Introduction

1921-

AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIST, RESEARCHER YALE MEDICAL SCHOOL, MD, 1946

Aaron Beck is one of the founders of cognitive therapy, a form of talk therapy that incorporates an information-processing model of human psychology rather than one based on instinct, motivation, or biochemistry. As of the early twenty-first century, cognitive therapy has become the reigning model of short-term psychotherapy in the United Kingdom as well as the United States, supplanting both psychoanalytical and behavioral approaches to the study and treatment of mental disorders. Beck has enjoyed widespread success and professional recognition. He was the only person, as of 2004, to have received research awards from both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. His honors include the Sarnat Award from the Institute of Medicine (2003), the Heinz Award for the Human Condition from the Heinz Foundation (2001), and honorary doctorates from Brown University and Assumption College (1995). An article that appeared in a French Canadian psychiatric journal in 2002 named Beck as one of ten individuals who "have changed the face of American psychiatry." He has also been listed as one of the five most influential psychotherapists since Sigmund Freud.

Beck's cognitive therapy may be categorized as a variant of constructivism, a term that has become increasingly popular among academic psychologists since the mid-1970s. Although theorists as otherwise different as William James, Jean Piaget, George Kelly, and Albert Bandura have been grouped together as

constructivists, it is possible to identify several recurrent themes in their work. The psychotherapist M. J. Mahoney has listed five such common themes:

• Humans are active agents with the power to effect changes in their own lives. This theme stands in contrast to the view that humans are passively controlled by larger forces.
• Humans are actively engaged in ordering their experiences through assigning emotional as well as intellectual significance to them.
• These processes of ordering are primarily self-referential; that is, they underlie a person's sense of selfhood or personal identity.
• On the other hand, humans are not isolated individuals; they cannot be understood apart from their relationships to other people, larger communities, and symbol systems.
• Humans continue to grow and develop over the entire course of their lifespan.

These themes are prominent features of Beck's work as well as the writings of other constructivists.

In terms of the history of psychotherapy, Beck's contribution is the development of an effective form of short-term treatment well-suited to the age of managed care, cost containment, and evidence-based medicine. The future of cognitive therapy as a distinctive approach sharply set off from other forms of talk therapy, however, is less certain. As the integrative movement in psychotherapy continues to grow, the theories and techniques of cognitive therapy may simply be appropriated by therapists from a wide variety of backgrounds.