Page 513 - Understanding Psychology

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Cognitive and Behavior Therapies
Reader’s Guide
Exploring Psychology
Imagine That!
Five times a day for several days, Brooks Workman stopped what she was doing and vividly imagined herself open- ing a soft drink can. She made a special point of picturing herself bringing the can to her mouth and placing her lips on it. Just as she was about to drink, hordes of roaches poured out of the can and scur- ried into her mouth, writhing, twitching, and wiggling their feelers.
—from Toward a Self-Managed Life Style by R.L. Williams and J.D. Long, 1979
s Main Idea
Cognitive and behavior therapies help clients develop new ways of thinking and behaving.
s Vocabulary
• behavior modification
• cognitive therapy
• rational-emotive therapy (RET)
• behavior therapy
• systematic desensitization
• aversive conditioning
• contingency management
• token economy
• cognitive-behavior therapy
s Objectives
• Describe cognitive therapies and
their aims.
• Explain the processes and goals of
behavior therapy.
Why would someone purposefully imagine the scene in the story above? Brooks’s behavior was not as strange as it sounds. She was trying to cut down on the number of soft drinks she had each day. To achieve her goal, Brooks Workman used a method known as behavior modification—one of several forms of behavior therapy often used to eliminate or alter an undesirable voluntary behavior. In this section we will examine behavior and cognitive therapies.
COGNITIVE THERAPY
The goal of cognitive therapies focuses on changing the way people think (Beck, 1991). Basic assumptions that cognitive therapies share are that faulty cognitions—our irrational or uninformed beliefs, expectations, and
behavior modification: a systematic method of changing the way a person acts and feels
cognitive therapy:
using thoughts to control emo- tions and behaviors
Chapter 17 / Therapy and Change 499