With ideas opposite psychodynamic approaches, Beck concluded the key to therapy was in a patients' cognition, which is the way we perceive, interpret, and attribute meaning. Beck's preliminary focus was on depression and developed a list of "errors" in thinking that he suggested could cause or maintain depression, including "arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, over-generalization, and magnification (of negatives) and minimization (of positives)." He later expanded his focus on anxiety disorders and introduced "schema", a patient's vulnerabilities or beliefs.
Cognitive therapists aim to discover a patient's core beliefs—the rules they set for themselves. "I should be perfect", "I should be liked by everyone", "My worth depends on other's approval", "I need to be certain", are just several examples of these set rules. Cognitive therapy also focuses on pinpointing and changing "distorted" or "unrealistic" ways of thinking, consequently effecting emotion and behavior. It......

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Title: Cognitive Theory
Approximate Word Count: 311
Approximate Pages: 2 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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