The psychoanalyst listened as his patient described her sexual adventures. She struggled with anxiety. “The sexual desires of her id are unacceptable to her super-ego,” he thought.

He had undergone extensive training. All he had to do was to listen. As her subconscious desires flowed to the surface of her consciousness, she would feel better.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Anxious,” she replied.

“But you feel better, right?”

“No. I feel worse.”

He was puzzled. This was a tough one. He thought for a moment, then did something unheard of at the time. He asked her why. His collegues would have laughed in his face. Patients couldn’t possibly know why they were anxious. Anxiety, they preached, was a manifestation of conflicts hidden away deep inside them. It took a trained psychoanalyst™ to uncover these conflicts.

“I’m afraid that I’m boring you. I’m always afraid of boring people. That’s why I’m anxious.”

He then quizzed her about these thoughts, and realized that her anxiety came from her strange interpretations. If a friend hadn’t called her, she interpreted this as a sign that no one liked her. If he didn’t react with enthusiasm to her stories, she interpreted this as a sign that he thought she was boring.

He asked her whether she thought her interpretations made sense. She thought about for a minute, then said: “No.” He asked her to make alternative interpretations that were more rational. She did. And then something strange happened.

She felt better.

The psychoanalyst was amazed. He tried the same technique on other patients, and it worked. Excited, he gave a talk to the other psychoanalysts. He was sure they would be just as enthusiastic as himself.

They weren’t. In fact, they were pissed. So pissed, that they said he was no longer a psychoanalyst.

If not a psychoanalyst, who was he?

He was Aaron Beck, one of the founders of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT is now the most effective treatment of anxiety in the world. How does it work?