ABSTRACT
The 1970s saw the cognitive approach establish itself as the major alternative to both psychoanalytic theory and behaviour theory of psychopathology (Mahoney, 1974; Mahoney & Arnkoff, 1978; Marzillier, 1980). The enthusiasm for the cognitive approach became a tidal wave in the 1980s and was applied to almost all forms of psychopathology including, anxiety disorders (Beck et al., 1985), personality disorder (Beck et al., 1990), and just about all forms of neurosis. The reader can find excellent reviews on these developments in Hawton, Salkovskis, Kirk, and Clark (1989), Freeman et al. (1989) and Scott, Williams, and Beck (1989). But in this era, cognitive approaches began to diversify and vary such that various debates between different schools have emerged (Dryden & Golden 1986). A major distinction is between the rationalists and constructivists (Mahoney & Gabriel, 1987; Carmin & Dowd, 1988).
