Background
- He was born in Providence, RI in 1921.
- He began to work cognitively through his problems and fears at an early age.
- He Graduated from Brown University in 1943.
- He received his M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine in 1946.
- He was certified in psychiatry in 1953.
- He joined the faculty of the Dept. of Psychiatry of the Univ. of Pennsylvania Medical
School in 1954.
Contributions
- The Philosophical Origins of Beck’s cognitive theory are: phenomenological approach
to psychology, structural theory and depth psychology, and cognitive psychology.
- Cognitive therapy is based on a theory of personality that maintains how a person thinks
is largely determined by how a person feels and behaves.
- Personality reflects the individual’s cognitive organization and structure, which are
both biologically and socially influenced.
- He developed the Beck Depression Inventory and the Scale for Suicide Ideation.
He developed the concepts of Schemas, Cognitive distortions, sociotropic
dimension, autonomous dimension, and the cognitive triad.
- Depressed individuals have a negative view of:
- The self
- The world
- The future
