The letters ABC may have a number of meanings in psychology and relateded fields:
In Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy(REBT) the ABC model is used for systematically analysing a clients problems into its cognitive components:
- A - the activating event
- B - the mediating evaluative beliefs
- C - the emotional and behavioral consequences
This is sometimes extended to ABCDE by the addition of
- D - disputing
- E - the effect of practising rational thinking
A similar idea lies behind the use of ABC in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). This time the letters stand for
- A - Antecedent leading up to the occurence of the problem behavior
- B - the problem behavior itself
- C - the consequences of performing the behavior
The letters ABC can also stand for ATP-binding cassette transporter genes, one of the largest families of genes