Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Commentary
  • Published:

How an anomalous finding led to a new system of psychotherapy

Nature Medicine volume 12, pages 1139–1141 (2006)Cite this article

Cognitive therapy is the fastest-growing psychological approach to psychiatric problems and is practiced in most regions of the world. The basis of this approach is the finding that individuals with psychiatric disorders develop biases and distortions in the way that they process external or internal stimuli. As a result, people with depression, anxiety or a wide range of other psychiatric disorders are prone to misinterpret and attach exaggerated meanings to their experiences. Consequently, they experience excessive emotional reactions and may engage in self-defeating or inappropriate behavior. Depressed individuals, for example, are disposed to interpret innocuous events as reflecting badly on their self-worth and acceptability, jump to conclusions that their future is hopeless, and experience profound sadness as a result of the negative bias. They are likely to withdraw from other people, give up on their usual life goals and consider suicide as a reasonable escape from their suffering and supposedly unsolvable problems. In contrast, individuals with panic disorder misinterpret bodily sensations as a sign of a physical or mental disaster and rush for medical help.

The evolution of cognitive therapy went through a number of twists and turns before it developed into a full-blown system of psychotherapy. The history is of some interest because the system stemmed from an 'anomalous' finding and several disconfirmations of strongly held hypotheses. I was not originally interested in psychiatry or psychotherapy, and after my internship, I embarked on a residency in neurology in 1948. I was attracted to this specialty by the highly disciplined diagnostic procedures and the rewarding experience of being able to pinpoint the precise lesion in the nervous system on the basis of careful clinical observations (this was prior to the era of sophisticated brain imaging, of course). A mandatory six-month rotation in psychiatry took me temporarily (I thought) out of neurology. I then became fascinated by psychiatry, and particularly psychoanalysis, which promised to reveal so much about the workings of the human mind. I was subsequently accepted by the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1
Figure 2

References

  1. Brown, G.K., Have, T.T., Henriques, G.R., Xie, S.X., Hollander, J.E. & Beck, A.T. JAMA 294, 563–570 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Gloaguen, V.R., Cottraux, J., Cucherat, M. & Blackburn, I.M. J. Affect. Disord. 49, 59–72 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. DeRubeis, R.J., Gelfand, L.A., Tang, T.Z. & Simons, A.D. Am. J. Psychiatry 156, 1007–1013 (1999).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Hollon, S.D. et al. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 62, 417–422 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Butler, A.C., Chapman, J.E., Forman, E.M. & Beck, A.T. Clin. Psychol. Rev. 26, 17–31 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Meyer, J.H. et al. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 61, 1271–1279 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Meyer, J.H. et al. Am. J. Psychiatry 160, 90–99 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Goldapple, K. et al. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 61, 34–41 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, 3535 Market Street, Philadelphia, 19104-3309, Pennsylvania, USA

    Aaron T Beck

Authors
  1. Aaron T Beck
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Beck, A. How an anomalous finding led to a new system of psychotherapy. Nat Med 12, 1139–1141 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1006-1139

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1006-1139

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing