Cognitive Approaches Ellis and Kelly

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Cognitive Approaches Ellis and Kelly
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Cognitive Approach

• Differences in personality can be explained in
  terms of differences in the way people process
  information
• Believe that negative thoughts cause depression

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Cognitive Behavior Therapy

• (CBT)
• Emphasize private events, thoughts, perceptions,
  judgments, self-statements
• Cognitive restructuring changing a pattern of
  thought that is presumed to be causing a
  disturbed behavior

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Albert Ellis

• Irrational beliefs about what is necessary to
  lead a meaningful life cause problems
• A-B-C process
• A Activating Experience
• B Irrational Belief
• C Emotional Consequence
• Many people skip from A to C without realizing
  their irrational beliefs

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Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

• (REBT)
• Goal to eliminate irrational, self-defeating
  beliefs
• Ellis often used humor and was very blunt with
  pointing out irrational beliefs

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George Kelly

• 1955
• "A person's processes are psychologically
  channelized by the ways in which he anticipates
  events."
• Little scientists

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Fundamental Postulate and Eleven Corollaries

• Fundamental Postulate A persons processes are
  psychologically channelized by the ways in which
  he anticipates events
• Construction Corollary A person anticipates
  events by construing their replications
• Individuality Corollary Persons differ from each
  other in their construction of events
• Organization Corollary Each person
  characteristically evolves, for his convenience
  in anticipating events, a construction system
  embracing ordinal relationships between constructs

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Continued

• Dichotomy Corollary A persons construction
  system is composed of a finite number of
  dichotomous constructs
• Choice Corollary A person chooses for himself
  that alternative in a dichotomous construct
  through which he anticipates the greater
  possibility for extension and definition of his
  system
• Range Corollary A construct is convenient for
  the anticipation of a finite range of events only
• Experience Corollary a persons construction
  system varies as he successively construes the
  replication of events

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Continued

• Modulation Corollary The variation in a persons
  construction system is limited by the
  permeability of the constructs within whose range
  of convenience the variants lie
• Fragmentation Corollary A person may
  successively employ a variety of construction
  subsystems which are inferentially incompatible
  with each other
• Commonality Corollary To the extent that one
  person employs a construction of experience which
  is similar to that employed by another, his
  psychological processes are similar to those of
  the other person
• Sociality Corollary To the extent that one
  person construes the construction processes of
  another, he may play a role in a social process
  involving the other person

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Psychological ProblemsKelly

• Arise from inadequate construct systems
• Anxiety is at the heart of all psychological
  problems
• Anxiety occurs when our constructs fail us
  (similar to cognitive dissonance)

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Resources

• Burger, J. M. (2004). Personality (6th ed.).
  United States of America Thomson Wadsworth.  
• Kring, A. M., Davison, G. C., Neale, J. M.
  Johnson, S. L. (2007). Abnormal Psychology
  (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ John Wiley Sons,
  Inc.