Relaxing Your Fears Away

By Adam Schultz

● Joseph Wolpe

● Systematic Desensitization

● Not the first to invent, but first to perfect

Who:

● Wolpe noticed that fear reactions could be reduced when conditioned with food

● Conditioning with fear did not work because feeding and fear were incompatible responses

● Reciprocal Inhibition- when two responses inhibit each other; only one may exist at a given moment.

Hypotheses:

With people, he used the two responses: ● Fear from phobias● Relaxation

● Treated 39 cases of 68 phobias

● Put subjects in deep relaxation through therapeutic training sessions and sometimes hypnosis

● “Desensitized” subjects by leading them through a step by step hierarchy of their fears, hoping to allow the subjects to confront and eradicate the phobias

Method:

● Out of 68 phobias treated, 62 reported either completely successful or partially successful in freedom from phobic reactions

● 9% that were considered unsuccessful were presumed to not be willing or able to imagine the situations presented in the hierarchy

● The average number of therapy sessions was 12.3

Results:

● Skepticism about how this method is a lot like Freud’s psychoanalytic approach to behavior

Critiques:

● College students with phobia of public speaking put in three categorieso Syst. Desen.o Insight Therapyo No Treatment

Subsequent Research:

● Based on findings, Wolpe’s method of systematic desensitization has been proven to be the most successful treatment of anxiety disorders to date.

Historical Significance: