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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/health/psychology/14psyc.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

More and More, Favored Psychotherapy Lets Bygones Be Bygones

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By ALIX SPIEGEL
Published: February 14, 2006

Ryan Donnell for The New York Times

PRESENT FOCUS Aaron T. Beck introduced cognitive behavioral therapy.
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Forum: Mental Health and Treatment

Correction Appended

For most of the 20th century, therapists in America agreed on a single truth. To cure patients, it was necessary to explore and talk through the origins of their problems. In other words, they had to come to terms with the past to move forward in the present.

Thousands of hours and countless dollars were spent in this pursuit. Therapists listened diligently as their patients recounted elaborate narratives of family dysfunction — the alcoholic father, the mother too absorbed in her own unhappiness to attend to her children's needs — certain that this process would ultimately produce relief.

But returning to the past has fallen out of fashion among mental health professionals over the last 15 years. Research has convinced many therapists that understanding the past is not required for healing.

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