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Early Behavioral Therapy was often understood to be based on the stimulus-response model of classical behaviorism. Focusing on observable events had the advantage of discouraging speculation about inner, hidden processes that need to be inferred because they can't be directly observed. It thus avoided the kind of rampant guesswork that had led psychoanalysis so far astray. However in the end, it became accepted that the S-R approach was leaving too many important things out. Meanwhile, psychological scientists continued to reject psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theories of personality and therapy. .
The pioneers of cognitive therapy, Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, both former psychoanalysts themselves, repudiated the emphasis on unconscious processes, the need for long-term treatment and extensive historical exploration, and the central role in therapy of transference, counter-transference and the development of accurate insight. Classical behavior therapy could only be applied to behavioral problems, or at best to the behavioral aspects of problems that had both behavioral and cognitive components. Cognitive methods were needed to fill some rather large gaps.
Finally, treatment studies came out that supported the effectiveness of cognitive therapy, and in particular, of behavior therapy extended with cognitive elements behavior therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Studies have shown Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to be as effective as drug treatment for depression, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other problems of excessive fear and anxiety, and often considered the only treatment strategy known to be both safe and effective.
Cognitive Behavioral therapists vary tremendously in both theory and technique. There are several approaches to Cognitive-Behavioral therapy, including Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Rational Behavior Therapy, Rational Living Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Dialectic Behavior Therapy.