Peter, 3, is terrified of rabbits and other furry objects. Mary Cover Jones gives him the following treatment: she tries to replace the fear of rabbits with a conditioned response incompatible with said fear; When you put it into practice, what you do is associate the rabbit (which produces fear) with a relaxed and pleasant response associated with eating. While Peter eats her snack, she introduces a caged rabbit to one end of the room, the boy enjoys his food and barely notices. As the days go by, Jones brings the rabbit closer and closer. After two weeks, Peter tolerates having the rabbit on his lap and petting it, and his fear of other furry objects has disappeared.
Thirty years later, psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe popularized and perfected Jones’ technique, turning it into the most widely used behavioral therapy method: exposure therapy.
Another technique that is also used is systematic desensitization. Wolpe assumed the same thing as Jones, that is, that one cannot be relaxed and anxious at the same time, therefore, if one manages to relax several times when faced with the stimulus that causes anxiety, it will decrease little by little. The key is to do it gradually.
In other words, systematic desensitization is a type of counterconditioning that associates a pleasantly relaxed state with increasingly anxiety-producing stimuli.
Let’s look at an example of how a common phobia would be treated with this method:
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Juan is afraid of speaking in public. Your therapist asks you to help him build a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations related to speaking in front of other people (such as speaking to a group of friends) or situations that cause him terror (such as addressing a large audience). Then, using the method, the therapist brings you to a state of drowsiness and relaxation. He then asks him, with his eyes closed, to imagine a situation that causes him little anxiety. If imagining said situation causes him anxiety, Juan tells the therapist and he will help him disconnect from that situation and return to a state of relaxation. The scene The imagined image is repeatedly associated with relaxation until the anxiety disappears.
Essentially, the therapist gradually makes Juan associate what he imagined with the feeling of relaxation. After several sessions, the patient will be able to practice the imagined behaviors in real situations, starting with tasks that are relatively easy for Juan, until reaching the situations that cause the most anxiety.
Fountain: Myers, D. (2006), Psychology 7th edition. Panamericana Medical Editorial:Madrid