Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition - Hardcover

Wolpe, Joseph

9780804705097: Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804705097 ISBN 13: 9780804705097

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1958

The quick and lasting results which Dr. Wolpe has obtained with the pioneer method of psychotherapy described in this book have begun to attract attention of psychiatrists and behavioral scientists everywhere. A new theory of psychotherapy is here presented: a serious alternative to the repression theory of psychoanalysis and one that is the direct product of modern learning theory. By applying known laws of learning to the special problems of neurosis, Dr. Wolpe has developed new techniques of therapy apparently much more effective than any previously reported. Methods ranging from traditional counseling to psychoanalysis all record much the same measure of success (about 50 per cent). The methods developed by Dr. Wolpe have resulted in a ratio of "apparently cured" and "much improved" patients that is consistently in the region of 90 per cent. According to Dr. Wolpe, several facts emerge from his work that support the hypothesis that reciprocal inhibition has a central role in human psychotherapy: in general, it is possible to overcome a habit by forming a new and antagonistic habit in the same stimulus situation; animal neuroses are overcome if feeding can be made to occur in the presence of anxiety-evoking stimuli; by deliberately opposing response antagonistic to anxiety responses, neurotic anxiety-response habits can be overcome, and more neurotic patients can be successfully treated, apparently, than by other methods; the success of other approaches to therapy is explicable on the reciprocal inhibition principle; "spontaneous" improvement of neuroses in the ordinary course of life is explicable on the reciprocal inhibition principle. In addition to the theoretical, experimental, and clinical material that forms the background to this approach, there is a detailed description of the techniques of therapy and a statistical analysis of 210 patients.

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