Main Components

• Main components

  1. Counterconditioning
  2. Desensitisation Hierarchy
  3. Different forms of SD
• Counterconditioning

  • The aim of SD is to acquire a new stimulus - response link, moving from a response with fear to relaxation. The client is taught a new association which runs counter to the original association (reciprocal inhibition)
• Desensitisation

  • A series of gradual steps that are determined at the beginning of therapy when the client + therapist work out a hierarchy of feared stimuli from least fearful to most fearful
  • It is put into 5 stages
• Desensitisation Hierarchy 5 stages:

  1. Patient taught how to relax muscles
  2. Therapist + patient create DH
  3. Patient works through hierarchy, visualising each event
  4. Once patient has mastered one step they move onto the next
  5. Patient masters the feared situation that caused them to seek help
• Different forms of SD

  • In the early days of SD clients would learn to confront their feared situations directly (vivo) by learning to relax in presence of objects or images that would arouse anxiety
  • Recently, instead of presenting the feared stimulus, the therpaist asks the subject to imagine the presence of it (vito)
  • Menzies + Clarke (1993) found actual contact with the feared stimulus is more successful