probably approaches a party telling himself something like this: “I don ’t
know why I ’m going to this dumb party. No one ever wants to talk with me.
And when they do, I usually sound awkward and stupid. ”This man has set
himself up to fail. At the first awkward moment, he will conclude that thingsare going as poorly as anticipated. All the nervousness and embarrassment he
dreaded are likely to follow.
What can be done for this man? A cognitive therapist might try to re-
place these self-defeating thoughts with more appropriate, positive ones. This
is not to say the man should unrealistically expect that everything will go
well. Rather, he should be prepared for some disappointments and failuresand learn to interpret these in appropriate ways. Some psychologists compare
this process to inoculation. Like a medical vaccine that prevents a patient
from becoming ill, the treatment is designed to keep negative thoughts from
creating undue psychological distress.
Like any approach to treatment, cognitive psychotherapy does not
work for everyone and may be limited to psychological problems thatare based in irrational and self-defeat ing thinking. Nonetheless, the suc-
cess many therapists have had with t his approach has been encouraging
(Butler, Chapman, Forman, & Beck, 2006; Gaudiano, 2005). Cognitive-behavioral therapies have been found t o be especially effective for treat-
ing emotional disorders like depressi on and anxiety (Hollon, Stewart, &
Strunk, 2006; Vittengl, Clark, Dunn, & Jarrett, 2007). Not only do thesetreatments relieve the symptoms of e motional disorders, but people who
have gone through cognitive-behavioral therapies are less likely to experi-ence a relapse in the future. Presumably these individuals have learnedhow to identify unhealthy thoughts and how to replace them with posi-
tive ones.
Rational Emotive Therapy
One of the earliest advocates of cogni tive therapy was Albert Ellis, who de-
veloped rational emotive therapy . Consistent with the tendency to blend
cognitive and behavioral treatments, r ecently Ellis referr ed to his approach
asrational emotive behavior therapy (Ellis, 2003). According to Ellis, peo-
ple become depressed, anxious, upse t, and the like because of faulty rea-
soning and a reliance on irrational be liefs. Ellis described this as an A-B-C
process. For example, suppose your boyfriend/girlfriend calls tonight and
tells you the relationship is over . This is the A, which Ellis calls the
Activating experience . However, when clients seek out psychotherapy,
they usually identify the reason as the C, the emotional Consequence .I n
this case, you are probably depressed, guilty, or angry. But how did youApplication: Cognitive (Behavior) Psychotherapy 425