Cognitive Therapy

Over thirty years old, Cognitive therapy is based on one's knowledge derived from factual (empirical) information.

It is different from Freudian Psychoanalytic therapy in several ways: Freudian system is based on uncovering hidden feelings; it usually is very intensive and time consuming, and it is open ended.

Cognitive therapy is short term, goal oriented, and a conscious process. Removed from an over the coffee cup conversation with a smart friend, treatment is directed by a trained doctor (psychiatrist or psychologist) and has all the safeguards needed in this type of therapy: confidentiality, ethical - patient first with no rewards to the therapist and an expert in treating many earlier patients.

Its initiator, Beck, traces cognitive therapy to Greek stoic philosophy and Eastern Taoism and Buddhism. Treatment is the exploration of thoughts producing incorrect behavior (cigarette smoking) with the recognition of the unrealistic nature of these thoughts.

In addition to the approach for the young man noted on the home page, consider a fifty-two year old financial writer who says: "Ever since high school I never wrote a word without a pencil in my right hand, a pad of yellow legal paper in front of me, and a burning cigarette in my left hand." A rational reconstruction of his thinking included: the cigarette is no writing instrument; your mind is working perfectly well together with your eyes without the addition of the inhaled smoke; and the use of substitute nicotine, scientifically derived from your brand and number smoked daily will substitute your brain's previous demand for cigarettes. Met two years later in a theater lobby, our writer shook my hand with the report, "Still cigarette free" and he had finished his second book since cessation.

Cognitive therapy especially appeals to the "thinking person" and the problem solver: computer people, management executives, and academic people. With this group it is a most useful complement to other treatments for smoking cessation. It must always be accompanied by agents to combat the addictive nature of nicotine (patch etc.) and sometimes by antidepressant or antianxiety medication, or by hypnotherapy to bolster motivation to quit.

With all our patients there is the optimal combination of treatments individually derived for each patient to achieve successful and painless quitting.