ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Client as Personal Scientist. This refers to helping clients to 'learn how to become scientific investigators of their own thinking, to treat thoughts as hypotheses and not as facts and to put these thoughts to the test'. The image of therapy that the cognitive behavioural therapist wants to convey to her client is that of two scientists working together to define the latter's problem, to formulate and test hypotheses about it and find problem-solving options. Beck et al. calls this working together as two scientists or co-investigators 'collaborative empiricism'. Working as co-investigators into problem-solving guards against the possibility of the relationship becoming one of guru and disciple, this partnership in problem-solving provides the success in therapy, not the therapist; also this working together disabuses clients of the notion that the therapist's job to 'fix me' while they remain passive in the 'fixing' process. Developing and maintaining both therapist and client speak from personal opinion or prejudice.
