A CBT Practitioner's Guide to ACT: How to Bridge the Gap Between Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

by Joseph V. Ciarrochi PhD, Ann Bailey MPsych, Steven C. Hayes PhD (Foreword by)

Overview

Interest in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is expanding rapidly. Many of those who are interested in ACT are trained using a mechanistic cognitive behavioral therapy model (or MCBT). Utilizing both ACT and MCBT together can be difficult, because the approaches make different philosophical assumptions and have different theoretical models. The core purpose of the book is to help provide a bridge between ACT and MCBT.

The emphasis of this book will be applied psychology, but it will also have important theoretical implications. The book will highlight where ACT and MCBT differ in their predictions, and will suggest directions for future research. It will be grounded in current research and will make clear to the reader what is known and what has yet to be tested.

The core theme of A CBT-Practitioner's Guide to ACT is that ACT and CBT can be unified if they share the same philosophical underpinnings (functional contextualism) and theoretical orientation (relational frame theory, or RFT). Thus, from a CBT practitioner's perspective, the mechanistic philosophical core of MCBT can be dropped, and the mechanistic information processing theory of CBT can be held lightly and ignored in contexts where it is not useful. From an ACT practitioner's perspective, the decades of CBT research on cognitive schema and dysfunctional beliefs provides useful information about how clients might be cognitively fused and how this fusion might be undermined. The core premise of the book is that CBT and ACT can be beneficially integrated, provided both are approached from a similar philosophical and theoretical framework.

The authors acknowledge that practitioners often have little interest in extended discussions of philosophy and theory. Thus, their discussion of functional contextualism and RFT is grounded clearly in clinical practice. They talk about what functional contextualism means for the practitioner in the room, with a particular client. They describe how RFT can help the practitioner to understand the barriers to effective client action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608825738
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	12/03/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Joseph Ciarrochi, PhD, is professor of psychology at the School of Psychology, University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia.

Ann Bailey, MA, is an experienced acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) practitioner and supervisor who developed an award winning public mental health service for the treatment of borderline personality disorder and anxiety disorders. The therapeutic models used in this service integrate ACT, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).

Joseph V. Ciarrochi, PhD, is a professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at Australian Catholic University. He has published more than 140 scientific journal articles and many books, including the widely acclaimed Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life and The Weight Escape. Ciarrochi has been honored with more than four million dollars in research funding. His work has been discussed on TV and radio, and in magazines and newspaper articles. He is ranked in the top 2 percent of scientists in the world across all disciplines.

Ann Bailey, MPsych, is an experienced ACT practitioner and supervisor who developed an award-winning public mental health service for the treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and anxiety disorders—integrating ACT, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Ann supervises a team of clinicians as director of her ACT-based Anxiety and Stress Clinic.
Steven C. Hayes, PhD, is Nevada Foundation Professor in the department of psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has been president of numerous professional organizations, is author of forty-five books and nearly 650 scientific articles, and is among the most cited living psychologists. He has shown in his research how language and thought leads to human suffering, and is originator and codeveloper of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): a powerful therapy method that is useful in a wide variety of areas; relational frame theory (RFT): an empirical program in language and cognition; and process-based therapy (with Stefan G. Hofmann).