vides data to be examined. Thoughts and images that occur in different situations are gathered. The therapist provides skills and designs behavioral procedures and may act in a more directive manner in severe cases to help the patient organize thoughts. The patient is responsible for observing and monitoring thoughts, completing homework assignment, and providing feedback about treatment (Freeman, Simon, Beutler, & Arkowitz, 1989).
Models of psychological dysfunction include irrational cognitive distortions leading to pathological reactions. These distortions include: arbitrary inferences or conclusions made in the absence of supporting evidence; selective abstraction or conceptualizing a situation by ignoring all information and focusing only on a detail taken out of context; overgeneralization or allowing an isolated incident to represent all similar situations whether they are related or not; magnification and minimization in which a situation is perceived to a greater or lesser light than it deserves; personalization or the attributing of external events to oneself without sufficient evidence; labeling and mislabeling or the portraying of one's identity based on imperfections and mistakes made previously; dichotomous thinking or the codifying of experiences as black or white; disqualifying the positive; mind reading; fortune-telling; emotional reasoning; and "should" statements (Freeman, Simon, Beutler, & Arkowitz, 1989).
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) uses cognitive interventions in an effort to help clients change their thinking, feeling, and behavior. The patient must be taught about the cognitive therapy model and how to monitor and modify automatic thoughts, assumptions, and beliefs. Cognitive treatment includes many techniques to explore dysfunctional interpretations and change cognitions when they are unrealistic or unreasonable. Techniques include: downward arrow, a technique to help understand the logic a...