Thursday 23 June 2011

Prolegomenon

Isaac Marks wanted to create a corps of Barefoot Therapists - not doctors, not psychologists, but nurses trained in behavioural psychotherapy. I am (among many others) the fruit of that project. I was trained by Annie Telford, to whom I will always be grateful.

Over the last twenty-three years since I qualified I have gradually simplified and purified my conception of what Cognitive Behaviour Therapy consists of, what its principles are, how it works and so on. I will be be progressively mapping out the results of that period of contemplation.

I will define CBT, and describe what I'm minded to call the "neo-classical" approach. This doesn't mean that my style of CBT has a Palladian architecture, it means it has a Pavlovian architecture -  its central point is classical conditioning. That is filtered through OH Mowrer's misnamed "two factor theory" (more properly, I'd argue, called "mediation theory"). It then spreads out into cognitive therapy, Perceptual Control Theory, mindfulness, exposure treatment, behavioural activation, experiential tolerance, cognitive dissonance, hypervigilance and much more.

I will also comment on current political issues within the world of CBT, including the BABCP and the NHS. I will post on subjects such as accreditation, or training, supervision, and so on.

These are the random and unstructured thoughts of a butterfly mind. Enjoy. Argue. Contribute.

2 comments:

  1. Good luck with your blog Mike I shall follow it with interest. I like your comment re Exposure versus CBT and agree that there is too much confusion .I get fed up with people referring to what is clearly CBT (to me at least) as CT and I have yet to see an example of what could be considered pure CT.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pure CT became apparent to me on changing to a two-stage model for managing the waiting list. Patients are offered a short wait for an assessment, followed by a longer wait to start treatment.

    A few patients recover while in the second wait. They use the CT of the assessment to understand what needs to change, and they manage their behaviour change without input from a therapist.

    You might say that's cheating — there is behaviour change. But the point is that it happens without therapy, so it's not BT. I wouldn't rely on pure CT to work every time, though.

    ReplyDelete