Behavior Therapy Strengths

Behavior therapy has shown its strengths in various aspects. Firstly, behavior therapist consist large range of behavioral techniques at the disposal (Corey, 2013). For behavior therapist, they are subjected to wide variety of methods which could be used to tackle with different clients’ problems, and this also means that behavior therapists are able to help their clients efficiently and effectively. The characteristic of behavior therapy that stresses on “do”, which appose to merely discussing the issues and gaining insight has largely help to increase the efficiency of therapist. For an example, there are four major areas of development in the behavioral movements: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, social-cognitive theory, and

Generally, behavior therapy gives priority to what the client wants, but not what the therapists want. That therapist will not and should not interrupt the clients’ decision, because they only look at “here and now”. In other words, clients are given a good deal of control and freedom in deciding what the goals of therapy will be (Corey, 2013). Hence, in cases of voluntary counseling and therapist session, the behavioral practitioner only specifies “how” to change those behaviors the client targets for change (Corey, 2013). For example, a therapist who apply behavior therapy will try their best to help their clients in changing certain attitudes as the clients has mentioned only, such as fear towards snake, but not other problems that discovered by therapist themselves which are not mentioned by that client as to remain ethical

One of the weaknesses that could be identified is that it disregards the importance of feelings and emotions in the counseling process. For this aspect, we believed that if one’s feeling could not be identified and change to match with their new behaviors, that client will soon resume to the original behavior. Generally, behavior therapy lays their therapy based on the directly observable behavior. In another words, it implies that behavior therapy considered as action-based therapy, as most of the techniques used in this therapy are usually practical. For example, operant conditioning techniques stressed that in order to change or stop one’s behaviors, therapists should either give them reinforcement (positive/negative) or punishment (positive/negative). It is because people respond in predictable ways because of the gains experienced or of the need to avoid unpleasant consequences. However, according to Corey G. (2013), he mentioned that he actually agree that initially focusing on what clients are feeling and then working with the behavioral and cognitive dimensions. It is because that to him, it is a good point of departure when clients are feeling they are engaged. Hence, he can tie a discussion of what clients are feeling with how this is affecting their behavior and then later he can inquire about the