The Question of Cognitive Therapy in a Postmodern World

Theories underlying psychotherapeutic interventions are subject to empirical and ideological scrutiny. This article reviews, integrates, and synthesizes core ideological critiques of Beck's cognitive therapy, recognized as the progenitor of most cognitive-behavioral therapies. The context of this review and its philosophical implications are discussed in an introduction on psychology and postmodernism. The critical psychology perspective and its implications for cognitive therapy are reviewed. It is argued that the theory of psychopathology and behavior change underlying cognitive therapy is incompatible with a postmodern perspective on the human condition, evidenced by cognitive therapy's reliance on modernist philosophical assumptions of rationality, reality, cognition, and ontology, as well as its social conservatism and inconsistence with the constructivism that defines cognitive science. This article also summarizes limitations of postmodern theory, offers suggestions for innovations in cognitive therapy, and discusses implications for psychotherapy research.