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Does the cognitive therapy of depression rest on a mistake?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Richard G. T. Gipps
Richard G. T. Gipps*
Affiliation:
Oxford University, UK
*
[email protected]
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Cognitive therapy for depression is common practice in today's National Health Service, yet it does not work well. Aaron Beck developed it after becoming disillusioned with the psychoanalytic theory and therapy he espoused and practised. But Beck's understanding of psychoanalysis appears to have been seriously flawed. Understood rightly, the psychoanalytic approach offers a cogent theory and therapy for depression which, unlike the cognitive approach, takes us to its emotional-motivational roots. A clinically successful therapy can afford to eschew theory and rest on its pragmatic laurels. This is not the case for cognitive therapy. The time is right to re-examine the psychoanalytic theory and treatment of depression.

Type
Special Articles
Information
BJPsych Bulletin , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , October 2017 , pp. 267 - 271
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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an open-access article published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 The Authors

Footnotes

Declaration of interest

None.

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