Behavior Therapy: Basic Concepts, Assessment Methods, and Applications.

In the text “Relaxing Your Fears away,” the author presents how Joseph Wolpe, a behavior therapist, used a behavioral technique called systematic desensitization to treat anxiety disorders. Systematic desensitization is a technique that is supposed to lower a person’s level of anxiety steadily. The reason he used this technique was to see if this technique actually worked using his prior ideas that two feelings or responses cannot occur at the same time. Wolpe focused on the phobias his patients had and proposed that when his patients were in a relaxed state, then they would not respond with fear when presented with something that gave them anxiety.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the inspired work of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck which emphasizes the need for attitudinal change to promote and maintain a behavior modification (Nichols, 2010 p. 167). Ellis believed, people contribute to their own psychological problems, as well as specific symptoms, by the rigid and extreme beliefs they hold about events and situations (Cory 2012, p. 291). CBT is based on an educational model with a scientifically supported assumption that most emotional and behavioral responses are learned. Therefore, the goal of therapy is to assist clients unlearn their unwanted behaviors and to learn new ways of behaving and thinking when he/she is faced with an

Behavior Modification, a psychological theory of human behavior. It evolved from the application of experimentally derived principles of learning to the modification of problem behaviors. The theory is based on a psychological model of human behavior that rejects the psychoanalytic or quasi-disease model of mental illness. Approaches to behavior modification assume that abnormal behavior is acquired and maintained in the same manner as normal behavior and can be changed directly through the application of social-learning principles. Assessment procedures focus on describing how an individual behaves, thinks, and feels in specific situations. Treatment methods are derived from the theories and findings of

The classical conditioning model was one of the first theories used to describe phobias. Many years ago, scientists observed that one could willingly elicit a fear response in an animal or human through systematic teaching. For example, if every time a rat is presented with a low buzzing noise, it is electrically shocked, eventually, when it hears the noise alone (with no shock), it will exhibit symptoms of fear. (3) Scientists

Fear, an intensive form of anxiety, can be crippling in nature to some people. It is important that we overcome our fears to be able to grow and mature. There are three main ways in which we can manage or resolve fear: behavioral therapy, systematic desensitization, and exposure desensitization. Behavioral therapy was introduced by John B. Watson, a behavioral psychologist, and involved an individual alternating engagements in coping and relaxation techniques to help desensitize that person to the stressors (Seaward, 2015). Systematic desensitization involves the anxious person learning to de-stress from the fear in small, piecemeal increments through which they always feel in control. Exposure desensitization, on the other hand, occurs when the individual is introduced to the real stressor is brief and save encounters with the stressor. Through combinations of the three different ways to

Desensitization is a predominant treatment that exceeds expectations to diminish the fear in a patient of a circumstance, by presenting them to it either in actuality or in one's imagination. In the first place, the patient should consider storms deliberately until the point when the contemplation isn't dreaded. Second, take a look at photographs of the storm until unfeared. Next, watch recordings of the storm until the point that the video is unfeared. Finally, the patient should play sounds from storms noisily for a considerable length of time until the point that the sounds are unfeared. Ensure you never proceed onward to the following stage unless you've effectively finished the past one. By finishing these means one ought to have the capacity

This paper will explore two alternative methods of behavioral therapies that do not involve PE and evaluate each treatment plan in terms of methodology and success rates.

One of the greatest appeals to behavior therapy is its efficacy in treating a wide array of disorders and its innovative applications outside of individual psychotherapy. In the past century, behavior therapy has made increasingly effective and creative therapies to treat patients with maladaptive behaviors which were previously, in some cases, untreatable. With such developments, patients were able to not only treat pathologies, but also improve functioning in a variety of aspects of their lives as well as the lives of those close to them. Amongst the most widely implemented treatments in behavior therapy are token economies, contingency contracts, and behavioral parent training. These therapies proved to be greatly useful when they were

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following witnessing or experiencing life-threatening events such as military combat and serious accidents. PTSDs are marked with clear biological changes and psychiatric symptoms and there is now increasing evidence that the persistence of this disorder may be related to the inability of patients to overcome the fearful experiences through a process called extinction. PTSD patients also likely develop other mental illnesses such as depression, drug abuse and problems with memory and cognition. Several studies have shown that deficits in fear extinction contribute to PTSD. The classical conditioning

In posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a prototypical anxiety disorder, the trauma can be considered an unconditioned stimulus, and the continued fear response in PTSD patients can be considered a conditioned response. PTSD has in fact been associated with enhanced acquisition and slower extinction of fear responses (1).

The key concepts of behavior therapy are that it “is grounded on a scientific view of human behavior that accommodates a systematic and structured approach to counseling” (Corey, 2013, p. 250). The attention is focused on the behavior of the person. Behavior therapy is about giving control to the client to expand their freedom. “People have the capacity to choose how they will respond to external events in their environment” (Corey, 2013, p. 250).

This experiment was designed in order to explore whether false memories generated by the fear conditioning technique could generate an observable active fear response through conditioned place-avoidance (CPA).

Exposure techniques allow for a controlled and systematic method of bringing Jakki into contact with feared events, dreams and people in her life. The therapist and Jakki will work together to develop a functional assessment, hierarchy of feared stimuli or events (from highly to mildly distressing), addressing each from high to low. Exposure needs to continue until Jakki’s stress level drops by at least half. By using exposure techniques, both vivo and in vivo, Jakki’s fear structure can be broken, emotional processing can occur, resulting in a new ability to cope and an increased tolerance of anxiety and uncertainty (Wenzel, 2013).

Ricciardi, Luiselli, and Camar studied contact desensitization (reinforcing approach responses) as intervention for specific phobia with a child diagnosed with autism. During hospital-based intervention, the boy was able to encounter previously avoided stimuli. Parental report suggested that findings were preserved post discharge. When determining which phobia treatment best suits a patient, many important factors must be considered. First, the root cause of the phobia must be recognised. If the patient does not find when or how the phobia initiated, cognitive-behavioral Exposure Therapy would be recommended as it has been shown to be the most successful, well investigated treatment. In some case like flying fear when phobia is difficult to meet with the therapist, then hypnosis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and virtual reality exposure therapy would be most suitable. If the client does tie to the phobia to a particular traumatic event, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) might be a more fit

Over the past 100 years, numerous experiments and studies were conducted to investigate classical conditioning, the most famous study being that of “Little Albert”, which resulted in the young boy in question being left with a strong fear towards anything which resembled a white rat. This study is a prime example of how classical conditioning can cause phobias to develop in individuals. In this essay I will investigate how Classical conditioning can cause an emotional response in an individual which manifests itself into a phobia and how researchers like Joseph Wolpe developed a technique known as systematic desensitization to help individuals overcome these phobias. Classical conditioning is a process where a neutral stimulus such as the bell in Pavlov’s study on the secretion of Saliva in dogs, is paired with an unconditioned