Aaron Beck
SchoolCognitive Therapy
Lived1921 – 2021
FromUnited States
Cognitive Therapy

Aaron Beck

Showed that thoughts shape feeling.

Father of cognitive therapy, who found that catching and testing distorted thoughts could lift depression and anxiety.

3 terms 3 techniques 3 books
The way you interpret a situation, not the situation itself, determines how you feel.
— Aaron Beck

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

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.

All questions

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.