Henck P.J.G. van Bilsen
This is a real introduction to COGNITIVE BEHAVIOUR therapy. No psychological therapy has received so much attention in the last couple of years as cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). This book will go back to basics. It will explain how the founding components of CBT: learning theory and cognitive psychology have created an unbeatable combination. The result is cognitive behaviour therapy: the most efficient and effective psychological therapy available to date.
The book starts with an introduction into both the behavioural and cognitive contribution to CBT. Readers will learn to apply the cognitive and behavioural model to enhance their understanding of human misery. The book links CBT interventions with their theoretical origens. In doing so it will enable readers to go beyond 'cook-book' and 'recipe CBT'. Readers will be able to understand their clients problems from a CBT perspective and as a result will be able to design idiosyncratic intervention plans.
The book explains in detail the structuring of sessions and how the process of treatment can be set up.
Chapters include: How I became a cognitve behaviour therapist, theoretical foundations, structuring therapy, formulation in CBT, identifying problems and goals, interventions to increase (behaviour & emotions); interventions to decrease (behaviour & emotions); underlying mechanisms and motivational interviewing.
This is a book written by a cognitive behaviour therapist of more then 25 years of clinical and teaching experience, filled with examples and helpful tips.
Henck van Bilsen was born in Nederweert, a small town in the southern part of the Netherlands. He is a chartered clinical psychologist and accredited by the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies as a cognitive behaviour therapist. He has been using CBT since he qualified as a psychologist in 1978 and has been involved in training and teaching CBT since 1988. He currently works as the director of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Partnership (
www.cbt-partnership.org) and a visiting fellow in cognitive behaviour therapies at the University of Hertfordshire. The CBT Partnership is the largest franchise organisation in the UK, offering excellence in CBT throughout the United Kingdom.
How I became a cognitive behaviour therapist?
My first exposure to cognitive and behaviour therapy was at the University of Nijmegen. In 1972 I had started my psychology degree there. As a working class boy from a rural part of the Netherlands, Nijmegen was the epitome of the big and bad town and I was in awe of all that University life threw at me. Psychology, as a subject to study at University, had been a chance choice. It was not the result of a rational decision making process, not did I succumb to a strong desire to help humanity by studying psychology. A few drinking buddies from my village were studying in Nijmegen and they were having a good time. Sniffing out a potential source of reinforcement I decided to opt for Nijmegen as a University town and psychology seemed to have an interesting mix of mathematics, playing with language and philosophy....
As there were way too many of us (more than 350 psychology students started in the first year!) the academic programme was geared towards reducing numbers. Instead of ‘real’ psychology we were treated to a festival of statistics, research methodology, philosophy and more statistics in the first three years of our programme. With enormous anticipation I started my speciality in clinical psychology in year for (of what then was a six year programme): at last something practical.
In the Seventies behaviour therapy ruled. Therefore my first clients were rats and pigeons. The lecturer who introduced us to this subject was from Belgium. I have never met a man who could talk about rats with so much affection. Training rats to respond to certain sounds proved to be fascinatingly difficult. A solid and detailed knowledge of basic principles on learning was needed. Without that I could not get the rats to do anything I wanted them to do. This was a revelation to me: living organisms responded to almost mathematical laws. . During my undergraduate years I have been exposed to the fantastic and mythical world of existential psychology and psychoanalysis (during the philosophy lectures. During these lectures we had been instilled with a solid dose of disdain and skepticism towards the mechanical and reductionist tendencies of behaviourism. I had also learnt to believe that behaviour therapy was superficial, focused at teaching tricks to people and animals. In other words my beliefs were that behaviour therapy was not for me, it did not deal with the real problems. Having to train my rat, which I soon gave the name ‘Kareltje’ (which translated means little Charlie) proved to me the infinite complexity of reinforcement theory. If training a rat to press a button was so difficult and required such complicated and precise arrangements, how could we expect that assisting humans to change behaviours could be any simpler? In other words, I am not converted to (cognitive) behaviour therapy by the work of B.F. Skinner, nor was I convinced by Ellis or Beck, it was Kareltje who did all the work. After Kareltje, I was convinced: behaviour therapy was the way to go. Subsequently, several staff members of the faculty went on a brief sabbatical to New York to learn about this new therapy called Rational Emotive Therapy. I remember one of them ‘exposing’ us to an exercise demonstrating the power of automatic thoughts. He asked us to close our eyes and pay attention to his voice. He subsequently started to walk around the group of 15 students and told us that he would tap one of us on the shoulder and that person would have to come forward and do a 5 minute presentation to the group. This student would be required to talk for 5 minutes about their first sexual experience....He never tapped anyone on the shoulder and when we all opened our eyes, relieved at not having been ‘tapped’, we discussed the various emotions experienced and thoughts that fuelled these feelings. I was completely blown away by my own irrational thoughts and the power of them......and was immediately sold on the addition of cognitions to the framework of analysing the cause and maintenance of human misery. During the remaining two years of my clinical psychology training programme they made a more scientifically convincing case for the inclusion of cognitions in the behavioural paradigm. But in my heart I am still a pure behaviourist: thoughts are just internal behaviours and in my heart I still know that it was good old Kareltje who helped me become the clinician I am now. Kareltje by the way served the faculty for a couple more years and I am sure that under different names he assisted many more aspiring psychologists see how we learn.
