Jeffrey E. Young, PhD, is on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is the Founder and Director of the Cognitive Therapy Centers of New York and Connecticut, and the Schema Therapy Institute in New York City. Janet S. Klosko, PhD, Codirector of the Cognitive Therapy Center of Long Island, in Great Neck, New York, is senior psychologist at the Schema Therapy Institute and at Woodstock Women's Health in Woodstock, New York. Marjorie E. Weishaar, PhD, is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University Medical School, where she teaches cognitive therapy to psychiatry residents and to psychology interns and postdoctoral fellows. She also… maintains a private practice in Providence, Rhode Island.
A native of Rhode Island, Aaron Beck had an early interest in psychology. After graduating from Brown University, he embarked on a career in medicine at Yale University with the intention of specializing in psychiatry. Dissatisfied with classical psychoanalysis, he turned to modified psychoanalytic approaches and was particularly influenced by ego psychology advanced by Rapaport. Ego psychology directed his interest in cognition, and over time Beck abandoned the psychoanalytic framework and formulated his own cognitive theory-behavior therapy for patients with depression and other psychiatric disorders. He developed numerous measurement scales, including the Beck Depression Inventory, the… Beck Hopelessness Scale, and the Self-Concept Test, which are widely used as diagnostic and research tools in the field. Beck continues to teach, consult, and write about the use of cognitive therapy in treating emotional disorders and other problems.