Influential Theorist And Practitioner: Aaron Beck

One particularly influential theorist and practitioner, Aaron Beck, argues that depression is not so much a disturbance of the emotions as cognition, but is the negative views that a person holds towards themselves and the world which make them feel depressed - not the other way around.
Depressed thoughts lead to depressed feelings, states Beck, in contrast to most other theorists who argue that it is depressed feelings that cause depressed thoughts.
He saw these themes as deriving not from underlying unconscious conflicts, nor from biochemical abnormalities, but from a set of basic cognitive patterns that are activated in depression.
Like the psychoanalysts, Beck returns to childhood. During childhood and infancy, the depression-prone individual