Description of the Strategy

Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) is a psychological treatment that draws on the therapist-client relationship to provide powerful in-therapy learning opportunities. This treatment is derived from B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism, which accounts for our external actions, private feelings, and beliefs in terms of the types of past experiences that shape us. FAP produces change through the natural and curative contingencies of reinforcement that occur within a close, emotional, and involving therapist-client relationship.

Psychologists R. J. Kohlenberg and M. Tsai began to conceive of such a treatment after noticing that some of their clients treated with conventional cognitive and behavioral therapy techniques showed dramatic and pervasive improvements that far exceeded treatment goals. They noticed that these improvements occurred in those ...