KQED News Mind/Shift – Jess P. Shatkin
“In the late 1950s, University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Aaron Beck, MD, studied the effectiveness of psychoanalysis for the treatment of depression. Beck committed to the theoretical foundations of Freud’s “talking cure.” To his great surprise and disappointment, however, the experiments failed to validate the treatment. By the early ’60s, Beck had penned two important articles on “thinking and depression,” which ultimately led to the development of cognitive behavioral therapy (currently the premier evidence‐based psychotherapeutic treatment for anxiety and depression in both adolescents and adults) and the design of the cognitive triangle, as shown in the diagram below.”(more)