ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we report recent findings from our laboratory that shed light on how cognitive therapy (CT) for depression (see Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979) achieves its beneficial effects. Our work borrows from traditions and methods found in the psychotherapy process literature. We assess therapist and patient behaviors that we believe are connected in some way to the symptomatic relief engendered by CT. Psychotherapy process research begins with the assumption that the intervention under investigation is effective on average, thus justifying the examination of its active processes. Until recently, the general effectiveness of CT was a widely held assumption (see, e.g., Dobson, 1989). Because this assumption has been challenged recently with regard to the treatment of severe depression, it is important first to visit the question of whether CT for depression is indeed a potent treatment for depression, whose processes warrant examination. We present new analyses of existing sets of outcome data that we believe justify our continued interest in CT as an effective form of therapy for depression. We then describe two different lines of research that we have conducted to investigate the processes of change in CT.
