The late 1960s through the 1990s represented a second generation of behavior therapy and it is called Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It is born from the view that the history of behavior therapy, in which cognitive factors assumed greater importance in both therapy and practice. The central idea is that psychological disorders involve dysfunctional thinking and modifying dysfunctional thinking is linked to improvement in symptoms. Since the 1990s, acceptance-based models of CBT such as acceptance and commitment therapy and dialectical behavior therapy came into prominence. These approaches are represented as a third generation of CBT. Because, they argued that they distinguish them from earlier behavior therapies with a number of features. As well, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has some critiques about CBT which I do not totally agree.
In my view, acceptance-based models of CBT can be seen as reframed version of CBT rather than representing as third generation of CBT. ACT is distinguished from CBT the philosophy which comes from eastern philosophy and it has different kinds of therapeutic strategies and techniques from CBT. Although, they share similar therapeutic goals, they criticize CBT in several points.
Firstly, ACT literature claim that CBT is based on mechanistic realism. They believe that CBT is training in positive thinking and the goal is to replace bad cognition with good cognitions. And also they see CBT is overly symptom focused. However, these are all misinterpretations. Because emotions are related to cognitions, perceptions and interpretations and CBT encourage clients to reexamine the certainty of their predictions, perceptions and interpretations. They encourage the clients to identify, reexamine and correct the cognitions which cause the dysfunctional beliefs. Additionally, the goal of the CBT is not to direct modification of the symptoms. In CBT, dysfunctional cognitions are identified and