Summary of Behavior Study

Behavior Study

Biography

 Skinner(1904-1990) spent most of his professional life at Harvard. He has been described as the most influential psychologist of this century and he certainly set the stage for the development of behavior therapy. Wolpe(1915-) receive his medical degree in South Africa and, after studying Pavlov, rebelled against his psychoanalytic training and devoted his career to an empirical approach to psychotherapy. He is best known for devising systematic desensitization. Bandura(1925-) has taught psychology his entire career at Stanford University, where he has developed a broader perspective on behavior therapy by bringing in a social learning component.

Historical Development 

 The beginnings of behavior therapy cab be found at the crossroads of the rise of behaviorism as a philosophical view and empiricism as a growing method in psychology. With the advent of systematic desensitization in the 1950s, however, behavior therapy came into its own and grew quickly during the 1960s as an alternative to psycho dynamic approaches.

View of Human Nature 

 Behavior therapists view humans as products of their experience. people are neither good nor bad. But the behavior therapist does view humans as hedonistic in nature., responding to requests to end or decrease personal suffering or to promote greater pleasure and enjoyment in life. Behavior therapist have no model of optimal human functioning toward which clients are led.

Development of Maladaptive Behavior

 Psychopathology, from the behavior perspective, is defined as behavior that is disadvantageous or dangerous to the individual and / or to other people. It can result from insufficient cues to predict consequences or from inadequate reinforcement. One of the most painful of a maladaptive behaviors stems from an overly severe set of self-standards, and the resulting excess of self-criticism.

Goals of Therapy 

 The goal of behavior therapy is to extinguish the client identified maladaptive behavior and to introduce or strengthen adaptive behavior that can serve as a replacement and enable him or her to live a productive life. The key to reaching this goal is learning new behaviors. This relies on 3   paradigms that can stand alone but are often integrated in this approach respondent learning, operant conditioning, and social modeling.

Function of the Therapist 

 The behavior therapist is generally very active in counseling. He or she serves as a consultant, a supporter, a resource and model. Functionally, the behavior therapist facilitates a process involving four major  steps: accurately defining a problem, gathering a developmental history of client, establishing specific goals, and determining the best method for change.

Major Methods and Techniques 

 Because its tasks is to resolve client symptom there are literally dozens and dozens of behavior therapy techniques. Some of the most common methods include behavioral assessment, positive reinforcement, token economies, assertiveness training, modeling, relaxation training, systematic desensitization and flooding.

Application 

 Research has shown different forms of behavior therapy to be effective in treating anger, obsessive-compulsive disorders, phobias, depression, alcoholism, sexual dysfunctions, paraphilias, marital distress, and childhood disorders. It has been used successfully in a wide variety of settings. The case of "Mr. B" summarized  by Joseph Wolpe illustrates the effectiveness of systematic  desensitization and assertiveness training.

Critical Analysis

 Behavior therapy provides a relatively coherent conceptual framework of psychotherapy. It is committed to systematization, objectively, evaluation,and a solid research base. It privies clients with an understanding of the treatment process and also supplies the practitioner with a abundance of effective techniques.