This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

By Joseph Wolpe, MD, and Arnold Lazarus, PhD. Price, $2.75. Pp 198. Pergamon Press, 44-01 21st St, Long Island, New York 11101, 1966.

Charles M. Stewart, MD, Reviewer

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1967;16(2):253-254.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The authors have put forth this book as a primer of behavior therapy techniques for dealing with the neuroses. They chose to report on phobias, sexual inadequacies, and inhibitions, as well as lesser problems. However, they make claims for more general efficacy in dealing with all neurotic problems. They view neuroses as learned, unadaptive reaction habits which are accompanied by anxiety, and as such are remediable by techniques derived from classical learning theory, including such things as counterconditioning and positive reconditioning.

Through counterconditioning the arousal of anxiety by a stimulus is inhibited by the evocation of a "competing response," such as muscle relaxation, an example of the "reciprocal inhibition principle" (which is not discussed or elaborated in the book). Assertive actions and sexual arousal can also inhibit anxiety responses. Positive reconditioning operates by rewarding adaptive behavior and by not rewarding unadaptive . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?