Challenging the Cognitive Behavioural Therapies: The Overselling of CBt's Evidence Base
www.limbus.org.uk/cbt

Conference Rationale:
In Britain and other countries, many people have come to believe that manualized Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is the only credible psychotherapy, scientifically proven to be effective (unlike the other psychotherapies).

The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has been sufficiently convinced by this 'evidence-base' to grace a number of CBT protocols its seal of approval. In the NHS and elsewhere, we are currenlty in a situation in which CBT has established a virtual monopoly over the range of other psychotherapies, disfranchising them and their practitioners.

The intention of this conference is to challenge this state of affairs by questioning the positivist premises behind the hegemonic claims being made by, and on the behalf of CBT. The conference will challenge these claims on a number of counts to ask:
• How robust is the evidence for CBT?
• How well does the statistical evidence stand up to scrutiny?
• What evidence, if any, is there for other schools of therapy?
• How realistic is the CBT model of the psyche?
• What does it say about the human condition?
• How helpful is CBT’s medicalised understanding of human distress?
• How much of CBT’s success is due to politics & ideology rather than science?
• How distinct is CBT from the other kinds of talking therapy?