Gambling before CBT: • Freud - gamblers were trying to punish themselves for their unresolved oedipal urges and that this meant they were deliberately trying to lose • Bergler - "...the gambler is not a weak person who wants to gain money [easily] ...but a neurotic with an unconscious wish to lose" Cognitive-Behavioural Theories (CBT) of gambling: • A number CBT models have been described - e.g., Petry, 2005; Sylvain, et al., 1997; Toneatto, 2002 - no single unified approach has been tested and the efficacy of CT continues to be debated • Sharpe and Tarrier (1993)--CBT model - incorporating relaxation, exposure and cognitive restructuring - while cited frequently - reservations must exist lack of empiricism - generalisation to all gambling problems is limited