The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients

Content Warning: The source text and this guide mention mental health issues, including suicidal ideation and substance use disorders.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy or CBT is a form of psychological treatment that focuses on the link between unhelpful, entrenched patterns of thinking that lead to negative behaviors. Proponents of CBT work on the assumption that changing these thought patterns can alter the behavior. As Irvin D. Yalom acknowledges in The Gift of Therapy, CBT has been scientifically proven to be an effective technique for treating certain behaviors, such as anxiety disorders and substance use disorders. However, Yalom asserts that it cannot address deeper, existential issues that often arise in psychotherapy.

This acronym refers to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM-IV provides standardized criteria of mental health conditions, and it is used by healthcare professionals as an authoritative guide for diagnosing mental illnesses.

Yalom references this manual in his discussion about diagnosing patients. He says that while making a diagnosis can sometimes be useful, especially to identify brain-based disorders such as schizophrenia or to help patients access insurance, he argues that diagnoses can inadvertently encourage patients to over-identify with that label.