Relaxing Your Fears Away The Systematic Desensitation Treatment of Neuroses In 1961 Joseph Wolpe worked in treating phobia disorders using systematic desensitation which is the gradual decreasing of your anxiety level over something. Phobias which are irrational fears or reactions out of proportion with the reality of danger and can be divided into three main types. Simple phobias involve irrational fears of animals, specific situations such as small spaces and heights. Social phobias are irrational fears about interactions with others such as public speaking. Finally, agoraphobias which are the irrational fear of being in an unfamiliar, open or crowded place. Wolpe was not the first to suggest the use of systematic desensitation, but is credited for perfecting and applying it to treating anxiety disorders caused by phobias. Theoretical Propositions Earlier research by Wolpe and others discovered fear in animals could be reduced by a simple conditioning procedure. The example given is a rat becomes fearful of a realistic photo of a cat. Every time the rat is shown the photo
it is given food until the rat’s fear lessens and becomes nonexistent. The rats fear is inhibited by feeding, the fear and feeding can’t co-exist. The incompatibility of the two responses is called reciprocal inhibition. Wolpe argued human anxiety reactions are similar to animals and reciprocal inhibition could be used to treat human phycological disorders. Instead of feeding Wolpe uses deep relaxation as the anxiety inhibiting response. Method Wolpe used a three-tier treatment plan beginning with Relaxation Training. Relaxation training the first of several sessions dealt very little with the actual phobias. He recommended a form of muscle relaxation introduced by Edmund Jacobson (1938) where he would have his patients tense and release various muscle groups. This training would take the first 56 sessions. Construction of an Anxiety Hierarchy the next stage in Wolpes process would involve developing a list of anxiety producing situations in correlation with your phobia ranging lowest to highest anxiety producing event. Desinsitation is the
unlearning of a phobia by decreasing one’s sensitivity to it. Wolpe believed in eliminating a phobia through association the same way it was developed. He would have the patient go into the relaxed state, climb the anxiety hierarchy observing stress levels and repeating until there were no more symptoms.
Results Out of 39 cases there were 68 phobias, 62 of which were judged completely or partially successful. Critics of Wolpe’s claimed he was only treating the symptom and not the underlying causes. Wolpe responded by obtaining 25 of 35 who received successful desensititation from 6mo-4yr after treatment. Upon examination, there were no signs of relapse or new observable phobias.