Beck, Gabbard to Compare Psychotherapies

APA’s 2012 annual meeting will include a session that promises to be standing room only. At the meeting’s Opening Session, two master psychotherapy educators, clinicians, and researchers—Aaron T. Beck, M.D., and Glen O. Gabbard, M.D.—will discuss the commonalities and differences between cognitive therapy and psychodynamic therapy. The session will be moderated by APA President John Oldham, M.D.

Published research on psychotherapy has increasingly demonstrated its effectiveness as an evidence-based treatment for many psychiatric disorders, in categories ranging from mood and anxiety disorders to personality disorders. But psychotherapy, even “manualized,” standardized psychotherapy, comes in many varieties. Not uncommonly, adherents to one form of psychotherapy or another advocate for its unique effectiveness, as if the field were a racetrack where there is only one winner. In this spirit, the most frequent “either/or” comparison is between cognitive therapy and psychodynamic therapy, often viewed as radically different treatment approaches. Without PowerPoints and without scripts, Beck and Gabbard will take their seats for an informal armchair conversation about these different yet overlapping forms of psychotherapy.

The session, titled “Cognitive Therapy and Psychodynamic Therapy: More Alike Than Different? A Conversation Between Aaron T. Beck, M.D., and Glen O. Gabbard, M.D.,” will be held Sunday, May 6, at 4:30 p.m.

As in past years, the Opening Session will also include the meeting’s opening ceremonies and speeches by the APA president and president-elect, who this year are John Oldham, M.D., and Dilip Jeste, M.D., respectively. The conversation between Beck and Gabbard will follow.

Beck is University Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, and Gabbard is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and training and supervising analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston.

More information is posted at www.psych.org/MainMenu/EducationCareerDevelopment/Meetings/2012-Annual-Meeting/Special-Program-with-Aaron-T-Beck-MD.aspx?FT=.pdf .