Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression
Abstract
AN INTEGRATED COGNITIVE THEORY OF DEPRESSION
Julian L. Simon
Philosophers have long understood that the comparisons one makes affect one's feelings.
But self-comparisons have not previously been systematically explored or integrated into
scientific understanding of the thinking of depressives, or exploited as the central
pressure-point for therapy; instead, the concept "negative thoughts" has been
used. This article argues that self-comparisons constitute the common pathway through
which all depression-causing lines of thought must pass. A negative self-comparison
between a) a perceived actual state of affairs, and b) a hypothetical benchmark state of
affairs causes psychic pain. And the interaction between negative self-comparisons and a
sense of helplessness converts painful negative self- comparisons into sadness and
depression. This framework opens up a wide variety of novel interventions.
Self-comparisons Analysis integrates the key therapeutic insights of the cognitive
theories of Ellis, Beck, and Seligman. All of the many variations of depressions that
modern psychiatry now recognizes as heterogeneous but related forms of the same illness
can be subsumed under the theory except those that have a purely biological origin, if
there are such. Hence it makes possible that instead of the field being seen as a conflict
of "schools," each may be seen as having a distinctive therapeutic method that
fits the needs of different sorts of sufferers from depression. The framework of
Self-Comparisons Analysis also helps weight the values of each of these methods for a
particular sufferer.
Self-comparisons Analysis also yields a new line of attack upon stubborn depressions --
committed choice to give up depression in order to attain important deeply-held values.
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