Cognitive psychology has been the dominant approach to psychology as a whole since the 1950s. By the 1970s, several approaches to psychological therapy had been developed based on a cognitive understanding of symptoms. Nowadays, cognitive behavioural therapies dominate applied psychology, in particular clinical psychology. If you are referred for treatment to a clinical psychology service, the chances are that you will receive cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
So, I hear you ask, why CBT and not just cognitive therapy? One reason is that cognitive techniques are often combined with behavioural techniques. For example, patients suffering from anxiety might be encouraged to expose themselves to the trigger for their anxiety as part of the treatment. This should help desensitise them to it. Desensitisation is a behavioural technique, so a course of treatment that uses it is partly behavioural therapy.
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