ABSTRACT
The cognitive therapy model developed by Aaron and Judith Beck has been characterised by its parsimony, clarity and highly integrated nature. Beck has described himself as a `pragmatist', ready to gather helpful aspects of therapy from a wider range of sources. Yet the ideas thus gathered are only included in so far as they explain and/or help change problems and ®t within the overall framework of the model. Beck laid out the ®rst few points of description of the model in his papers in the early 1960s. These were extended into some principles of treatment in the 1976 and 1979 books. They were more explicitly codi®ed into principle statements and expanded upon in Beck and Emery (1985) and revised somewhat in Judith's 1995 book (Beck, 1995). This is a thoroughly Beckian approach: a simple set of axiomatic principles have slowly evolved along with learning from the experience of process and outcomes of the therapy but have also been subtly adapted to new ®ndings and feedback from the therapy world. Because these principles map so well onto practice skills, we will review them and use them as a template for describing 15 main Points of the practice section of this book. We begin by stating the version of the 11 principles given by Judith Beck (1995):
relation-
active
d Cognitive therapy aims to be time-limited. e Cognitive therapy sessions are structured and directional. f Cognitive therapy is goal orientated and problem focused. g Cognitive therapy initially emphasises the present. h Cognitive therapy is educative, aims to teach the client to
be her own therapist, and emphasises relapse prevention.1
