The Application of Psychodynamics to Behavior Therapy
JOHN M. RHOADS M.D.1, and
BEN W. FEATHER M.D., PH.D.2
1 Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. 27710
2 Professor of Psychiatry, Brown University, Providence, R.I.
The authors describe a modification of systematic desensitization that they developed which uses a psychodynamic formulation as the basis for treatment along behavioral lines. The technique, illustrated by the authors through case reports, involves efforts to relieve the patient's anxiety arising in connection with unacceptable impulses or with irrational prohibitions against these impulses.
