Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

B.F. Skinner developed the 'behavioural therapy', essentially programming animals with reward mechanisms.  It wasn't original but he systematized it and popularized it and made this ancient 'training' and 'educating' mechanism scientific so that it could be 'programmed'.  Rats and maizes and all that sort of stuff was shown to be made up of little building blocks.  Many clinical applications followed.
Pavlov's dogs, 'conditioned' by being giving meat on the sound of a bell, salivated thereafter when they heard the bell.  
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy followed showing that 'cognitions' programed behaviour.  No surprise. If I think I'm going to fail at a task and say to myself, "you're a failure, you're a failure", I'm more likely to fail.  Like the 'little engine who can'  subjects in experiments were told to change their 'self talk' and surprise surprise the outcome was scientifically significantly altered.
Insight therapy for example, psychoanalysis, delved into the past to see what was causing present day limitations, whereas Cognitive Behavioural Therapy focussed principally on the present.
It is in fact an "educational" form of therapy and lends itself to group instruction, reproduction and work book materials.
Feeling Good was the 1980 classic in the new "Mood Therapy" written by Burns who was a student of the greatest Cognitive Behaviour Therapist of the day, Dr. Beck. His "Beck Depression Scale" remains today as a standard Cognitive Behavioural Therapy tool.
Patients, or clients, like students, are encouraged to record their 'thinking', what are they 'actively thinking about a problem .
eg.  "No one likes me."
Then the person is encouraged to write the 'cognitive error'  ie this is a Generalization.  Whenever a person thinks "no one likes me" they are indeed encouraged to respond to their inner Cognitive errors 'that is a 'Generalization", some people don't like me, some people do."
Psychology , a relative new kid on the block, tends to forever 'rename' things and claim them.  It's a very 'plagiaristic pseudoscience' at this level.
The original "cognitive errors' or 'cognitive disonance'  or 'negative programming' was best described years ago in philosophy under the heading, "Fallacies".
Most of the cognitive errors which are popularly called with 'neat memorable psychology labels' were rigorously defined and given the proper labels of 'illogical' thinking.  Indeed Cognitive Behavoural Therapy in it's own way attempts to encourage 'logical thinking'.
Much of the understanding and communications used in teaching Cognitive Behavioural Therapy were originally developped in Theology and Philosophy and now are renamed and over taken by psychology.

Michael LaBoisiere, (42 Fallacies)  a French philosopher has, to my mind, made the Fallacies most understandable.  Listening to patients for decades I've noted the 'illogical' thinking and the 'emotionally reasoning' and simply ticked off the 'fallacies' the patients use much as Laboissiere describes.  Burns has in his classic popularizing book Feeling Good listed a few of these cognitive errors like 'catastrophising' , "the world is going to end".
The fallacie of catastrophising is taking a single event and assuming that one event represents the whole and because it's a negative event assuming that the future will be negative.
Affirmations are 'thought blocking' techniques that go back thousands of years in pastoral care and theological literature.
Patients are advised to say "All shall be well" rather than "I"m going to die, I'm going to die."  Since the panic thought leads the body to accelerated heart rate hyperventialiation and blacking out it's fairly maladaptive.  So by 'blocking' the negative thought with the affirmation 'all shall be well' one breaks up the negative behavioural program by changing cognition. 

The term 'emotional reasoning' can be understood by considering the statement 'It feels good so it is good."  Translate this to "it looks good so it is good" and you have a person who would pick up a 'red' coloured insect without realizing that 'red' is often the symbol for deadly.


Ad hominen means 'against the man'.  The cognitive distortion would be to say, "I can't believe what John told me about physics because John isn't married".  Commonly people have this kind of bizarre thinking.

Generalizations are fallacious and cognitive distortions can occur.  Eg.  My mother told me I could  trust her brother but he sexually abused me, therefore everything my mother says is false."  This isn't true and therefore based on this one 'event' patient generalizes that what their mother told them about the existence of gravity is also false.  Not true.

Alot of the problems with distorted thinking can be found in the media presentation of stories, marketting and advertising.  Clinton was not a poor president because he had sex with Monica.  However, since he had a contractual relationship with his wife called marriage and a duty to his children as father and as a president he had a responsibility to follow contracts and a duty to the country. When questioned by Star as to whether or not he had sexual relations with Monica he could reasonably have answered "I didn't commit adultery".  Biblically, technically, oral sex is not mentioned and adultery laws most clearly are related to knowing who the father is in patriarchal societies.  However when he answered he 'did not have sexual relationships with Monica", he either 'lied under oath' thereby forfeiting his responsibility to the american people or he didn't know that what he was doing was deemed 'sexual' whereby he'd be a complete idiot and not worthy or safe to be President.  The media coverage of this pivotal moment in history was however mostly at the level of a lot of rather stupid media coverage, crass and sexual.  We can't have good media with so many perverted mental midgets being allowed to speak on tv. However the vast majority who watch mainstream media aren't themselves that swift. Most media is marketed to the majority who are under the college level.  Hence the stupidity of mainstream media and the continuation of the insaniety for which CBT is needed to address.

Eg.  I loved him so I killed myself.

Love does not beget suicide, only narcissism begets this kind of adolescent suicidal behaviour.  Yet Hollywood continues to celebrate it's suicides and continues to support the cognitive disorder that love is destructive when theoretically at least love is considered love because it's life enhancing.

Schizophrenia per se is often associated with flipping the pronowns which we call 'projection'.  In cognitive behaviour therapy we encourage people to use "I " statement.  "I don't like you" rather than "You don't like me".

Homophobia and Heterophobia

Homophobia is a psychiatric defense that has taken on political significance. Phobias are cathected fears of objects, fears that might well have a 'neutral' response were it not usually from some early trauma.
Homophobia is extremely common in those who were sexually abused as children by the same sex.  This is a product of trauma.  Just as I have a patient who was bit by a dog when she was in a refugee camp today she is afraid of my dog who has to his chagrin been called a 'purse dog' by those who don't know he rides a Harley.  As a small child a big mangy wild dog attacked her. Her fear of that dog generalized to fear of all dogs even little wee dogs.  A person who  I treat was in a plane crash and had a phobia about flying in planes until with standard psychiatric treatment she was restored to being able to fly in planes. Phobias are quite common.
Given the extent of sexual abuse in our society, expecially same sex sexual abuse, it's not surprising that Homophobia exists.  There are of course other psychiatric mechanisms for homophobia but this is the most common in my clinical experience and probably most 'natural'.
In addition, political 'homophobia' is a different matter.
Personally,  if I,  as a hetero sexual.  am standing with two men looking at three women and the two men beside me become enamoured with each other I will celebrate their behaviour as it serves me specifically in that it leaves three women for me.  Personally, as a heterosexual, I might well object to lesbianism but not homosexuality.  If I ignore the women and focus my attention on the homosexual men I may well be showing to those in the know that really I'm more interested in homosexuality.  "The lady protesteth too much" in this regard.  Such 'homophobia' is quite 'unnatural'. Equally as a homosexual if I am "heterophobic" I might well be the one who 'protesteth too much".
Historically all manner of sexuality was tolerated in society in general. Homosexuality was main stream in many communities.  It's also developmentally normal with a developmental stage where children prefer the company of their same sex before adventuring across the great chasm of dangerous opposite sex behaviour. Given the importance of children and their importance in hunter gatherer, agricultural and war economies bisexuality was more commonly tolerated than homosexuality.  Indeed in early Irish society homosexuality was enshrined in the warriors  on the war path but frowned on in the communities at peace. Often as in jails and distant mining communities and ranches and pirate ships it was considered acceptable to use men as a 'default' but to 'prefer' men over women when women were available was 'deviant'.  We are only now getting a handle on the commonality of lesbianism given it's toleraance so long as women had children.
One Mexican "machismo" police chief I met insisted he was hypersexual and had sex with men and women because he was so "manly'.Pink Swatika by Scott Lively was a fascinating book discussing homosexuality in the Nazi movement which pointed to similiar hyersexuality views in the SS.  A colleague talked of being enamoured with a homosexual pedophile who he served with in the British army. In war times there has been much tolerance of deviant behaviour which in peace time is given a second look.
The "8 is too late" , Man Boy Love society used to march in the Vancouver Gay Parade proudly carrying their banner . They were 'tolerated' as late as the 80's because there was then a sense of 'war' between homosexuals and heterosexuals as evidenced in 'queer' politics of the communist Radical Fairy, Harry Hay. With community tolerance in general there has been less tolerance in specific.
Pedophiles who were once as illegal as homosexuals, are now no longer accepted in the 'gay community' as a whole. Similarly suffragette women were once not accepted in 'polite society' and men who didn't 'follow sports' weren't accepted in some private clubs.
Recently, religious homo phobia in general has been tied to the importance of the 'family' and 'family' especially where the number of children is equated with the greater success of the family.  With the education of women however, children have become less the old age pension of the woman. Education of women is equated with fewer chldren.  The upper classes once great producers of children now tend to fewer children indeed.
Further with industrialization and decline in labour intensive work,  there is a natural decline in the need for more children so the central taboo against homosexuality, that is it's potential to decrease children, is lost.
Parents wanting grand children have naturally been homophobic regarding their children especially coming out of the agricultural Darwinian era where 'survival of the fittest' causes me a 'survivor' to want to pass on my 'survivalist' genes to my children as I would want to breed a good race horse.
Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism especially equated homosexuality with the lustful and deceitful marginal and often illegal communities which tolerated homosexuality. Hence the naturalness of "homosexuality" among the 'pirates' and acceptance of homosexuality in some early artist communes.  Promiscuity was discouraged in the heterosexual community because of it's damage to the community. Homosexuality was associated with more promiscuity though not necessarily among older lesbians.  Catholocism even celebrated the sexually abstinent until the recent seminal teaching of Pope John Paul.  Many religions especially nihilistic religions of the east and west reject the 'sensual' world in favour of the interior world experienced not by sense but by intuition.
The infamous homosexual spy Guy Burgess was associated with his sexuality whereas the  homosexual Allan Turing whose mathematics and cryptoanalysis essentially saved the English in WWII as much as the Battle of Britain is neatly overlooked in regards to his sexuality.
The tendency for 'cherry picking' in these matters is best discussed in the classic treatise Why Can't I Own a Canadian?
Homophobia probably as a term should be limitted to clinical situations.  Politically I may well be against vegetarians who are as all know them a sneaky and suspicious group of folks as bad as the bike riders of Vancouver who are destroying the inner city with their evil and blasphemous bike lanes.  Clearly I could call these groups 'carniphobes'  , "luddites' and "enginephobes"   But name calling is evidence of a 'weak argument' as the fallacies teach 'ad hominem' (against the man) is such.
Jesus specifically did not speak about homosexuality and I personally have found that while he spoke a great deal about a lot of matters his emphasis on sexuality was less than modest.  That the church today is caught up in the debate about sex has cynically been said by some as an attempt for just those churches losing membership  to attract people to them through tried and true sexy marketting approaches.  The Catholics have used gambling with their bingo halls as a means of maintaining membership. Some evangelical Christians have used their crusade for 'missionary' position sex in pyjamas as their justification for 'bearing false witness' and not honoring their parents or 'loving their neighbour as themselves". Homophobia in this regard is as 'sexy' as homosexuality used to be.
Homosexual long term monogamous relationships are perhaps sadly as 'unsexy' as heterosexual long term monogamous relationships.  There really isn't much 'homophobia' about them in society and even growing up I noticed a serious tolerance for such couples in my community at a time when it was ostensibly 'illegal'.
I do find it sad though that today there is a growing 'heterophobia'. So commonly where there is 'revolution' it just means that an out group becomes an in group and does to the outsiders just what they objected being done to them.  Rather than 'progress' ,there's just  tribal feuds and war  based on 'revenge' rather than the advances made with love..