It is helpful to understand the evolutionary underpinnings of psychological problems

Such an approach has been partly stimulated by the problems surrounding the nature of the schema concept. Some critics have pointed to the weakness that there is a lack of a convincing underlying theory about why cognitive therapy works. On one level, many cognitive therapists might not have a great need for a theory that explains everything and might be happy to be considered as pragmatists.1 Beck (1996) has, however, speculated about the links between cognitive processing and evolutionary mechanisms and has been joined by other writers such as Paul Gilbert (2006).