The unconscious mind can be seen as the source of night dreams and automatic thoughts (those that appear without apparent cause).

A cognitive therapist directs a patient's attention to "automatic" thoughts, the things people say to themselves, that result in unpleasant feelings.

"When you look up at that clock with a minute to go, there's a natural, automatic thought that comes into your head," Worthy said.

Limited time spent reflecting on automatic thoughts would lead patients to treat them as valid.

Beck (1997) discovered that frequent negative automatic thoughts reveal a persons core beliefs.

With cognitive therapy, a person learns to recognize and correct negative automatic thoughts.

These negative thoughts are sometimes called irrational or automatic thoughts.

His first, almost automatic thought was pure reaction to his childhood teachings.

For example, a depressed person might have automatic thoughts like these:

Beck says automatic thoughts "may have a grain of truth.