Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition: Joseph Wolpe

Extract

I first came across this particular book during my training at Boston City Hospital in 1970. It was by that time 12 years old. Skinnerian operant conditioning was the rage in the psychological and psychiatric circles; reciprocal inhibition seemed at the time to be considered passe. The psychoanalysts had already discounted any suggestion that the only effect of insight-oriented therapy was to provide a therapeutic setting in which reciprocal inhibition took place. Behaviour therapists were busy working out complex positive and negative reinforcement schedules for illnesses as diverse as schizophrenia and alcoholism. Dr Laing put in an appearance in Boston at that particular time, extolling the virtues of the existential benefits of madness. But, I imagine that in its day, this book was highly controversial, since it challenges the central premise of psychoanalysis-that the essence of psychotherapy is uncovering and expression of the repressed.