Aaron Beck, R.I.P.

Friday’s newspaper contains an obituary for Dr. Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive behavioral psychiatry, who lived to be one hundred. The article describes his questioning the support for Freudian psychoanalysis, and developing cognitive techniques, and his facing considerable opposition from what was then the reigning orthodoxy among head shrinkers. I believe that I have read about him before, although I did not recall his name.

Here was a man who dared to think, relied on evidence and reasoning in place of authority, dared to say that the emperor was naked, and seems to have accomplished real improvement in the treatment of mental distress. May he rest in honored remembrance.