NCP: Criticisms of Cognitive Therapy

Non Cognitive Psychotherapy (NCP) has a number of standard objections to cognitive therapy (CT).

Remember CT is based on the belief that it is not events that are upsetting to us but it is what we think, belief or imagine about events that CAUSE our upsets.

To illustrate: recently, I was 'accosted' by two foreign-sounding Jehovah's Witnesses in the main street of our local shopping area. I challenged their view about the Trinity and after a little discussion they chose to leave me. Afterwards I felt anxious and blah.

Now the question is, did my thinking and imagining cause my emotional upset or did the event itself produce thinking, imagining and emotional upset?

NCP would say that my reaction is not irrational or 'unscientific' but is perfectly normal and justified! One of the assumptions behind most of cognitive therapy is that reactions such as mine to the above confrontation is irrational and illogical. The deeper assumption is that I 'should not' have been ruffled and disturbed by meeting these people who saw me as a target to unsettle and challenge.

However, to quote Russell Hoover (author of NCP) 'the way people feel is predictably determined by what happens to them, and that mood . . . is seldom the result of miscognition in the irrational or dysfunctional sense' (p.25, 2001).

Hoover accuses CT of being built on a number of 'pretenses' or 'shams' some of which include:

1. 'Upset is a certain sign of weak and unfit minds, while calmness a certain show of strength' (p. 22).
2. All humanity has a bent towards irrational thinking and emotional irritability shows you are thinking irrationally.
3. No absolutes exist in the universe and thinking in terms of absolutes is to encourage mental health problems.
4. Because no absolutes exist nothing is really bad or evil; this means that redefining something troubling as 'I just don't like it' will resolve my exaggerated response.
5. Imperative thinking (i.e., using oughts, shoulds, etc) is impaired thinking.

These pretenses seem to apply more to Albert Ellis' form of CT than Aaron Beck's but I think Hoover could readily create a list applicable to the latter as well.

Hoover's primary criticism of CT in all its forms is that it is condescending and bends the mind by indoctrination to accept the unacceptable as if the latter is simply my dislike for it or my illogical (unscientific) thinking about it rather than any inherent badness it may have.