Classical Conditioning Essay

This essay hopes to shed light on the development of phobias with emphasis on classical conditioning principles. This essay will also describe how systematic desensitisation as an exposure therapy can be used to overcome fears and phobias. Phobias in their most basic forms are the results of a traumatic experience or a learned conditioned reaction from key figures in a person's formative years. Classical Conditioning is crucial when discussing phobias as it shows us why a person may react to a contextually unrelated or related object. At its simplest, Classical Conditioning is "A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events", it allows us to map out a person's responses and thus form links between

Exposure Therapy is the act of introducing the fear to the patients of the therapy, minimally at first but gradually increasing the proximity to the fear. A pioneer in the early twentieth century for Exposure Therapy is behavioural psychologist is Mary Cover Jones. In 1924, Jones used a three year old boy named Peter ( who had a fear of rabbits and furry objects ) to associate the phobia of rabbits with the relaxed conditioned response of eating. Whilst Peter sat in a room eating, Jones introduced a caged rabbit which Peter barely noticed or reacted to. Over the course of two months, Jones brought the rabbit closer and closer until Peter had broken the phobia and was even able to hold the rabbit whilst eating thus proving Exposure Therapy as a successful method in breaking a phobia. As an indirect result, Peter also overcame his fear of furry objects. Although Jones proved successful in this technique, the Psychological world did not embrace the technique until the 1950's where Joseph Wolpe ( 1958; Wolpe and Plaud, 1997 ) refined her techniques into what we know today as Exposure Therapy. The most used Exposure Therapy is Systematic Desensitisation. Because you cannot be both anxious and relaxed simultaneously ( Jones 1924) , you present the phobia in stages so the patient can become accustomed to the situation and try to achieve a state of relaxation while confronting the fear . Gradually the patient goes