ABSTRACT
Beck saw automatic thoughts as outcrops of deeper levels of cognition such as beliefs and attitudes. This chapter gives further descriptions of ‘core beliefs’ about self, others and the world – for example, ‘I am worthless’ – and may relate to childhood experiences such as abuse and rejection. There are also ‘intermediate-level’ beliefs that are sometimes termed ‘rules of living’. These rules often take an ‘if/then’ form – e.g., ‘If I don’t achieve, then I am worthless’. All these levels of belief are underlain by cognitive organizations in the mind, referred to as ‘schemas’ – e.g., an ‘unworthiness schema’ – that may have non-conscious and non-verbal elements. The chapter describes interesting new history that shows that Beck was never completely satisfied by the schema concept and has recently returned to aspects of psychoanalytic and evolutionary ideas to revise the schema concept by adding the concept of ‘mode’.
