* problems of homosexuals
* marital problems
Like bioenergetics, primal therapy is best suited for individuals who have repressed or pent-up feelings they have not found ways to release.
It is important to bear in mind that primal therapy is initially one of the most expensive therapies, since it devotes exclusive attention to each client at the beginning of therapy. It may not be the therapy of choice for more verbal, intellectual clients who want to develop an understanding of themselves beyond an experience of catharsis.
IMPLOSIVE THERAPY
For people with phobias.
This emotional flooding therapy was developed by Thomas Stampfl (1923- ). Stampfl was trained as a clinical psychologist at Loyola of Chicago and was influenced by both psychoanalysis and the psychology of learning. Early in his career, he became convinced that clients with phobias tend to reinforce their fears by automatically avoiding what they fear. He developed an approach to help people face the situations, feelings, or memories they most fear.
Stampfl's approach is most easily understood in the light of recent experimental work on animal avoidance behavior. A dog, for example, is confined in a cage that is divided in two. A low wall separates the two halves of the cage, over which the dog can jump. On one side there is a bell that rings just before the dog receives an electric shock. The dog promptly learns that he can avoid the shock by jumping to the other side of the cage. Soon he will learn to do this automatically, whenever the bell rings. What is significant from a psychologist's point of view is that the dog will continue for a long time to jump to the opposite side of the cage, even once no further shocks are given. The dog's fear is maintained in force only by his own memory.
Animal psychologists have found a quick way to end the dog's fear: ring the bell, but prevent the dog from jumping to the other side of the cage. Once the anxiety-stricken animal realizes that he is no longer going to be shocked, the old habit based on fear simply disappears.
Implosive therapists make use of an equivalent technique with human beings. Patients are asked to imagine, as vividly as possible, that they are facing the very thing they chronically have tried to avoid. For example, an individual may have suffered from a terrifying fear of elevators for years. The therapist tries to use exaggerated imagery to produce maximum anxiety. He might ask the patient to imagine being stuck in an elevator fifty floors up, having the elevator shake and abruptly fall a foot, then have the lights go out, and so on. By maintaining this contrived elevator nightmare long enough, implosive therapists claim that, frequently, the level of anxiety of patients quickly and dramatically falls, and they lose their exaggerated fears.