Behavioral Therapy

Wave 1: Behavioral Therapy

Based on John B. Watson's behaviorist principle that psychology should only research overt behavior, behavioral therapy originated in three different and independent locations, guided by Joseph Wolpe in South Africa, Hans Eysenck in the United Kingdom, and Skinner in the United States. Mainly following the principles of classical conditioning and operant learning, these pioneers approached maladaptive behavior as a reaction to a specific context (so-called stimulus-response [S-R] chains) in which this reaction should be replaced by more adaptive behavior. They deliberately objected to taking into account the non-observable inner world of the client and thus opposed difficult-to-investigate classic psychoanalytic claims that maladaptive behavior stems from unconscious processes.

Behavior therapists abstract a thorough so-called functional analysis from the clients' description of their maladaptive behavior and the contexts in which they demonstrate this behavior. This functional analysis contains the relevant context-related stimuli, the behaviors, and the consequences of these behaviors and leads therapists to understand the forces that influence the provoking/eliciting or continuation of maladaptive behavior. Several techniques have been proposed that can be adopted to change the maladaptive behavior. Therapists can teach clients to [Page 106]avoid exposing themselves to the stimuli that elicit maladaptive behavior (e.g., teach smokers to avoid places where many people smoke). Therapists can suggest that clients adopt more adaptive behaviors in certain contexts (e.g., teach smokers to chew gum in a smoking provoking context). Therapists can influence clients to institute consequences (e.g., if smokers smoke, they might punish themselves, or if they avoid smoking, they might reward themselves). In spite of the apparent effectiveness of these approaches in the treatment of, for example, fear-related behavior problems, obesity, and addictionrelated problems, this classic behaviorist approach has been criticized, as it appears difficult to sustain the view that thoughts and cognitions have no influence on maladaptive behavior. Furthermore, behavioral therapy has been criticized for not finding a good strategy for treating, for example, depression-related pathology.

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