David Crossley and Michael Göpfert

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) is a brief, collaborative therapy which integrates at a theoretical and pragmatic level psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches. The therapy developed both within and outside of the NHS to meet the psychotherapy demand of a very wide variety of people with minimum selectivity.

CAT is cognitive in the sense that it is problem focused and aims to describe accurately and explicitly the difficulties people face as a process involving links between their aims, beliefs, thoughts and actions. It is psychoanalytic in its emphasis on relationship and in its expectation that early relationships are likely to help explain current difficulties and influence the therapy. CAT therefore uses the conscious and unconscious aspects of the therapeutic relationship as a way of promoting change, as well as having recourse to a wide variety of techniques that cognitive behaviour therapists may use. CAT is not indiscriminate but works from a specific unified model of how emotional problems develop and are maintained. CAT was developed by Anthony Ryle in the UK in the late 1970s and 1980s. It now has a professional association (Association of Cognitive Analytic Therapist) with its own accreditation procedure and is part of the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapists.

Further information about this therapeutic approach written by the authors, can be found in "Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: The Essential Guide", edited by Professor Stephen Palmer and published by Sage, London.  Price £18.99.

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