fred

About Frederick Aardema

Frederick Aardema, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and professor at the University of Montreal. As co-creator of Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT), he has helped redefine how OCD is understood and treated. He is the author of The Doubt Illusion and the Resolving OCD series, which have helped readers worldwide find lasting clarity and freedom from obsessional doubt.
14 02, 2026

Clarifying Measurement and Construct-Level Inference in Myers and Abramowitz’s Review of the Inference-Based Approach

By |2026-02-14T18:28:14+00:00February 14th, 2026|critique, Inference-based approach, Inferential Confusion|0 Comments

Note to readers:A condensed, peer-reviewed version of this article has been published in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders. That shorter version underwent independent peer review and is limited to 1,000 words in accordance with journal requirements. For those who prefer the concise, peer-reviewed version, a downloadable preprint is available here: [Link to published [...]

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15 01, 2026

OCD and Coconuts

By |2026-01-16T14:49:13+00:00January 15th, 2026|Imagination, Inverse Reasoning, Overestimating Threat, Uncertainty|1 Comment

How my brain turned a tropical snack into an existential threat My mind sometimes has trouble shutting down. So naturally, one afternoon, it latched onto coconuts. This happened in the Caribbean, where coconuts are everywhere, lounging under palm trees like they pay rent. Back home in Montreal, my usual habitat, coconuts are exotic celebrities you [...]

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27 12, 2025

Revisiting “Ten Commandments for the Scrupulous” through the Lens of Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

By |2025-12-27T16:30:46+00:00December 27th, 2025|Religion, Scrupulosity, Values|Comments Off on Revisiting “Ten Commandments for the Scrupulous” through the Lens of Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

This post republishes a previously published article, “Revisiting Ten Commandments for the Scrupulous through the Lens of Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT),” co-authored by Frederick Aardema, Ph.D., Constance Salhany, Ph.D., and Fr. Thomas M. Santa, C.Ss.R. Fr. Santa’s Ten Commandments for the Scrupulous has long offered practical pastoral guidance for people tormented by scrupulosity. In [...]

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7 12, 2025

Dead Dodos and Better Outcomes: Why Different People Need Different Treatments

By |2025-12-15T19:11:49+00:00December 7th, 2025|Bias, ERP, Mechanism of Change, Research, Treatment matching, Treatment outcome, Treatment Trials|Comments Off on Dead Dodos and Better Outcomes: Why Different People Need Different Treatments

For decades, exposure and response prevention (ERP) has been described as the “gold standard” for OCD. Yet the field of psychotherapy has a long history of declaring winners too early. Budd and Hughes (2009) reminded the field that psychotherapy research faces an inherent difficulty: treatments are rarely isolated enough to determine whether one approach [...]

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2 12, 2025

The Myth of Inner Parts in OCD

By |2026-03-01T18:32:43+00:00December 2nd, 2025|IFS, Metaphors, Myths, Self|3 Comments

IFS’s Growing Popularity and Why It Falls Short for OCD Internal Family Systems (IFS) has swept through psychotherapy over the past decade. Its language of protectors, exiles, firefighters, and inner families gives people a cast of internal characters to identify with. It is imaginative. It is intuitive. It gives emotional life a narrative shape. And [...]

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14 11, 2025

The Magic of ICBT: Seeing Through OCD’s Illusion

By |2025-12-27T16:26:26+00:00November 14th, 2025|Illusion, Magic|Comments Off on The Magic of ICBT: Seeing Through OCD’s Illusion

Illusion has always offered one of the clearest metaphors for understanding obsessional doubt. Not the trivial kind, rabbits in hats or cards up sleeves, but the deeper magic of psychological illusion: the kind that reshapes perception, redirects attention, and persuades an audience to believe in a reality that is not there. From its earliest ideas, [...]

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9 11, 2025

Is I-CBT Just Exposure by Another Name? Why It’s Not, and Why That Matters

By |2025-12-15T19:04:49+00:00November 9th, 2025|ERP, Exposure, Reality Sensing|1 Comment

Every so often, a question appears that seems straightforward but reveals a deeper misunderstanding: “If Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) helps people face situations they’ve been avoiding, isn’t that just exposure with a different name?” The exposure therapy in question is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), the long-standing behavioral standard for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder [...]

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