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Raimy contends that “faulty beliefs or convictions, or, in our terminology, misconceptions,” are responsible for maladaptive behavior. “The misconception hypothesis holds that if relevant misconceptions can be modified or eliminated, improved adjustment results. Because this approach does not depend on any given set of therapeutic methods or techniques, it can be used with almost any therapeutic procedures” (p. ix).
The book presents “a rationale for psychotherapy based upon the misconception hypothesis” (p. x), followed by a discussion of four therapies which explicitly focus upon changing faulty self-concepts. Raimy then suggests how five other sets of approaches-including those developed by Freud-“contain valuable contributions to a cognitive approach to treatment and the misconception hypothesis.” A final chapter summarizes the major principles of Raimy's cognitive approach.
Raimy cannot be adversely criticized on the grounds that his cognitive psychotherapeutic techniques arrogate to the analyst an omnipotent' role in identifying and specifying the patient's misconceptions: case studies he includes shows how it is the patient himself, over time and with the use of such techniques as vicariaton, who comes to define his misconceptions and modify his behavior. But presumably those who use the concepts of repression and the unconscious would take exception to his contention that cognitions control emotions rather than more nearly the reverse, and would suggest that his therapeutic results are, more largely than he realizes, maturation made possible by release and the fruitful use of previously unavailable energy following the resolution of transference resistances.