Systematic Desensitization

Systematic desensitization is a behavior therapy developed by psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe in the 1950s for treating phobias and anxiety, based on the principle that a relaxed body cannot simultaneously sustain an anxious response. Treatment proceeds by building a hierarchy of feared situations from least to most frightening, teaching the patient relaxation techniques, and then pairing relaxation with exposure to each step of the hierarchy in turn. Wolpe reported the method successful in roughly ninety percent of the phobia cases he treated, though later behavior therapies such as flooding have partly displaced it in clinical practice.