Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Ellis, and to their therapeutic theory and technique, with a different consideration of the
therapist's role. However, it is generally agreed that Beck and Ellis provided the most
systematic and significant contributions to early cognitive psychotherapy and cognitive
behavioral therapies.
The main difference between behavioral and cognitive approaches to therapy resides in
the object to be changed: the behavior in the first case, and thoughts and emotions in the
second.
On the clinical side, cognitive therapy entails many different approaches (Mahoney
1991) that share an emphasis on the ways of processing information, which determines
the construction of meaning. In addition to this single commonality, these approaches
are very different in many theoretical and epistemological topics determining prominent
differences in intervention strategies and techniques. In any case, we underscore that the
above-mentioned cognitive theories and therapies are all related to a rationalist matrix
stressing the supremacy of cognitive processes.
The rationalist stance was followed by constructivist cognitivism, which stresses per-
sonal development processes and the construction of one's own meanings on the basis of
emotional experiences. This underlines the interdependence and circular influence among
thought, emotion, and action.
In the constructivist perspective, the principle of direct perception of reality and of
incomplete correspondence between reality and reality knowledge, defined also as critical
realism, is formulated as a principle of match between the two, and in more radical terms
as a principle of knowledge fit to reality (von Glasersfeld 1984).
A further step was proposed by the biologists Maturana and Varela (1980, 1987) and
by the computer scientist von Foerster (1984). According to them, knowledge is not the
product of objectively valid cognitive processing. Rather, it is the result of a subjective
interpretation that is valid only in a determinate space and time because it is linguistically
generated and socially negotiated.
Such an important revolution of the knowledge paradigm started in the last decades
of the past century with the crisis of the empiricist and rationalist epistemologies, not
as much for the scientific and clinical results obtained by means of the classic cog-
nitive approach. The results immediately appeared important and relevant because
of discontent at a general theoretical level with the hypothesis of the functioning of
mind (Olivetti Belardinelli 1973, 1976) and of the meaning of the psychic discomfort
(Semerani 2002).
The behavioral approach and the cognitive-rationalist one are based on the assump-
tion that knowledge is the representation of an objective and univocal order that exists
independently from our “being in the world.” This assumption passed through a crisis
and then changed after the publication of work such as that of Mahoney (1980). In his
“Psychotherapy and the Structure of Personal Revolutions” he criticizes in six points the
behavioral-cognitive therapy giving origin to a new trend in the cognitive psychotherapy.
In this study, the author underlines some critical points of the cognitive behavioral model.
In particular, he criticized the consideration of rationality and explicit convictions as factors
dominating and determining all human experience, both “normal” and pathological, to
the detriment of emotional aspects, which are subjective, implicit, and autoreferential. The
author maintains that the emphasis on rationality is excessive and unilateral. Moreover, in
the therapeutic relation the stress falls on pedagogical and normative aspects, minimizing
the complexity of relational events and their role in the therapeutic process. Meanwhile,
he proposes a change model in psychotherapy so substantial and significant like those
described by Kuhn as occurring during scientific revolutions.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search