CULTURAL-HISTORICAL APPROACH AS A METHODOLOGICAL BASIS FOR COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

Abstract

The article argues that the methodology applied by the cultural-historical approach and cognitive behavioural psychotherapy reveals uniformity of their ideas about an object, methods and units of analysis of the psyche. Cognitive behavioural psychotherapy, as well as cultural-historical psychology, understands development as acquisition of cultural methods, tools for substantive, communicative and intellectual tasks, mastering of thinking and mental activities as a whole and internalizing these tools. This goal is realized through specially organized education. From the point of view of cultural-historical psychology, psychological problems and disorders are rightly regarded as lack of instruments for organization, as well as self-regulation of an individual’s mental activities and behaviour, and psychotherapy is a method for compensation of revealed corresponding deficit. The strategic goal of cognitive behavioural therapy is the formation of an arsenal of psychological and behavioural tools improving an individual’s self-regulation. At the same time such therapy realizes the basic provisions of L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach: the ideas of a dynamically developing unity of intellect and affect, the central role of mental activity and its internalization during personal development. The ways of managing thoughts, optimizing it, testing thoughts, beliefs, the methods detecting cognitive distortions, planning and modelling behavioural changes, the ways of emotional self-regulation can be regarded as cultural tools optimizing human mental processes and behaviour, forming awareness and arbitrariness of these processes. The article substantiates that the development of a cognitive behavioural model helps take into account and specifically reorganize the influence of an individual’s own thoughts on him/her for his/her benefit.