THE COGNITIVIST OVERSELL AND COMMENTS ON SYMPOSIUM CONTRIBUTIONS

During the 1980s the behavior therapy movement was infiltrated by cogn itivists, people who believe that all maladaptive fears are based on w rong beliefs and all can be overcome by cognitive correction. This art icle asserts and defends the following propositions: (1) There are num erous maladaptive fears demonstrably immune to cognitive correction bu t removable by deconditioning. (2) These conditioning based fears cons titute the majority, but there are also some based on mistaken beliefs . (3) Proponents of the cognitivist viewpoint have overrated the outco mes of cognitive therapy, because they have not realized the fact that conditioned anxiety is often inadvertently weakened by simultaneous c ompeting emotions (nonspecific therapeutic effects). (4) This overrati ng led to the fiction that cognitive-behavior therapy is behavior ther apy's best resource to overcome non-psychotic depression, a fiction th at was exposed by cognitive-behavior therapy's inferior performance in the National Institute of Mental Health's Collaborative Research Proj ect. (5) There is data to suggest that use of the full resources of be havior therapy would have produced notably superior results. The comme ntary concludes with comments on the other contributions to the sympos ium, From Behavior Theory to Behavior Therapy.