Dr. Aaron T. Beck, Quarking Ducks, and Me (2023 version)
Recalling how a towering figure in psychiatry and mental health became my friend after I subjected his work to robust criticism.
This 2011 memory is retrieved from the archives of CoyneoftheRealm and was edited in 2023 at a time when the vital role of the skeptic in improving science is under siege. I recall some special aspects of my relationship with Aaron T. Beck (1921-2021). Tim became a friend, co-author, and confident after I subjected his work to a sustained critique.
Thirty years ago, I was still early in my career (Ph.D. Indiana, 1975), but I was already a skeptic taking aim at theory and research concerning the role of cognition in depression. I fired away at research studies appearing in the best of journals like beer bottles lined up on a fence. Cognitive therapy and its associated theory represented the unchallenged, dominant perspective on depression at the time. No one had ever written such a sustained, robust critique as I did, or, at least, no one had ever gotten one published.
Dr. Joan Cook, Dr. Beck, and Jim Coyne (2010) at the Dairy Cafe, Bala Cynwyrd
Shortly after the Psychological Bulletin …