There are many different ways to treat psychological disorders. The two main types of therapies are insight therapy and behavior therapy (behavior modification). Insight therapists rely on trying to change the way people think and feel. Behavior therapists seek to understand how unwanted behaviors might have been learned and, even more important, how they can be eliminated and replaced by more effective patterns (Geller & Dula, 2015). Behavior therapy is the most compelling to me. Under behavior treatments, there are therapies based on operant conditioning, observational learning, and classical conditioning. Out of those three therapies, I believe that the most effective one is classical conditioning therapy. In my opinion, I feel as if it
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The reason why it wasn’t mainstream was because of the Freudian idea that every symptom has an underlying, unconscious cause that must be discovered and eradicated (Geller & Dula, 2015). There was also a fear of symptom substitution, which is the idea that by eliminating one symptom, another, which could be much worse, could take its place. Symptom substitution was challenged by psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe with systematic desensitization. Systematic desensitization is a technique in which anxiety is extinguished by exposing the patient to an anxiety-provoking stimulus. Even though behavior therapy is successful, classical conditioning therapies have a lot less downfalls than operant conditioning therapies, specifically with contingency …show more content…
Geller and Dula (2015) claim that in operant conditioning, behavior changes because of consequences, such as rewards and punishments. The problem with that is that rewarding good behavior can lead to overjustification. The situation that Geller & Dula (2015) used to explain contingency management was with a four year old child named Tyler. Tyler has fits when his parents don’t buy him candy at the grocery store. The solution to resolve this problem is to “catch Tyler being good”(Geller & Dula, 2015, p.363) and give him a lot of attention. This will lead to the child thinking that every time he is good, he will receive a reward (being given a lot of attention). The child might then act up if he is not given a lot of attention for his good
The reason why it wasn’t mainstream was because of the Freudian idea that every symptom has an underlying, unconscious cause that must be discovered and eradicated (Geller & Dula, 2015). There was also a fear of symptom substitution, which is the idea that by eliminating one symptom, another, which could be much worse, could take its place. Symptom substitution was challenged by psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe with systematic desensitization. Systematic desensitization is a technique in which anxiety is extinguished by exposing the patient to an anxiety-provoking stimulus. Even though behavior therapy is successful, classical conditioning therapies have a lot less downfalls than operant conditioning therapies, specifically with contingency …show more content…
Geller and Dula (2015) claim that in operant conditioning, behavior changes because of consequences, such as rewards and punishments. The problem with that is that rewarding good behavior can lead to overjustification. The situation that Geller & Dula (2015) used to explain contingency management was with a four year old child named Tyler. Tyler has fits when his parents don’t buy him candy at the grocery store. The solution to resolve this problem is to “catch Tyler being good”(Geller & Dula, 2015, p.363) and give him a lot of attention. This will lead to the child thinking that every time he is good, he will receive a reward (being given a lot of attention). The child might then act up if he is not given a lot of attention for his good