The criterion of effectiveness in behavioural therapies

Abstract

One of the strongest arguments put forward to justify the behavioral approach to various behavioral disorders has been its efficacy. When the first clinical applications of behavior modification took place in the 1950s and early 1960s, the dominant psychotherapeutic model in clinical settings was the psychodynamic model, whose acceptance, moreover, carried a sense of universality, despite certain earlier studies, such as Denker’s (1946), which questioned its effectiveness. In a review of 500 cases of neurosis, Denker found that the rate of spontaneous recoveries reached 90% of the subjects after 4–5 years, thus offering results that were, in short, no worse than those obtained through traditional psychotherapy.