Inappropriate learning

Behaviourists argue that phobias develop as a result of inappropriate learning, primarily with children being subjected to various fears by their parents being role models. This type of learning can be very powerful and even unconscious. Small children are very receptive to emotional states in adults and respond very strongly if they see a parent react in a terrified manner at the sight of a spider or mouse. This can have a very deep impact on a child and can result deep-rooted phobias later in life. Role modelling was seen to be a very sensitive stage of development for children, and in most cases this was based on imitation rather than understanding (Bandura & Walters 1963)(Mead1934).

A further example of learned phobia was the experiment by Watson and Rayner (1920) with “Little Albert” which involved systematically terrifying the nine-month-old child by striking a steel bar every time he played with a white rat. Very quickly the child would show every sign of fear of the rat, crying and attempting to crawl away from the animal. To all intents and purposes, Albert had been trained into a full-scale phobia, which then went on to be generalised to similar objects, like a furry white rabbit.

How well do phobias and fears respond to hypnosis?

Anxiety disorders such as fears and phobias tend to respond well to hypnosis as the therapeutic medium. The ability to replace behaviours and provide post hypnotic suggestions enables clients to reduce phobias to an acceptable level of anxiety.

What options are available?

Of the previous five causes it is felt that the behaviourist approach of replacing the maladaptive learning with more appropriate learning is the most successful technique (Hayes 1998). This form of behaviour therapy is known as classical conditioning and consists of three main options – systematic desensitisation, implosion therapy, and the avoidance-inducing treatment of aversion therapy.

Systematic desensitisation

Joseph Wolpe, a South African psychologist, first designed this method of treatment in the late 1950’s. His theories are based on the idea that it is impossible for two opposite emotions to exist together at the same time e.g. anxiety and relaxation.

The treatment involves gradually acclimatising clients to a very weak form of their feared object, by using hypnosis. When they are able to relax in it’s presence, the stimulus is changed, so that they now have to learn to relax in the presence of a slightly stronger form of the fear. By slowly working their way up a list of feared situations and learning to relax with each one in turn, the patient becomes able to address their most feared situation without becoming terrified, although they may still experience some anxiety.

Jones, using a 3-year-old boy, Peter, who had fears of a white rat and a rabbit, used a form of this technique in 1924. While Peter was preoccupied with eating lunch the stimuli (the white rabbit and rat) were brought nearer to him over a period of time, the result being that Peter overcame his phobia through progressive habituation. The act of moving the rabbit nearer is the equivalent of moving to the next level in the hierarchy of the phobia.
By replacing the maladaptive learning with new thoughts and behaviours the client has achieved their goal.