Logic-Based Therapy

Logic-Based Therapy (LBT) is a proposed modality of philosophical counseling developed by philosopher Elliot D. Cohen beginning in the mid-1980s. It is a philosophical variant of Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), which was developed by psychologist Albert Ellis. However, there have currently been no independent, controlled studies to measure its therapeutic value or advantages over classical REBT.

According to the adherents LBT, people decide to make themselves upset emotionally and behaviorally by deducing self-defeating emotional and behavioral conclusions from irrational premises. LBT retains the theoretical base of the cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies, insofar as it contends emotional and behavioral problems to be rooted in malignant and maladaptive thought processes and patterns. LBT considers itself not only a type of philosophical counseling, but a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy. At the same time, LBT remains firmly planted in philosophy by way of the use of formal logic, phenomenological intentionality, and philosophical antidotes in conceptualizing and treating mental disorders and psychosocial difficulties.

In contrast to classical REBT, LBT recasts REBT’s A-B-C-model of psychological disturbance into syllogistic logic. According to classical REBT, there are three psychological points: Point A (Activating event), Point B (Belief system), and Point C (behavioral and emotional Consequence). Ellis argued that the Activating event itself does not cause people to be upset (C); they require also a set of Beliefs that, in conjunction with the event, causes a self-defeating behavioral and emotional Consequence. For example, it is not just having recently been divorced (Point A) that causes a depression (point C), but also the belief that this event is awful and the worst thing that could have happened. Thus, according to Ellis, by finding the particular Activating event and Belief, one can find out what is causing one’s depression (C). Clients can then work on changing their Belief system and their behavior to overcome the depression.

LBT translates the A-B-C-model of psychological disturbance into a form of deductive logic, in particular, syllogistic logic. According to its logic-based approach, the causal model Ellis advanced is not accurate. The depression is not caused by events that occur inside (Point B) and outside (Point A) one’s subjective world. Instead, one decides to feel depressed by deducing a conclusion from a set of premises. For example, you depress yourself by setting up this syllogism:

...
Wikipedia