Aaron Beck
Showed that thoughts shape feeling.
Father of cognitive therapy, who found that catching and testing distorted thoughts could lift depression and anxiety.
terms
The way you interpret a situation, not the situation itself, determines how you feel.
Who they were
Aaron Beck noticed his patients narrating a stream of harsh, automatic thoughts beneath their moods. By learning to catch these thoughts, examine the evidence and reshape them, people could change how they felt. That insight became Cognitive Behavioral Therapy — today one of the most studied and practiced approaches in the world.
Famous books
What they left on the shelf
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
Cognitive Theory
Aaron Beck found that distress often grows from automatic thoughts and quiet distortions in how we read ourselves and the world. By noticing and testing these thoughts, he argued, people can loosen the grip of depression and anxiety.
The approach they founded
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
A practical, present-focused method: notice the thoughts that drive feelings, then test and reshape them.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Beck — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.