Cycle Categorisation Theory

Cycle Categorisation Theory (CCT) asserts that psychological disorders cannot be reduced to a single cause, but that they are the manifestation of a vicious cycle (or several vicious cycles). CCT aims to categorise psychological disorders based on the functionality, content, and structure of these cycles.

COMPONENTS

The above diagram represents a cycle, which may roughly correspond to what is currently known as a disorder. The cycle above consists of three components. Each component can be further split into several categories.

Negative Situation: Physical, Social, Relational.
Negative Experience of Situation: Thought, feeling, bodily sensation.
Regulation of Experience: Behavioural (Avoidance, Escape, Control), Cognitive (Avoidance, Escape, Control)

DIMENSIONS

Each component of a cycle may be measured dimensionally. For example, the negative situation may have been a social problem such as an embarrassing event. This event could then be measured on a scale from not at all embarrassing to very embarrassing by the clinician. The experience may be a specific experience, or it may be an overall measure of how negative the clients’ experiences are. The experience of the situation may also be rated in terms of how negative the experience was. Finally, the unproductive regulation of experiences may each be rated using self-report questionnaires to determine the extent to which each type of unproductive regulation strategy is being used.

COMORBIDITY

Comorbidity is not a problem for CCT as it does not make the assumption that psychological disorders are fixed, categorically distinct entities. In fact CCT assumes that cycles will often be comorbid, as many will have common components.