Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Goals of Therapy To eliminate maladaptive behaviors and learn more effective behaviors.
To identify factors that infl uence behavior and find out what can be
done about problematic behavior. To encourage clients to take an active
and collaborative role in clearly setting treatment goals and evaluating
how well these goals are being met.
Therapeutic Relationship The therapist is active and directive and functions as a teacher or mentor
in helping clients learn more effective behavior. Clients must be active in
the process and experiment with new behaviors. Although a quality
clienttherapist relationship is not viewed as suffi cient to bring about
change, it is considered essential for implementing behavioral
procedures.
Techniques of Therapy The main techniques are reinforcement, shaping, modeling, systematic
desensitization, relaxation methods, fl ooding, eye movement and
desensitization reprocessing, cognitive restructuring, assertion and social
skills training, self-management programs, mindfulness and acceptance
methods, behavioral rehearsal, coaching, and various multimodal therapy
techniques. Diagnosis or assessment is done at the outset to determine a
treatment plan. Questions concentrate on what, how, and when
(but not why). Contracts and homework assignments are also typically
used.
Limitation Major criticisms are that it may change behavior but not feelings; that it
ignores the relational factors in therapy; that it does not provide insight;
that it ignores historical causes of present behavior; that it involves
control by the therapist; and that it is limited in its capacity to address
certain aspects of the human condition.