This paper presents a comparative analysis of two cognitive models of anxiety: Clark and Beck's (2010) reformulated cognitive model, as articulated in their 628-page treatise Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: Science and Practice, and the Misinterpretation Theory (Fejlfortolkningsteorien; Vinter, 2025), presented in Angstens Logik and Angstens Logik for Fagfolk. Both models identify catastrophic misinterpretation of bodily sensations as a core process in panic anxiety. However, they diverge fundamentally in their conclusions: Clark and Beck treat anxiety as a psychiatric disorder requiring treatment, while the Misinterpretation Theory treats it as a cognitive error that can be dissolved through understanding. The analysis reveals an internal contradiction in Clark and Beck's position: their own empirical data — drawn from hundreds of biological challenge experiments — demonstrate that the difference between panic patients and controls lies in interpretation, not physiology, yet they maintain a disease framework unsupported by biological evidence. The paper further presents a four-step logical argument — drawing on physiological symmetry, adrenaline's biological function, the ontological separation of vulnerability and interpretation, and the evolutionary emergence of irrational anxiety with language — that definitively closes the case against the disease classification. The analysis concludes that Clark and Beck's empirical findings support the Misinterpretation Theory's conclusion more robustly than their own.
Thomas Fogh Vinter (Mon,) studied this question.