The Objective Assessment of Desensitization

¹ Reader, Department of Psychiatry, University of Manchester
² Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, University of Manchester

(1) Four patients with monosymptomatic phobias were treated by systematic desensitization as recommended by Wolpe (1958).

(2) The outcome of the treatment was tested by recording anxiety responses by the psychogalvanic response (P.G.R.) to the stimulus word in a word association test, to imagery and to real stimuli.

(3) It was shown that the findings obtained by this method need not conform to the results assessed by the usual clinical methods which largely rely on eliciting verbal reports from the patient or his relatives.

(4) It is submitted that in assessing treatment results, the usual clinical methods alone have limited reliability, and that in controlled trials the objective method described here might help to eliminate some of the contradictory results reported in the past.