Aaron T. Beck, who is known as Tim to his friends, was born in 1921, in Rhode Island, USA. He is the youngest of four siblings.
In the 1940’s
In his 20s, he completed his undergraduate degree at Brown University, then he received a medical degree from Yale University, and completed residencies in pathology and psychiatry. During his first residency, Beck already won awards for scholarship and oratory at Brown University.
In the 1950’s
During the 1950s, Beck went on with his psychiatric studies—first at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and then at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Society, where at the age of 35, he graduated as a psychoanalyst in 1956. He also began a lengthy and prolific career on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he started as an instructor in psychiatry. By the end of this decade he was an assistant professor in psychiatry. In his 40 years stay, the University of Pennsylvania named him University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry.
Beck was able to publish his first articles in psychiatry in the 1950s, and two among those articles are seminal for cognitive therapy. When he was already 31 years old in 1952, he was able to publish his first psychiatric article, a case study about treatment of schizophrenic delusion. It was the first of numerous publications he made that were later on recognized as significant precursor to the development in cognitive therapy. In the mid-1950s, his publications declined as he played an active role as a parent to his young children.
As the decade neared its end, it also became the end of his psychoanalytic career and the commencement of cognitive therapy, even Beck did not foresee its significance at the time. He set out to empirically demonstrate the psychoanalytic theory that depression is anger turned inward. In attempting to provide empirical support for certain
References: Beck, A. T., Freeman, A., & Davis, D. (2004). Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders 2nd Ed. Guilford Publication Inc. New York. Beck, A. T., & Weishaar, M. E. (2009). Cognitive Therapy. Current Psychotherapies 8th Ed. Thomson Brooks/Cole. USA. Beck, J. S., & Pretzer, James. (2004). Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders: Twenty Years of Progress. Contemporary Cognitive Therapy, Theory, Research and Practice. The Guilford Press. New York. Padesky, C. (2004) Aaron T. Beck: Mind, Man, and Mentor. Contemporary Cognitive Therapy, Theory, Research and Practice. The Guilford Press. New York. Neenan, M., & Dryden, W. (2004). Cognitive Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques. Brunner-Routledge. East Sussex. Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. F., & Emery, G. (1979). Cognitive Therapy of Depression. Guilfod Press. New York. Beck, J. (1995). Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond. The Guilford Press. New York Beck, A. T., & Alford, B. A. (1997). The Integrative Power of Cognitive Therapy. The Guilford Press. New York. Corey, Gerald (2009). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy. Thomson Brooks/Cole. USA. Flanagan, J. S., & Flanagan, R. S. (2004). Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New Jersey.