A conversation with
Prof. Judith beck

We are delighted to invite professionals from all therapeutic schools to a conversation with Judith Beck, one of the most important and figures in CBT today and has enormous impact on the field of psychotherapy beyond CBT.

Dr. Beck is the primary developer of Beck Institute’s core online courses, which have now been taken by health and mental health professionals in over 130 countries. First created in 2015, and extensively revised in 2021, these core comprehensive courses changed the landscape of mental health training worldwide.

Her father Aaron T. Beck, the founder of CBT, made no efforts to encourage her to follow his footsteps. But during her adolescence he checked out his ideas on his daughter who reassured him that "“They make good sense".

All methods of cognitive behavior therapy that originated from Beck's model treatment is based on a cognitive formulation, the core beliefs and behavioral approaches that describe a specific disorder.  The therapist pursues in a variety of techniques to create cognitive change – modification in the patient's thinking and belief system – to bring about lasting emotional and behavioral change.

Beck specializes in explaining the moment-to-moment decisions cognitive therapists make during therapy sessions. What may appear to be an intuitive process of decision making is based on a continuous ongoing conceptualization of patients, their diagnosis, and their experience of the therapy session.

Throughout her writings Beck delineates the typical problems that thwart the progress of CBT and discourage therapist and patient alike. Among therapists' obstacles are: an erroneous diagnosis, an incorrect formulation or conceptualization of the case, a failure to use one’s formulation of the case and conceptualization of the patient to guide therapy, a faulty treatment, a rift in the therapeutic alliance, an inadequate list of behavioral goals, incorrect implementation of techniques, inappropriate homework.

In this conversation we will discuss with Judith Beck: what can help therapists to overcome the above obstacles? how to optimize the management of therapeutic process? How CBT therapists treats personality disorders? How CBT therapists deal with patients that insist they cannot change or that therapy cannot help them?

We will also discuss what she thinks about the world of psychotherapy today, the third wave of CBT and a possible integration between CBT and psychoanalysis.