Education

1. Behavior Therapy

2. View of Human Nature
 People have the capacity to actually make
changes in their environment
 Increasing people’s freedom and skills allows
them to have more options for responding to the
environment
 Change occurs by taking actions rather than only
reflecting on the problems
 People need to take responsibility for their own
behavior

3. Therapeutic Goals
 Focus on what the client wants to do
 Help clients accept responsibility for change
 Discuss advantages and disadvantages of the goals
 Reduce maladaptive behaviors and learn more
adaptive behaviors
 Client and therapist collaboratively decide on
concrete, measurable, and objective treatment goals

4. Therapist’s function and Role
 Be active and directive
 Serve as an consultant, problem solver, or educator
 Conduct a thorough functional assessment
 formulate initial treatment goals, use strategies for
behavior change, evaluate the success of the change,
and conduct a follow-up assessment
 Serve as a role model for the client
 Focus on current problems

5. Client’s Experience in Therapy
 To be taught concrete skills
 To be motivated to change
 To expand their adaptive behaviors
 To implement new behaviors

6. Therapeutic Relationship
 Therapeutic relationship still can contribute
significantly to the process of behavior change
 The client’s positive expectations for change
contribute to successful outcomes
 Common factors (warm, empathy, or acceptance)
are necessary but not sufficient for behavior
change to occur.
 The progress is due to specific behavioral
techniques instead of therapeutic relationship

7. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
Operant conditioning techniques
 Positive reinforcement
 A child gets a good grade and is praised by teachers.
 Negative reinforcement
 Escape from aversive (unpleasant) stimuli
 Extinction
 Withholding reinforcement from a previously
reinforced response
 Positive punishment
 Spanking a child for misbehavior
 Negative punishment
 Taking TV time away from a child for misbehavior

8. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
 Progressive Relaxation
 Tense and relax muscle including face, neck,
shoulders, chest, stomach, arms, and legs
 Systematic Desensitization – Joseph Wolpe (1958)
 1st step: Learn relaxation
 2nd step: Make a list of anxiety hierarchies
 3rd step: Imagine anxiety-evoking situation
while being relaxed

9. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
 Modeling
 Observe another person’s behavior and make
use of that observation
 Live modeling
 Symbolic modeling
 Assertion Training
 People have the right to express themselves
 Identify irrational beliefs
 Practice assertive behaviors

10. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
 In Vivo therapies
 Approach the actual fear-inducing situation or
event gradually or directly
 Imaginal Flooding therapies
 Expose to the mental image of a frightening or
anxiety-producing object or event
 Experience the image of the event until the
anxiety gradually reduces

11. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
 Self-management strategies
 Self-monitoring, self-reward, or self-
instruction
 Three phases integrating behavioral techniques
with contemporary psychodynamic approach
 Assessment and relationship-building
 Insight—understand how early relational patterns are
related to present difficulties
 Behavioral techniques

12. Research on Behavior Therapy
 In general, studies indicated that more improvement for
behavioral therapy or CBT than for psychodynamic,
client-centered, or control group.
 Behavioral treatments are more effective than non-
behavioral treatments regardless of the type of problem,
client age, or therapist experiences.
 A considerable research has been conducted behavioral
therapy treatment of depression, anxiety, OCD, phobias,
alcoholism, sexual dysfunction, panic attack, or other
disorder.

13. Summary and Evaluation
 Contributions
 Use Empirical-Validated Treatment
 In general, behavior therapy is more effective than no
treatment
 Limitations
 Change behavior, but not feelings
 Ignore relational factors
 Ignore insight
 Treat symptoms rather than causes
 Control and manipulation by the therapist