Aaron Beck Wins Recognition

I find it interesting that one of the recipients of a Lasker Clinical
Research Award this year was href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Beck" rel="tag">Aaron
Beck.  Dr. Beck is a psychiatrist.  He is
widely regarded as the originator of cognitive therapy.



The rationale is outlined in the NYT href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/health/17lasker.html?ex=1316145600&en=f2f082f5fbdc459b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">article
on the awards:

The psychiatrist, Dr. Aaron T. Beck, 85, of the
University of Pennsylvania, won the Lasker clinical research award. Dr.
Beck’s technique, cognitive therapy, transformed the
treatment of depression and many other mental health conditions.



Cognitive therapy “is one of the most important advances
— if not the most important advance — in the
treatment of mental diseases in the last 50 years,” said Dr.
Joseph L. Goldstein, the chairman of the Lasker jury.



The therapy is a counseling technique in which patients learn to head
off or defuse self-defeating thoughts before acting on them. Dr. Beck
and his students showed that cognitive therapy can reverse serious
mental illnesses in weekly sessions over two or three months...

More information can be found at the href="http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/library/2006clinical.shtml">Lasker
Foundation site.



I have some minor quibbles with the NYT article, but mostly what
bothers me about it is that it portrays an oversimplified view of the
importance of Beck's work.  It also fails to place his
advances in context.  



Probably the most important aspect of his work, what led it to be so
influential, is that he developed a system of psychotherapy that was
amenable to clinical trials in a way that insight-oriented therapy was
not.  It also was applicable to a broader range of patients
than pure behavioral therapy.  



Prior to the advent of cognitive therapy, behaviorism and
psychoanalytic theory were the dominant paradigms in psychotherapy.
 In actual practice, most therapists tended to diversify their
technique, not adhering strictly to any one paradigm.  But
eclectic therapies are inherently difficult to study ina rigorous
fashion.  



I would not go so far as to say that cognitive therapy was a
revolution. In order to say that, I would have to agree that it is
inherently more effective than the other methods.  What made
it important is the fact that it is more practical to administer that
insight-oriented therapies and it is more amenable to controlled
research studies.