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...
Please login to view the full essay...