Psychologist: Joseph Wolpe (Term Paper Sample)

Psychologist: Joseph Wolpe
Introduction
Joseph Wolpe was a psychologist who was born on 20th April 1915. He was a psychologist in behavioral therapy whereby he used to treat patients suffering from phobia by use of what he called systematic desensitization. This treatment involved gradually exposing the patients to what caused their fears. Situations that caused fears to the patients were constructed in hierarchical manner. That is to say, patients would be exposed to situations that caused least fear, then situations were gradually increased to situations which caused most fears. He also developed training on assertiveness which was an approach to deal with emotional problems such as depression, phobia among others. Joseph Wolpe died on 4th December 1997 in Los Angeles (Hooks, 2012).
Why did you select this psychologist?
I selected Joseph Wolpe since his ideas are very important in today’s society. His ideas are very interesting and they are very applicable in treating various phobias and fears that most people in the society suffer from. There are people who are very afraid of heights, afraid of flying, afraid of snakes, afraid of dogs and even public speaking. Some people have social phobias whereby it is hard for them to interact with other people well at school or at their workplaces. So by applying the ideas of Joseph Wolpe, we can have a community with confident individuals in the country who are very assertive and not afraid to speak their mind. Workers would be more productive since they would be confident to improve their teamwork and communication.
What were this psychologist’s most important ideas?
The most important ideas of Joseph Wolpe’s is that behavior of a person is learned and that behavior can also be unlearned. To support this idea, he developed a theory called systematic desensitization which was his approach of treating anxiety. He suggested that a response which is antagonistic to any anxiety can only be made to occur where anxiety provoking situation is present. This is to mean, relaxation and anxiety cannot occur at the same time but exposure would weaken the bond between anxiety and the stimuli (Freedman, 1973). This situation whereby two responses are not compatible that they cannot occur at the same time is known as reciprocal inhibition. Systematic desensitization involves three steps. First step is training a patient to relax. Patient’s muscles are tensed and relaxed all over the body to achieve relaxation state. The second step is constructing hierarchy of anxiety. At the bottom of the hierarchy is the situation which is slight frightening and the as one proceeds up the hierarchy, he or she is introduced to more frightening situations and at the peak is the situation which causes anxiety most. Third step is desensitization. This is a stage of unlearning where a patient is made to imagine a fear causing situation or a fear causing situation is described. Then the patient is asked to relax as he or she imagines of those frightening situations as it is done in step one and if there is something frightening he or she should make a signal. That fear has to be eliminated before preceding to the next step (Wolpe, 1961).