Mr. Pretzer,

I was wondering if you would be willing to comment on an issue that has bothered me for a while. I have noticed a trend that many inexperienced therapists use the interventions from CBT in a reckless way, stringing together intervention after intervention without ever talking the time to build rapport with the client. In my opinion, this often leads the therapist to do something "to" a client rather than "with" a client. I also believe that the linguistical nature of CBT can lead to some abuses by inexperienced therapists. As an example, words like disputation and illogical thoughts etc. are part of the lexicon of your therapy. Again, in my experience, I have found that these words have led some therapists to attack a client rather than work with a client by saying "you are having an illogical thought right now" as though the therapist is superior to the client.

Now, I am sure that you could simply chalk this up to bad supervision or say "of course this happens to new therapists because they are still learning." However, I have seen this much more with therapists who practice CBT vs. other theoretical orientations. I will admit that other orientations have their own problems. I have noticed that many psycho dynamic people want clients to keep feeling their feelings beyond the time where it is probably helpful. I was wondering what the leaders in CBT are doing to make sure that this misuse of your therapy is limited? I am fully aware that a well trained CBT therapist does take the time to build rapport and is very effective with clients. unfortunately, the vast majority of therapists never train under someone such as yourself so they can learn the style properly.