American psychiatrist (1921- )
When the authorities disagree among themselves regarding the correct approach to psychological problems, where does the troubled person turn for help? In view of the opposed and apparently irreconcilable views represented by the different schools, he faces a serious dilemma: He is trapped between choosing a therapist blindly and trusting to luck or trying to cope with his psychological difficulties by himself.
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
The tendency to compare oneself with others further lowers self-esteem. Every encounter with another may be turned into a negative self-evaluation.
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
Some authors have conceptualized depression as a "depletion syndrome" because of the prominence of fatigability; they postulate that the patient exhausts his available energy during the period prior to the onset of the depression and that the depressed state represents a kind of hibernation, during which the patient gradually builds up a new story of energy.
AARON T. BECK
Depression
If our thinking is bogged down by distorted symbolic meanings, illogical reasoning and erroneous interpretations, we become, in truth, blind and deaf.
AARON T. BECK
Love Is Never Enough
When married people develop such an intense but inappropriate fixation to somebody other than their mate, they may be driven to jeopardize or even destroy a reasonable marital relationship. In the heat of passion, they seem incapable of attaching any real weight to the potentially disastrous consequences of their infatuation--the possible breakup of their marriage.
AARON T. BECK
Love Is Never Enough
The therapist should not evade probing for the reasons the patient regards suicide as the only escape from his misery or intolerable life situation. The patient generally has considered alternative solutions but has discarded them as useless. The therapist should re-examine these alternatives with the patient.
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
Your spouse is your closest relative and is entitled to depend on you as a committed ally, supporter, and champion.
AARON T. BECK
Love Is Never Enough
Sometimes a spouse, in trying to relieve a partner's distress, accomplishes just the opposite.
AARON T. BECK
Love Is Never Enough
Classical psychoanalysis regards conscious thoughts as a disguised representation of unconscious conflicts that are presumably causing the problem. The patient's own explanations are regarded as spurious rationalizations, his coping mechanisms as defenses. Consequently, his conscious ideas, his reasoning and judgements, his practical solutions to problems are not taken at face value: they are treated as stepping-stones to deeper, concealed components of the mind.
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
The stronger person is not the one making the most noise but the one who can quietly direct the conversation toward defining and solving problems.
AARON T. BECK
attributed, Theories and Applications of Counseling and Psychotherapy
Although love is a powerful incentive for husbands and wives to help and support each other, make each other happy and create a family, it is not in itself the essence of the relationship, because it does not provide the personal qualities and aptitudes that are vital to sustain it and make it grow.
AARON T. BECK
Love Is Never Enough
There is a dearth of conversation that revolves simply around expressions of caring, sharing, and loving.
AARON T. BECK
Love Is Never Enough
Another problem posed by excessive reliance on acceptance, admiration, or love is that we do not possess a reliable gauge that another person is, indeed, rejecting, reproaching, or critical of us.
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
The history of psychiatry shows that many ideas and concepts that once had attained the status of incontrovertible facts were later discarded as nothing more than myths or superstitions. We are forced to the realization that the study of the nature and treatment of the neuroses--or emotional disorders--does not rest on any proven theorems or generally shared assumptions.
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
The manners that apply specifically during courtship come to be replaced over the course of marriage by a different set of manners, embodying the residual pettiness, complaining, and faultfinding of childhood.
AARON T. BECK
Love Is Never Enough
Since the chain reaction is circular, the depression becomes progressively worse. The various symptoms--sadness, decreased physical activity, sleep disturbance--feeds back into the psychological system. Hence, as he experiences sadness, his pessimism leads him to conclude, "I shall always be sad."
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
It is impossible for a person to be loved totally, at all times by all his friends. The degree of love and acceptance fluctuates considerably.
AARON T. BECK
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders