The cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy: a value-added strategy for chronic depression

Figure 1 illustrates Bouton's synthesis of the learning processes in a basic paradigm.4 For the first time in the history of psychology and psychiatry, an adequate theory of learning is now available to practitioners to describe the following in CLT terminology: * The etiology, diagnosis, and psychosocial functioning of chronically depressed patients. * The learning goals of treatment and a way to assess the impact of learning on treatment outcome. * What clinicians are trying to teach patients, defined as the "subject matter" of therapy. * The prevention of the loss of extinction of the older pathological learning during the posttreatment period. CS (conditional stimulus) that is followed by a biologically significant event, that is a reinforcer, S*:UCS (unconditional stimulus: pleasure, physical or psychological pain, fear, anxiety, hunger, thirst, and sexual satisfaction or deprivation) presents a learning moment in which the S*:UCS becomes associated with some behavior (response) and also with contextual cues or occasion setters. 4,7 The cues may be a place (eg, office, waiting room, workplace, home) or the context may involve particular individuals (eg, parent or caregiver, spouse, therapist,work colleagues, teacher, friend).