Historical Context

Cognitive therapy is rooted in philosophical systems dating back two millennia that are part of the high culture of the West as well as in medical and psychological research since Freud.

Classical Western philosophical tradition

Beck's interest in the humanities as an undergraduate led him to situate his approach to psychotherapy within the mainstream of Western philosophy, which has traditionally emphasized the role of human reason as the guide or governor of the emotions. He has explicitly mentioned his indebtedness to Greek and Roman Stoicism, the critical idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Stoicism numbered among its adherents such writers as Zeno of Citium (333–264 B.C.), Cicero (106–46 B.C.),...