Who he is
Donald Meichenbaum, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and Research Director of the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention in Miami, Florida.
Together with Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, he is recognised as one of the founders of cognitive behavioural therapy. He developed two of its foundational approaches: Self-Instructional Training and Stress Inoculation Training. In a survey of clinicians reported in the American Psychologist, he was voted one of the ten most influential psychotherapists of the twentieth century. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Clinical Division of the American Psychological Association and served as Honorary President of the Canadian Psychological Association.
His Stress Inoculation Training protocol is cited by both the American Psychological Association and the US Department of Veterans Affairs as an empirically validated treatment for PTSD.
PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus
A persistent critic of hype
Professor Meichenbaum has been one of the field's most consistent voices against exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims in psychotherapy. With the late Professor Scott Lilienfeld, he co-authored “How to Spot Hype in the Field of Psychotherapy: A 19-Item Checklist,” awarded best contribution to the field by the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy.
It was that stance — as much as his stature — that led Mark R. Davis to approach him in 2021.
His connection to the College
Professor Meichenbaum's relationship with the College began in 2021. Together, the College and Professor Meichenbaum have run workshops on treating PTSD and building resilience, produced his legacy course series The Essence of Psychotherapy, and built his personal website at donaldmeichenbaum.com.
His agreement to chair the Senior Advisory Board is the formal expression of a partnership that had already been developing for several years.
In his own words:
“What persuaded me is that the version of hypnosis this College teaches does not rest on those assumptions” — the assumptions about special states, recovered memories and miracle cures that have given hypnosis a bad name.
The intellectual connection
Professor Meichenbaum has long argued that we are not only Homo sapiens but Homo narrans — the storytelling animal. The stories we tell ourselves, the words we use, and the meaning we make are not mere commentary on experience. They shape it.
His work on self-instruction traces this through Vygotsky: we regulate ourselves through inner speech, through the things we say to ourselves in the moments that matter. Hypno-CBT® takes that insight further — the reason focused, purposeful, believed-in self-talk works is that it is a form of autosuggestion. The boundary between Meichenbaum's self-instruction and therapeutic suggestion is thinner than either field has traditionally been willing to admit.
Professor Meichenbaum describes Hypno-CBT® as “a transdiagnostic, process-based approach that takes seriously the factors the outcome research tells us matter most, including the cultivation of expectancy and hope.”
Publications and further reading
Professor Meichenbaum's recent and classic works include:
- Roadmap to Resilience — available free at roadmaptoresilience.wordpress.com
- The Evolution of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: A Personal and Professional Journey
- Treatment of Individuals with Addictive Disorders
- Stress Inoculation Training (classic)
- Cognitive Behavioural Modification: An Integrative Approach (classic)
A full list of his publications is available at his own website.