As I described in my last post (see “What Were They Thinking? - Part 2”), persons with disturbed characters don’t act the way we do largely because they don’t think the way we do.   Stanton Samenow was among the early researchers to catalog the distorted thinking patterns or “errors in thinking” which some of the most severely disturbed characters (those with criminal records) display. Over the years, I’ve adapted and modified... 

One of the central tenets of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is that there is an inextricable relationship between a person’s core beliefs, the attitudes those beliefs have engendered, and the ways the person’s attitudes prompt him or her to to behave in various situations. Each element of the triad of thinking patterns-attitudes-behaviors generally has a reinforcing effect on the others and contributes greatly to an individual’s...