Aaron Beck's therapeutic approach that focuses on identifying and changing dysfunctional thought patterns that contribute to emotional and behavioral problems. It assumes that how we think about situations affects how we feel and behave.
Developed by Aaron Beck in the 1960s, combining 'cognitive' (from Latin 'cognoscere' meaning 'to know') with therapy. Beck was originally trained in psychoanalysis but developed this approach after noticing that depressed patients had characteristic patterns of negative thinking.
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