One Psychological Therapy for Phobic Disorders is Systematic Desensitisation (SD). Wolpe (1958) developed SD where you come up with a hierarchy of fear (levels of acceptable exposure) and are gradually exposed to your phobia in accordance to these levels. Before being exposed to your phobia relaxation techniques are learnt to be used during exposure. SD aims to replace fear response with calm andrelaxation.
Systematic Desensitisation is good because it is relatively quick compared to other psychological and biological therapies and there are no side effects that come with it. It can also be self-administered meaning it can cost very little money. However if a therapist is used it can end up being quite expensive.
Research into SD was done by Masserman (1943) who conditioned a fear reponse to a box in cats by electric shocking them in the box. He then tried to reduce this fear by feeding them in this box and found that he could reduce it by forming new associations with the box. This would have supported SD as a therapy for Phobic Disorders as it shows that fear of something can be replaced, in the case of SD it would be with relaxation. However subsequent research found that this is not so much the case in humans as it is in cats as fear is not as simple as a conditioned association in humans and expectations contribute less to fear in cats than in humans. Therefore we cannot generalise the findings of Masserman’sstudy to humans as it has been shown we have a different psychological makeup regarding fear.
A study which supported SD was carried out by Jones (1924) who tried to cure a 3 year old boy, Little Peter, of his fear of white rabbits. She did this by moving a white rabbit closer and closer to him as he ate each day. Through this his fear of white rabbits gradually went away. This supports SD as a therapy for Phobic Disorders as increased exposure of the Phobia eventually cured it.
Another supporting study of SD was conducted byCapafons (1998) where he used SD treatment on 21 patients from a volunteer sample to try to cure them of aerophobia. They reported levels of fear during the 12-15 week period of two hour sessions a week by a self-report method. He found that by the end all but two patients reported lower fear levels. This supports SD as a therapy for Phobic Disorders as 90% of participants reported less fear after receiving SD.
However Capafons’s study did use a self-report method which reduces the validity as participants could have given answers they thought Capafons wanted to hear rather than truthful ones. This needs to be taken into account when using the results from Capafons study so that conclusions are not built on only invalid evidence. To stop this lots of studies should be looked at together and their result collated when looking into whether SD is an effective therapy for Phobic Disorders.
Another Psychological Theory for Phobic Disorders is Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT). REBT was developed by Ellis (1950’s) and aims to replace irrational thought patterns with rational ones. It says that the Phobia itself is not the problem but the irrational thoughts that develop and are associated with the phobia. He developed an ABC model to help identify these irrational thoughts:
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A – Activating Event (eg. A friend ignores you in the street)
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B – Irrational Beliefs (eg. You think he has decided he doesn’t like you and that no one else will and that you are worthless)
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C – Consequences (eg. You avoid social situations in the future)
It was also said that the acting events that cause unproductive consequences, but the beliefs that lead to the self-defeating consequences. Because of this REBT focuses on challenging or disputing these beliefs and replacing them with effective rational beliefs instead such as; Logical disputing (self-defeating thoughts do not flow logically from the information available), Empirical disputing (Self-defeating thoughts may not be consistent with reality), and Pragmatic disputing (Emphasise the lack of usefulness of self-defeating beliefs).
The National Institute of Clinical Excellence claimed that REBT should be the first line of defence for treating phobic disorders and Ellis claimed it had a 90% success rate however it require a lot of time and commitment from the patient as it is a weekly session and takes on average 27 sessions to cure a phobia therefore making it quite expensive.
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