European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - December 10, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse There Are socially ingrained differences in the thinking and speaking styles of men and woman that a fact Oiler relationships. Quick fix therapy for couples by Anne c. Roark. Los Angeles times. Aront Beck s idea was simple change the Way people think and you can change their lives Challenge a few unrealistic beliefs alter some habitual thought pallens and people will Stop being depressed they will lose their anxieties kick their drug habits and give up. Alcohol. Beck called the method cognitive despite considerable resistance from his fellow psycho Iii Sis Over much of Trio past 30 years the technique has proved quite successful so much so that it is now one of the treatments of Choice for a number of illnesses ranging from depression to panic disorders. Now the Philadelphia psychiatrist is adding his Quick fix therapy to those people who Are nol necessarily mentally disturbed or emotionally troubled but who he believes also desperately need help couples Whoso relationships Are in trouble. At Iho urging followers. Beck has written his lust pop Book love is never enough a 323-Page opus just released by Harper & Row. H is aimed not just at husbands and wives but All couples whose relationships Are falling apart or at Leas need some retooling virtually everyone i talked to told me it was a great idea because typically people who most need Heip Are the least Likely to gel it. Beck said in a recent interview. Marriage counselling May seem an Odd place for an eminent Ivy league professor of psychiatry to focus his attention. Alipra All. In the Hierarchy of the profession family therapy is no a exactly at the lop of the list. And Beck who has already written numerous scholarly. Books years ago earned a permanent place in the annals of the profession with his famed Beck depression inventory a scale of symptoms used almost universally to diagnose depression Yel with somewhere Between 40 percent and �0 percent of All marriages in the United slates ending in divorce and with countless others in distress. Beck Long ago became convinced that there was a real need Tor different counselling techniques. What s More the courtly Good Humoured professor claims to have More than just professional knowledge of Cem milled relationships. A father of four and Giand lather of seven he has been married for 38 years to the same woman. Superior court judge Phyllis Beck. Beck Gol involved in to business of marriages quite naturally he said when a was working with depressed patients Many of whom also had marriages that were in trouble. Even ii they weren t depressed. Beck. Found people in Rocky relationships shared Many o the same thinking defects As those who were clinically depressed while he credits one of his. Former students at the University of Pennsylvania Norman Epstein with first making that observation seek came up. With the whole notion of defective thinking. The idea came to him in the late 1950s shortly Aller he graduated from medical school at Yale and completed his training at the Philadelphia psychoanalytic Institute. At the Lime he was trying to prove Freud s theory of depression that it was hostility against a loved one turned inward. Ii Freud were right. Beck had reasoned it possible to find evidence of hostility in the dreams of depressed patients. But that is not what Beck uncovered. Instead to saw recurring patterns of distorted thinking people who were depressed did not dream of hatred or revenge they dreamed of defeat deprivation loss. They did not seek failure they twisted reality to the Point. Where they could not recognize Success even when it came their Way. Beck then began to wonder was it possible to change those thinking. Patterns if hey were changed would. The patient no longer be depressed the answer in both cases was yes cognitive therapy the method that Beck devised for changing thinking patterns is almost As easy to use As it is to understand according to its practitioners although Many spend upwards of a year in training to perfect the technique. -. The idea is to help troubled individuals recognize that their minds Are riddled with negative messages explained Chrisline a. Padesky one of Beck s. Proteges who is director 6 the Center of cognitive therapy in Newport Beach calif., one of dozens of such censers now in operation. V. Wilh in help of hefty doses of reality testing and some painstaking sell discipline and role playing inappropriate and destructive thoughts can be identified and replaced with More objective and positive forms of and instead of months and years of introspection and analysis the whole process can usually be completed in 81o 12 recent months,.bock has been travelling around the United slates explaining his method of marriage counselling in Day Long cognitive therapy clinics to thousands of psychiatrists psychologists and other menial health professionals one of the peculiarities of relationships and it is True whether the couple is married or not and whether they Are heterosexual or homosexuals that the individuals involved act perfectly Norma and rational outside the relationship and positively crazy within Beck told a group of therapists in los Angeles recently. We be had couples watch videotapes of other distressed couples and they see precisely what is wrong. In their own relationships they have no idea he said. What seems to be an innocent statement will provoke a fight simply because the person who hears the statement does some automatic and quite inaccurate mind Reading he said. A wife for instance will think that she knows what her spouse is thinking when in tact she has t a clue Beck said. Instead of assuming she knows what Hor husband is thinking she ought to ask first. Is this what you meant ii it in to they should Bolh keep lathing and listening until they do understand one another Beck said. Mind Reading he cautioned is not something anyone can do. We to gel people Over dramatize their lives in Many ways Beck said. One common Way is to Calas Trophine events or husband noting thai his wife is late from work might thin she s late. She s always late from work and my dinner is never ready. She must have had an Accident. Or More Likely she simply does t love me Why else would she be late. What the husband can. And should be aught to think Beck said is sorrel Wing along Thesa lines of my wife is late. She must have gotten delayed at the office. Or perhaps she hit some traffic whatever the Case Shell surely to Home soon.". Vet another tendency is for couples to Bury hidden massages inside innocuous statements or to ask innocuous questions loaded with past grievances. The right Way Beck said to ask your husband to help your child with. Home work might be since you re so Good with math do you suppose you could help our son with his algebra tonight a less Tefle calve Way would be to say. Do you suppose you could possibly Lake Lime out from your incessant to watching Long enough to spend some time with your fatherless son part of the problem in Many marriages is that there Are socially. Ingrained differences in the thinking and communication styles of men and women. Problems occur because women Are Laughl from the time they Are Little to discuss intimate problems openly while men have been cautioned repeatedly to remain silent about such matters a woman s Poirel of View is As Long As you can talk about problems the. Marriage is working Beck noted a Man s View is As Long As you have to talk about problems the marriage in t working thai about sums it although therapists could Point out these tendencies to a couple that is having rouble Beck says mat traditional marriage Counselor Don t always solve Fundaun enrol problems because they often do Little More than broiler the kind of advice a very Wise Friend might Beck is even critical of his own training and background. While psychoanalysts May Well help individuals in a relationship discover \ s roots of their distorted perceptions and eventually resolve them a said the biggest problem is that by the Lima you get this worked out your marriage has fallen apart.". Saturday december 10, 1888 the stars and stripes Page 17
