Psychotherapy of phobias.

Abstract

This review seeks to identify the common elements in all forms of psychotherapy with phobic disorders. The behavior patterns characteristic of phobics are exaggerated dependency, which they perceive as incompatible with selfreliance; and exaggerated avoidance of difficult, fear-evoking situations. These patterns are learned as the person adapts to the expectations of overprotective parents. Most therapists partially reciprocate the phobic's demands for protection and guidance, and subsequently use the influence conferred by this relationship as leverage to urge the patient toward a direct confrontation with the phobic stimuli. By being neither overprotective nor harsh, the therapist stands in sharp contrast to others in the phobic's life, and thus provides a new interpersonal learning experience that moves the patient toward self-reliance.

A Factor Analytic Investigation of Children's Nighttime Fear and Coping Responses

“…Andrews (1966), in a review of phobias and fears in adults, amassed much anecdotal clinical evidence that individuals with fears and phobias are almost always characterized as dependent, nonassertive, and immature and often provoke care and protection from significant others. This has been especially noted in school fears (Kennedy, 1965;Poznanski, 1973) but also seems to receive considerable anecdotal observation in other children's fears (e.g., Jones, 1924;Lazarus & Abramowitz, 1962).…”

The butterfly and the serpent: Culture, psychopathology and biomedicine

“…Symonds (1971) suggests agoraphobia is an alternative to overt marital conflict and "refusal to go out can draw attention to oneself, it can be used to control or punish others, it can protect from the dangers involved in living an independent social life, from having a social life, from having ... to face the possibility of failure" (Hudson 1974). The agoraphobic woman conforms even more to the stereotypic publicly extruded role, but she gains a strategy, which, without open defiance of the husband (Andrews 1966), requires him to make sacrifices and gives her a veto over proposed joint activities (Buglass et al 1977). The very nature of a woman's household responsibility makes her illness the most potentially disturbing of all to family equilibrium, and agoraphobia is thus a particularly adaptive strategy (Parsons and Fox 1952;Lazarus 1972).…”

Freud and Modern Psychology

“…In a most instructive review of the common features of all major psychotherapeutic approaches, Andrews (1966) points out that in their case accounts, behavior therapists describe their phobic patients in much the same human emotional terms as do dynamic theorists. For example, Mary Cover Jones (1960), describing the case of Peter (the behaviorists' equivalent of Little Hans), focused specifically on the issue of Peter's emotional separation from his mother.…”