... came about a from the merging of the established paradigm of behavioural therapy and contemporary cognitive therapy (Clarke and Fairburn 1997). Behavioural therapy historically focused on anxiety, phobic and obsessional disorders. Treatments were aligned to the learning theories of Pavlov and Skinner, anxieties and phobias were conceptualise to be conditioned fear responses, passively acquired and elicited by conditioned stimulii (Clarke and Fairburn 1997). A variety of techniques were employed to enable the client to 'unlearn' these acquired behaviours. These treatments regimes were concerned with maladaptive habits and behaviours; thought and emotional responses where considered reactive and of no influence to these behaviours. Behaviour was considered to be primarily shaped by environmental factors and therapy was by exposure to a sequence of environmental events. Cognitive approaches to psychological therapy emphasise the meaning given to mental processes that intervene between environmental events and the reaction to that event. Events that ...

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