An Explanation And Evaluation Of The Behaviorists Approach To Psychotherapy

An explanation and evaluation the Behaviorist approach to Psychotherapy.

In this essay I shall explain what the behaviorist approach is. In order to do this I shall be examining the historical perspective of behaviourism.

I shall need to evaluate the behaviourist approach and it's effectiveness in the treatment of the whole person and shall briefly compare it to some of the other approaches to treatment.

The fundamental approach of behaviourism and psychoanalytical therapy seems diametrically opposed and it will be interesting to see how some therapists are able to incorporate both of these approaches into their treatment techniques.

Behaviourism is defined in the Collin's Dictionary as" the guiding principle of certain psychologists who hold that the proper basis of psychological science is the objective study of behaviour under stimuli".

What does this mean? We shall come back to this statement.

Psychotherapy is defined in the Collin's Dictionary as "The treatment of disease by psychological means". The definition of psychotherapeautic is even more interesting " The treatment of disease by psychological means. The treatment of disease by psychological or hypnotic means".

It is interesting that here we come to a definition of treatment using hypnosis. This essay is being written with hypnosis and hypnotherapy in mind as the main tool to use treatment approaches in therapy.

In fact modern psychotherapy often doesn't use hypnosis at all.

I feel a more rational definition to behaviourism to be " Techniques to change behaviour; without evaluating/using any analysis of how the problem arrived, why it might be there - and what might be behind it; without any need to understand or delve at the source of the difficulty."

It might be fairer to describe behaviourism as "1.The evaluation of the individual in his environment in order to determine what factors around him are responsible for his problem, and 2. manipulation of the environment or the individual in order to ameliorate the difficulty."

Pavlov was the first person who is noted as examining behaviour. He was a Russian physiologist who is noted as the father of 'Classical conditioning'. Outlining the Stimulus and response connection, teaching us about an unconditioned stimulus, paired with a conditioned stimulus resulting in a conditioned response. He initially worked with dogs as his subjects. He also taught us about 'extinction , when the conditioned response decreases, and 'spontaneous recovery' when it returns later.

Classical conditioning can also be generalised, similar stimuli, creating similar responses. The ability to distinguish the two he called 'discrimination'.

Pavlov was also able to create a neurotic dog. This illustrates discrimination. When the two stimuli he wanted the dogs to respond to were too similar the dog became neurotic as it couldn't distinguish between the two. It tried desperately to free itself from it's harness, it whined, growled, barked frantically and lost control of it's bowels. It had become emotionally unstable.

J.B.Watson was the first theorist in the 1900's to advance the behaviourist approach and said "give me a dozen healthy infants - well formed - and my own specific world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any specialist he might select." Watson showed the strength of classical conditioning, by conditioning Little Albert to be afraid of a white rat. He did this by making loud noises every time the child saw the rat, In fact the conditioning was so strong that he then generalised his fear to all furry, white objects.

Skinner took conditioning many steps further by outlining the process he called operant conditioning. B.F. Skinner demonstrated how learning takes place and once proposed that all learning (i.e. all psychology) could be explained by the acquisition of learning by operant conditioning. More recently it is considered as being one of the many ways in which behaviour may be altered.

Operant conditioning is concerned with the reinforcement of behaviours that are already occurring spontaneously. These behaviours are referred by Skinner as Operants. Many operants may be involved in a piece of complex behaviour, and they may be selectively reinforced towards that behaviour in a process called Shaping.

To demonstrate operant conditioning in the laboratory, a rat is placed in a box, called a 'Skinner box'. Because the rat has been previously deprived of food, it is assumed that the rat will be ' motivated' to look for food.

So operant conditioning refers to increasing the probability of a response in a particular stimulus environment by following the response with reinforcement.

Behaviour therapy and modification have taught us that the principles from learning theory can be introduced to modify undesirable behaviour. Using first rats and then pigeons, Skinner did the groundwork for behaviour therapists to begin applying these ideas to humans.

Learning theory, unlike Piagetian or Freudian theory, concentrates on overt behaviour ( that which is easily seen) rather than what goes on within the mind.

In this theory the power of the environment and experiences are stressed and the role of biological maturation is minimised. It views the child as a malleable creature who wants more pleasure than pain and will do things that will gain rewards and steer away from actions which are punished. Learning looked at in this way is simply "the process by which behaviour is modified as a result of experience".

Theorists propose two fundamental mechanisms for behaviour change. 1. forming associations through conditioning. 2. by the observations of models ,i.e. parents, friends, authority figures etc.

Behaviour therapy is, therefore, an attempt to ensure that the desired behaviour is immediately and appropriately rewarded, (Contiguous), and that undesired behaviour is not rewarded. For example if a child throws things around in the room and screams and shouts, he is rewarded during periods when he is sitting quietly and not rewarded/punished when he is being destructive.

For people, rewards can be many things. They be material rewards such as food, sweets, cigarettes, money or toys, or ; they may be social, for example praise or attention. Anything which is rewarding can be used as long as it is used immediately following the desired behaviour. In some cases as in hospitals for the mentally handicapped or psychiatrically ill, tokens are used which

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