Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: A Transformative Approach to Negative Appraisals of Religious Origin

This paper discusses ways of transforming personal appraisals of religious origin through the use of cognitive behavioural therapeuticapproaches. In the introduction, an account is presented of the theoretical background of cognitive behavioural therapy together with the mainaspects underlining it, such as: how an event can induce irrational thinking in one’s reasoning, how irrational thinking can affect physical andemotional sensations and what follows, in terms of behaviours, after one has been emotionally influenced by irrational thinking. Appraisals ofreligious origin are presented and discussed in the main part of this chapter, followed by cognitive behavioural explanations which explorehow these can be transformed from negative to positive ones. Before completing the main part of the chapter, a new topic is discussed, titledCognitive Behavioural Psychology of Religion and ways of its contributing to new theoretical and empirical approaches for both psychologyand religion. Finally, a summary of the main points of what has been discussed concludes the paper.