Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies

The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) was founded in 1966. Its headquarters are in New York City and its membership includes researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, social workers, nurses, and other mental-health practitioners, researchers, and students (located nationally and internationally) who support, use, and/or disseminate behavioral and cognitive approaches.

ABCT is an interdisciplinary organization committed to the advancement of a scientific approach to the understanding and amelioration of problems of the human condition. These aims are achieved through the investigation and application of behavioral, cognitive, and other evidence-based principles to assessment, prevention, and treatment. While primarily an interest group, ABCT is also active in:

Through its membership, publications, convention and education committees, along with numerous subcommittees, ABCT conducts a variety of activities to support and disseminate the behavioral and cognitive therapies. The organization produces two quarterly journals, Behavior Therapy (research-based) and Cognitive and Behavioral Practice (treatment focused), as well as its house periodical, the Behavior Therapist (eight times per year). The association’s convention is held annually in November. ABCT also produces fact sheets, an assessment series, and training and archival videotapes. The association maintains a website (http://www.abct.org) on which can be found a “Find-a-Therapist” search engine and information about behavioral and cognitive therapies. The organization provides its members with an online clinical directory, over 30 special interest groups, a list serve, a job bank, and an awards and recognition program. Other offerings available on the website include sample course syllabi, listings of grants available, and a broad range of offerings of interest to mental health researchers.

The organization was founded in 1966 under the name Association for Advancement of Behavioral Therapies by 10 behaviorists who were dissatisfied with the prevailing Freudian/psychoanalytic model (founding members: John Paul Brady, Joseph Cautela, Edward Dengrove, Cyril Franks, Martin Gittelman, Leonard Krasner, Arnold Lazarus, Andrew Salter, Dorothy Susskind, and Joseph Wolpe). Although AABT/ABCT was not established until 1966, its history begins in the early 1900s with the birth of the behaviorist movement, which was brought about by Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, Thorndike, Hull, Mowrer, and others—scientists who, concerned primarily with observable behavior, were beginning to experiment with conditioning and learning theory. By the 1950s, two entities—Hans Eysenck’s research group (which included one of AABT’s founders Cyril Franks) at the University of London Institute of Psychiatry, and Joseph Wolpe’s research group (which included another of AABT’s founders, Arnold Lazarus) in South Africa—were conducting important studies that would establish behavior therapy as a science based on principles of learning. In complete opposition to the psychoanalytic model, “The seminal significance of behavior therapy was the commitment to apply the principles and procedures of experimental psychology to clinical problems, to rigorously evaluate the effects of therapy, and to ensure that clinical practice was guided by such objective evaluation”

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