A Comparative Study of Aversion Relief and Systematic Desensitization in the Treatment of Phobias

Abstract
Systematic desensitization is unquestionably the most popular of the behaviour therapies. To circumvent several difficulties specific to this technique we devized a new treatment paradigm—the reciprocal inhibition of anxiety by aversion relief (Solyom and Miller, 1967), from which 31 of 40 phobic patients (80 per cent) benefited (Solyom, Kenny and Ledwidge, 1969). The present paper reports on a systematic comparison of the two treatment techniques in terms of: (1) the rate and degree of improvement; (2) the specificity versus the generality of improvement; (3) prognostic indicators favouring one treatment over the other.

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