Making love in a Volkswagen can be an impossible feat, as a University of Pennsylvania student discovered not long ago. His failure led to a year of impotence that ended only recently when Temple University Psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe cured him in two sessions. Wolpe's treatment; a controversial method called behavior therapy.
The difference between behavior therapy and traditional Freudian psychoanalysis stems from the way each defines neurosis. To psychoanalysts, neurosis is the result of unconscious conflicts that influence behavior in complex, mysterious ways. But to behavior therapists, the unconscious does not matter: neurosis to them is a collection of bad habits that were learned much the way Pavlov's dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell. Believing that what has been learned can be unlearned, the behaviorists apply conditioning procedures developed in animal laboratories to break old habits and build new ones. Unlike psychoanalysis, which may go on for years, behavior therapy is often completed in fewer than 30 sessions—and it claims success in 85% of its cases.
Desensitization. The new method has no more than 100 practitioners, though the number is growing, and its advocates include such prominent psychologists as Harvard's B.F. Skinner and the University of London's H.J. Eysenck. Last month, as the principal developer of behavior therapy in the U.S., Joseph Wolpe conducted a training institute at Temple for 30 American, Canadian and Mexican therapists who wanted to learn his techniques.
Chief among these techniques is "systematic desensitization," the process a mother uses when she accustoms a baby to the ocean by dipping in one foot first, then a leg, then the infant's whole body. In that case, the delightful feel of the water gets the better of fright. Similarly in behavior therapy, Wolpe uses gradual methods of confronting neurotic behavior to overcome anxiety. The Pennsylvania student, for example, was told that his failure had conditioned him to fear sex, and he was advised to find an understanding girl who would be patient with him until he had conquered his fear by degrees. Approaching her sexually on successive days, he stopped each time he began to feel uneasy; soon the connection between sex and anxiety was broken, and the link between intercourse and pleasure restored. For Wolpe and his colleagues, sexual problems are generally the easiest to cure, because sexual desire is stronger than fear.