ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Paper Tools at Beck’s Center for Cognitive Therapy: Materializing Epistemic Values and Shaping Research, Training and Therapeutic Practice

• In Event: The Making of Psychotherapeutic Knowledge: Research Practices, Epistemic Cultures, and Disciplinary Negotiations 1

English Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the foundation of the first Center for Cognitive Therapy around Aaron Beck in the early 1970s marked a turning point in the use of paper tools in psychotherapeutic research. The development of these instruments not only organized the research practices of the CCT but also shaped its training procedures and therapeutic interventions, contributing to Cognitive Therapy becoming a highly manualized and technically oriented practice.
Before the establishment of the CCT, Beck had already participated in creating various diagnostic and research instruments designed for use with patients, such as the Beck Depression Inventory, hostility and masochism scales, dream quantification protocols, and projective tests. The creation of the CCT took place at the same time as the first clinical trials of Cognitive Therapy, carried out by the psychology team. These trials are often described as revolutionary for their role in legitimizing Cognitive Therapy as a scientifically grounded practice. They required a new repertoire of paper tools, including therapy manuals, session worksheets for patients, and rating scales for evaluating therapists. As a result, paper tools shifted from devices used to assess patients to instruments structuring therapeutic processes and the training of practitioners. Finally, I discuss how these paper tools materialized epistemic and normative values, as well as particular forms of rationality, shaping therapeutic interactions and contributing to the formation of both therapists and patients as a particular kind of “cognitive subject” who learns to act as a scientist of their own life.

Author

• Iván Moya Diez, IMGWF, University of Luebeck