DAVISON: Hello.

My name is Gerry Davison, and this is an interview that's part of

the Archive Series from the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy. It's
mid-December 1994, and we're here at the University of Southern California, where I
will have the pleasure today of speaking with Dr. Joseph Wolpe, one of the pioneers
of behavior therapy. Joe, good morning.

WOLPE: Good morning.

DAVISON: Thank you for coming in.

WOLPE: It's a pleasure.

DAVISON: I thought I might start with asking you how as an MD, you found yourself
working in a heavily psychological domain of behavior therapy.

WOLPE: Well, I graduated as an MBBCh, which is a sort of British equivalent of MD,

in South Africa, at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1939. I did a kind of
locum-tenency for 18 months after various residencies. And at the end of this time,
I decided that I needed to do my duty during the Second World War, and I
volunteered in the South African Medical Corps.

Now although I was an MD, I had always had a kind of an academic interest in
psychology. In fact, I was rather strongly impressed with psychoanalysis and the
principles on which it was based. Well, I went into the Army in April 1942, and in
October, I was transferred to a unit, to a camp-- or rather, I should say, a
military center in Kimberley, which was of course famous for diamonds. And I was in
the camp, but there was a hospital which was attached to a group of about four
camps.

Now this hospital received soldiers from the battle areas in East and North Africa.
And it turned out that a substantial number of these soldiers had war neuroses. And
there were three of us who were interested in treating them.

Now I was particularly interested because number one, I knew a little bit about
psychoanalysis, and there was also a very popular treatment of that time, called
narcoanalysis. This treatment consists of giving the individual an intravenous
injection of a barbiturate, very slowly, until he sort of becomes woozy. And then
his attention is focused to the onset of his nervous condition.

And what then happens is that he begins to talk about it in a very emotional way.
In fact, he may become very excited. And the idea here was that he would de-
repress, that he would get back into the reality of the onset. And in this way,
well, there would be sort of a recovery of what was unconscious, and therefore, he
should be cured.

So the three of us did this, and I must say it was for us, a very exciting
experience, to see how we were influencing these soldiers. After the treatment,
many of them were bitter for a while. But after two or three months, it became
apparent that it really was just for a while. And maybe one or two of them got, to
some extent, permanently better. But most of them went right back to the way they
were. So clearly, this treatment really wasn't doing anything. It was a very great
disappointment-- I'm sure more to me than to my colleagues.

So the practical import of this was that we abandoned the treatment. Now the
question for me was since this was not working, what else to do? The only indicator
of something different was in the knowledge, at least the presumed knowledge, that
the Russians don't accept psychoanalysis. And as you know, they were our allies in
the war at that time.
So I wanted to find out what they did. But at that time, there were no airliners
flying up and down the world, and it was really impossible to find out. So I simply
figured that it probably has something to do with Pavlov.

So around 1943, I began studying Pavlov's works. I made summaries of every one of
his experiments. First of all, the [INAUDIBLE] book, which is his general book. And
then later, the book translated by Gantt, which is called Conditioned Reflexes and
Psychiatry.

Well, I made a summary of every experiment, and wrote a commentary on every

experiment. I've still got these summaries. I've never looked at them again. But in
the meantime, I learned a great deal about Pavlov and conditioning. And I was
introduced, in the course of these readings, to experimental neuroses.

Now what is it really quite interesting about experimental neuroses is Pavlov's

attitude. Because all of his work was in conditioning and learning. He regarded
these conditions as due to damage to the nervous system.

Because, you see, he had produced most of these neuroses-- in fact, he thought that
he had produced all of these neuroses by conflict. He thought the conflict did
something to the nervous system, did some kind of a damage. So he didn't even
consider any kind of reconditioning. The treatments he proposed were by means of
drugs like bromides and caffeine, which produced certain changes, but nothing
really exciting.

In the course of the years, there were other experimenters who followed Pavlov's
work, who duplicated it with variations. They all accepted his interpretation that
it was a matter of damage. And if they used treatments at all, they tended to be on
the basis of drugs.

However, in 1944, I read a review of a book by Jules Masserman, who was a

psychoanalyst at Northwestern University. The book was called Behavior and
Neuroses. He produced the experimental neuroses, but there was also an indication
that he had a treatment. So I ordered this book, and after quite some time, it
arrived. And, well, it's a fascinating book.

But one very curious feature about it is that although he did excellent
experiments, instead of getting cues from the experiments as to what to do-- in
these experiments, he produced neuroses in cats by shocking them as they were
approaching food. Well, instead of using his observations, what he did was to apply
psychodynamic principles. So in effect, he learned nothing from these experiments.
It was a matter of superimposing psychodynamic principles.

Now he did have a treatment. You see, the cats were always shocked as they were
approaching a food box. And his treatment consisted of one day, filling the food
box with food, and then there was a movable barrier in the cage by which he could
force the cat to be really close to the food box. And some of the cats would then,
at some point, sort of were near the food, having really been starved for at least
24 hours, would make a sort of a hurried snatch at a piece of food and swallow it.
And once it happened, there would be more and more eating.

And these cats, in varying degrees, overcame their fearfulness in the experimental
cage. And it's very interesting, but it was impossible to see how you could
transfer this observation to the human problem. At least, I could not see it then,
and I can't see it now.

So at that point, I decided to apply to the University of the Witwatersrand for an

opportunity to do my own experiments for an advanced degree, which is in MD. An MD
in South Africa is like a Ph.D. in medicine. And fortunately, there, the professor
of psychiatry country wasn't psychodynamic, and he agreed to let me do this work.

And so I did my own experiments. I followed Masserman's method, produced neuroses

experimentally. But I found that it was not necessary to feed the cats and then
shock them. It was enough to give them the same shocks without having fed them, and
that produced much the same lasting fearfulness in the experimental cage.

The next essential thing was this, that when I had these cats neurotic, I found
that it didn't matter how long they had been starved. If they were put into the
experimental cage, they would not eat. Now that is, in itself, important because it
meant that the fearfulness was incompatible with eating. It inhibited eating. So it
seemed logical to embark on the enterprise of trying to use the feeding to inhibit
the fearfulness.

Now since even a great degree of hunger didn't result in the eating, I took a
further step. I decided that instead of trying more and more to increase the eating
impulse, I decided to see if I could diminish the level of the fear, and then with
diminishing the levels of fear, to offer the animals food.

So the way it worked out was this. I had a series of places where fearfulness was
progressively less. First of all, there was the floor of the experimental room.
Then there was a series of four other rooms which were less and less like the
experimental room. So I offered each neurotic animal food in these rooms, in
descending order of resemblance to the experimental room.

DAVISON: Sort of a generalization gradient.

WOLPE: Yes. So of course, obviously, I was making use of the knowledge that I then
had of generalization. Which incidentally had been-- my knowledge of psychology
had, at that point, been greatly augmented by a study of Howell's principles of
behavior.

Every animal, at some point in this gradient of decreasing fearfulness, could be

induced to eat. He would eat fearfully at first in that place, and then more and
more readily. And then he would be looking around for food.

Now, the next experimental day, he would be fed in the place next in resemblance to
the experimental room. And so, by a succession of stages, the animal eventually be
fed in the experimental room. And then when he could eat fearlessly there, he could
be put into the experimental cage and he would eat there again-- with hesitation,
but more and more readily.

And it usually took something like 200 pellets of meat, widely distributed over
several stations, to remove totally the animal's fearfulness of the experimental
cage. So anyway, this--

DAVISON: So you started with it--

WOLPE: This is how I, as an MD, found myself using psychological principles.

Do you remember, Joe, how you and when you moved from those classic experiments
with the cats to developing desensitization and applying it to humans?

WOLPE: After I finished my theses and had duly had the MD conferred upon me, I
decided that the logical thing to do would be to see human beings with neuroses and
try to apply what I had learned with the animal experiments. It made sense, first
of all, to see whether feeding could be used to overcome human fears. I was
bolstered in this kind of enterprise by the knowledge that in 1924, Mary Cover
Jones had reported overcoming children's fears by feeding.
Now I had only adult subjects. And in any case, I tried to suggest feeding in
various contexts of fearfulness. But the basic fact is that it simply didn't work.
And I think to some extent, it didn't work because as you know, most human neuroses
have a social context. And it's very difficult to set up a hierarchical situation
where feeding impacts upon a given amount of fear.

Anyway, whatever the reason, it didn't work. So then I thought, well, let's try to
use other emotions. And the one emotion that appeared to have possibilities-- for
which there was also kind of experimental support-- was the use of angry and
resentful feelings.

So I began to suggest to people with social fears the use of angry expression in
vivo. But also, when there were fears of people bound up with feelings of rejection
and so forth, I suggested the imagining of the expression of resentment, for
example.

Now in doing this, I had a certain amount of success, which was encouraging enough.
But fortunately, a few months after I began that, I came upon it Andrew Salter's
book, Conditioned Reflex Therapy. And as you know, that's a very enthusiastic
portrayal of the use of what he called excitation, but in fact is mainly the
assertiveness. Because it means not any excitation, but the expression of-- well,
basically, angry and annoyed feelings. The sort of feelings that are expressed when
standing up for your rights.

Now to get this was very encouraging to me, and I began to use it widely. Even
though, you see, I could see the sense of using it where there were interpersonal
fears. Salter advocated the use of it in just about every context. And even though
it doesn't make sense, I tried this out.

Eventually, I remember there was a patient who had a fear of being in the presence
of sick people. I tried assertiveness with her, and she became very assertive. But
it turned out to be totally useless in overcoming that particular fear. And so I no
longer had any doubt of its limitations. Well--

DAVISON: You were still, at that time, looking for a way to inhibit anxiety,
analogous to the feeding of the cats?

WOLPE: Yes. Well, in the case of that were related to interpersonal fears,
timidity, there was an answer in this kind of assertiveness context. In other
words, following the line that I had sort of made a beginning of, but which Salter
had already greatly developed and that was expressed in his Conditioned Reflex
Therapy. But I didn't see how that could be relevant for the overcoming of fears of
illness--

DAVISON: Specific animal phobias, or close spaces?

WOLPE: Animal phobias. And also a very wide variety of interpersonal fears. So for
example, there was a fear of disapproval. Or a fear of being ignored.

Well, if a person feels ignored and he feels anxious about it, it's not a practical
solution for him to say, hey, you guys, I'm here, too. You know, it's sort of a
demeaning procedure, and it's not going to overcome his fear. At least it didn't
make sense to me. So there had to be something else.

Well, I suppose I can say that Salter was my first clinical stroke of luck. Second
clinical stroke of luck was coming upon Jacobson's Progressive Relaxation. Now
Jacobson had been using muscle relaxation quite explicitly to overcome all kinds of
fears. He didn't see the use of the relaxation as a learning procedure. He saw it
as a kind of program of reducing tension.

DAVISON: Sort of a general dampening of--

WOLPE: Yes, but he also saw it as sort of building up a habit of calmness, so that
from a practical point of view, any unwelcome tension could be overcome by the use
of a well learned relaxation. And he reported very considerable success.

I began to be interested in relaxation, but what concerned me was the fact that
Jacobson required an enormous amount of training. Patients would receive anything
from 50 to 200 training sessions in relaxation. And even if it works, it's a lot
[INAUDIBLE]. In fact, in terms of time consumption, even though it's undoubtedly
more effective, it was almost as bad as psychoanalysis. So I thought that it might
be more effectively applied in a different way.

In trying to apply it in a different way, I drew upon the experience of the

hypnotists, who used imagination. And so I thought it might be possible to expose
the person to imaginary situations instead of real situations, one of which was,
you could specify the situation. If you depend on real situations, to a great
extent, you're at the mercy of circumstances.

DAVISON: Especially if it's an interpersonal situation.

WOLPE: Especially so, yes. So I began to use imagination. And in fact, in the
beginning, I did it in the context of a hypnotic procedure. You see, I would
hypnotize the person, I would teach him relaxation, and then I would have a
hierarchy, and I would present the weakest scene.

Now in the beginning, I was influenced by something that Pavlov had said, although
I might have misinterpreted it. I'm not sure. Pavlov gave the idea that you
diminish the efficacy of a procedure if you repeat it at the same session. So in
the beginning, I used to use one scene presentation at a session.

One day, I was seeing a particular patient, and I had presented this scene to him.
And the anxiety level was much less than it had been during the previous session.
Then I thought, well, I'll take a great risk. I'll present that same scene again.
And I did. And instead of there being no effect or a worsening, there was a further
drop in anxiety.

That was the beginning of systematic desensitization. Because from then on, I was
able to present any number of scenes, at as many levels as time permitted, and also
use material from different hierarchies in the patient at a single session.

DAVISON: One of the questions that people talk about a lot these days is the
relationship between experimental work and clinical work. And you've describe a
kind of interplay between things you'd read, experiments that you did on the one
hand, on the more scientific side, and then what you were seeing and experiencing
as a clinician. And what has always intrigued me, as a student of behavior therapy,
has been how big a role, in your case, did the experiments that you did with cats
play in your development of desensitization? It's hard to know what would have
happened, for example, in your work in desensitization if you had not done the
experiments with cats. Do you have any thoughts on that?

WOLPE: The clinical method of systematic desensitization rested totally on the

experience I had with the animal experiments. This was the situation. Animals had
fear in particular situations, and no matter how often and for how long they were
put into the fearful situation, there was never any evidence of diminution of fear.

Then, by putting them where there was a weaker fear, generalized from the original
situation and counterposing eating, that fear diminished, and enabled one to
progress to progressively greater resemblances to the original fearful situation.
Until eventually, the use of the feeding removed totally any fearfulness in the
original situation. So it was a matter of having an opposing response, a competing
response.

Now, the situation is basically the same in the human fear. A person is fearful in
situations-- and there's usually a peak situation, where fear is greatest. And here
again, in starting with a very low level of fearfulness, let the person respond to
this weak stimulus in the state of calmness. And the fact is that it worked. And
through progressing through a hierarchy, one could often very quickly use the
calmness to overcome the fear.

So there's no question that what I was doing to the human being was absolutely
parallel to what I had done in the animal, with the exception that I was using an
imaginary stimulus instead of a real stimulus. But then, of course, there were also
many experiments and many clinical efforts in which instead of imaginary stimuli,
real stimuli were used. And with their use, similarly, fearfulness was overcome.

DAVISON: Let's talk for a little bit about your 1958 book, which is clearly a
classic-- Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition. I believe you wrote that book
when you were a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
in Palo Alto. Do you remember anything about the reception that that book enjoyed
after it was published? What kind of reactions did it elicit, and from whom?

WOLPE: Well, let me tell you something about before it was published. At that time,
they would be 50 fellows each year at that center. They would be from a variety of
disciplines, from history and mathematics through various kinds of psychology and
philosophy and so forth. Each fellow had the opportunity to present his work.

Well, in 1938, I had already published both my experimental work and two papers on
the results of the use of behavior therapy in human patients. So I presented this,
and they all listened very carefully. And their response was, this is very
interesting. This is what psychotherapy should consist of.

And one person said to me, how long do you think it will take for this to catch on?
And I said, well, give it five years. Well, we're talking about 1956. It is now
almost 40 years, and really-- I mean, it has caught on to an extent. But I mean,
psychodynamics still dominates the field.

DAVISON: Yeah. That leads me--

WOLPE: Anyway, then, about the book.

DAVISON: Yes.

WOLPE: Well, the book was quite popular, and there were some very enthusiastic
reviews of them. One memorable was by [? Jenny ?] [? Frank ?] of Johns Hopkins. On
the other hand, there was an absolutely scathing review from Edward Glover, the
British psychoanalyst. It was a seven-page review in-- to I think it was the
British Journal of Medical Psychology. So there was a spectrum of responses.

DAVISON: Now you said that you overestimated at least the speed of its impact, and
you alluded to psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches. It seems to be the case
that these days, they continue to be widely followed and widely applied, perhaps
even more so than behavior therapy. Do you have any clues as to why this is
happening? Why the data that had been accumulated over the years in our own field
are not having more impact on the practice of practitioners and what they actually
do?
WOLPE: There's a very powerful-- I was going to say doctrinaire, but it's more
doctrinal feature about psychoanalysis. It really does have something of the [?
character ?] of a religion. And it is very strongly held, and the main teaching
institutions continue to teach it, and so it goes on. It used to be thought--
actually, I think I said many years ago that we have to wait for the old generation
to die out. And when they've died out, the new generation will accept behavioral
principles.

Well, it hasn't died out, because the new generation was indoctrinated, as the old
one had been. And as the years went on, those who were young then became old and
influential. If you look through the American Handbook of Psychiatric Training
Programs, you will see that the training which is giving in psychotherapy to
psychiatrists is at least 90% psychodynamic.

There's a special question that every program is asked. Do you have facilities for
psychoanalytic supervision? That is not asked about behavior therapy.

So that is number one. The other thing is that when you try to present the
situation-- for example, I wrote a paper, starting about two years ago, with Leo
Reyna and Michelle Craske, which is an object comparison of the efficacy of
behavior therapy and psychoanalysis, in which behavior therapy comes out way on
top.

Now we sent this article in the first place to the American Journal of Psychiatry.
They asked for revisions, which we made. And we sent it back and then we waited for
five months.

And then the editor said, you made an excellent case for utility of behavior
therapy, and we need to teach it. But there was no need to do this at the expense
of denigrating psychoanalysis. On the basis of this, he rejected the article. The
denigration consisted purely of data.

We then sent the article to the New England Journal of Medicine. They sent it to
psychoanalytically-oriented reviewers. And of course, to cut the story short, it
was rejected. So in other words, their power has spread very wide.

DAVISON: One of the things that some people are getting involved in is an attempt
to integrate approaches like psychoanalysis and behavior therapy, or humanistic
approaches and behavior therapy. In fact, there are many members of AABT who have
become active in this so-called movement, if you will. What are your thoughts on
this?

WOLPE: I'll tell you why I'm opposed to it. We are talking about something like in
marriage. If you have a marriage, both parties must have something to offer. Now
there is objective evidence that behavior therapy produces results which are more
than you can attribute to the mere fact that an interview occurs. Of course, it's
very well known that everybody gets some results due to something that the
psychoanalyst calls transference effect and that we can also explain behaviorally.
But behavior therapy does better than that.

There is no evidence that psychodynamic methods can do this in any condition. I

have yet to see this. Now, if they come up with evidence that they are more
efficacious than what you can attribute and [? assign ?] to the transference
effect, then I am prepared to listen and see what happens. But it has not happened.
Therefore, why should we use psychodynamics? Or any other method that is advocated,
unless there is evidence of efficacy?

DAVISON: Let me move to another kind of topic. As you were describing your own
background-- your medical training and how you got into psychology-- and I know
other aspects of your intellectual interests that go quite beyond medicine and
psychology, what kinds of training and education do you think today's crop of
applied behavioral scientists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, what kinds of
education and training do you think would be good for them to be getting in their
undergraduate work, in their graduate/post-doctoral work, and so forth?

WOLPE: Well, I think that they should have a background in experimental psychology.
Because only then can they really understand what goes on when you use methods like
systematic desensitization and flooding, et cetera. And there's a very distinct
impression that in recent years, there's been less and less of this kind of
background.

To me, it is essentially the same thing as requiring a physician to have a

background in physiology. You don't just bring him into the ward and say, these are
the methods. He should understand the mechanisms.

DAVISON: Let me move to a somewhat different topic. The word "cognition" was one
that was not very much used, in my memory, in the '50s and '60s within behavior
therapy. Today, we find the study of cognition and cognitive processes to be much
more prevalent within the membership of AABT. We can see it in the conventions and
so forth, in the journals. What are your views on the role of cognitive processes
in therapeutic change, in psychopathology, in our field generally?

WOLPE: Well, first of all, let me say that cognition enters all the time into what
we call conscious life. Cognition is very much present here while you and I talk.
The question really-- and cognition, of course, is used in behavior therapy
technique.

For example, in systematic desensitization, you're using cognition when you greet
the patient at the door. You're using it when you teach him relaxation. You're
using it when you make a hierarchy. And you're using it in desensitization. So
cognition as a reality is, well, pervasive.

The question is really, as far as the cognitive movement is concerned-- the

question is to what extent are fears based not upon classical conditioning-- as the
animal experiments and as evidence in most human cases. But to what extent can it
be said that there are cases in which it is not classical conditioning, but it is
something in the thinking which is the basis of the fear? Well, there is no doubt
that there are many cases.

And according to three different studies, it appears that approximately one-third

of maladaptive fears are based upon wrong thinking. These people all need cognitive
correction. And it would be ludicrous to use desensitization on them.

An example which I use frequently in teaching is a person with a fear of elevators.

He has to be investigated. He has to be questioned.

And basic question is, what is there to be afraid of in an elevator? He will say,
well, I'm afraid of going into an elevator. And you say, yes, but what can happen
to you?

Now a certain number of people will give you a sort of thought-based explanation,
which is this. Something can happen to me. If the elevator were to be stuck between
floors, I would exhaust the air and suffocate.

Now clearly, if a person believes that, he can have a fear. And it's no use doing
systematic desensitization. He must be given information. It may require an
elevator mechanic, but anyway. And there are other things, like the ropes may
break, and so on. These beliefs need cognitive correction. And anyway, it
undoubtedly applies to a large number of fears.

But now what is actually happening with fear? There are people like Beck and Ellis
who say quite explicitly, there is no such thing as classical conditioning. It's
all a matter of correcting thinking. And well, I obviously can't go into this, but
I think it's a totally untenable proposition.

DAVISON: Certainly, I would imagine that you're thinking about, there'd be a group
of elevator-fearful people who would remain just as phobic even after they are
given the information about the automatic braking mechanisms if the rope should
break, the fact that they won't run out of air, and they're still afraid.

WOLPE: No, it's not quite like that. You see, the other group of people will say,
there's no dangerous consequence I can think of. I just get afraid.

DAVISON: And there's nothing you can--

WOLPE: Some of them also find a history, usually, of some sort of fearful
experience, and a terror of being in a confined space, and just then generalize to
all confined spaces. So they don't have to be told about the basis of a fear of
suffocation, because they don't have it. But because you can find no rational
explanation for the fear, and everything points to cognitive conditioning, then
they get no cognitive input correction, because there's nothing to correct. They
get something like systematic desensitization or flooding or whatever it is.

DAVISON: Back in 1966, you were one of a small group of people in the New
York/Philadelphia area who put together this association, AABT. And you've been
with it, of course, ever since. You were its first-- or second president. I guess
Franks was the first president.

WOLPE: Right.

DAVISON: What ideas or what thoughts do you have about the way the organization has
changed, in addition to just becoming much larger? How do you view the evolution of
AABT?

WOLPE: Well, I'll tell you that the most important way in which it has changed has
been in the development of an increasing bias towards what is called cognitive
therapy. Now there is undoubtedly a place for cognitive procedures in-- well, as a
matter of context, as I described. But a lot of people have got the idea that it's
all a matter of cognitive correction.

And there's a lot of that in AABT. And I think it's a very bad development. There
is no evidence-- you know, one of the ways in which it has been put is this.

There's been a paradigm shift from a learning paradigm to a cognitive paradigm. And
this is in advance. Now if this is so, there should be evidence that pure cognitive
procedures are doing better than the set of procedures-- plus, where they apply
cognitive procedures that constitutes behavior therapy, as I understand it, there
is no evidence of that. In fact, there have been a number of articles to show the
contrary.

And I believe that one of the most telling examples of the inadequacy of a pure
cognitive approach is in this multi-disciplinary study on depression. In which, you
remember, there was interpersonal therapy, drug therapy, and cognitive therapy. Now
cognitive therapy was seen as behavior therapy's contribution or behavior therapy's
way of dealing with non-psychotic depression.
As it turned out, the interpersonal therapy, which is a kind of psychodynamic-based
therapy, did significantly better than cognitive therapy. Well, non-psychotic
depression is generally, basically anxiety-based depression. And if you're going to
treat an anxiety-based problem, you should be using the whole behavior therapy
armamentarium, which includes conditioning methods.

If you confine yourself to cognitive methods, then you weaken your impact. And I
think that this is the most important result of this program. Of course, it's not
mentioned by anybody except me.

DAVISON: I know the results of that study are very complex and sometimes hard to
understand. But as you've been talking about depression and anxiety, another
question occurred to me about the DSM and its various changes over the years. Among
behavior therapists, you're very close to the medical side and the psychiatric side
of things.

And I wonder how you view the DSM, the way it changes every few years. And whether,
for example, this separation of mood disorders from anxiety disorders might not
always contribute to the best kinds of research. But in general terms, do you have
thoughts about the DSM?

WOLPE: Well, I'm not a fan of the DSM. And my main reason for it is that it bases
its classification on manifestation. I feel that a really appropriate system would
be etiologically oriented. Because in the last resort, the key to the solution of
problems is the understanding of their causation.

And just to fiddle around with different descriptions that classify is, well,
unsatisfactory-- and in a way, it's sort of primitive. I think in a way, it's the
way medicine was 100 years ago. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but that is my
feeling.

DAVISON: Right, right. Do you have some crystal ball-type ideas about where
behavior therapy is going to be, say, in 50 years? What do you think people are
going to be doing who call themselves behavior therapists? What do you think AABT
will be like in 50 years? Do you have any ideas about that?

WOLPE: I really don't know. It does seem to me, though, that people who take the
position that everything is cognitive, everything can be cured by correcting
thinking, don't really belong in the field of behavior therapy. Because after all,
behavior therapy consists of the use of experimentally established principles and
paradigms of learning, and related paradigms, for the overcoming of certain
maladaptive behaviors.

I always feel myself to be using learning paradigms. Even when I'm doing cognitive
change, I see basically what I'm doing as understandable on the basis of
retroactive inhibition, which is a kind of reciprocal inhibition. I think that a
person who just says, I'm doing cognitive things for such-and-such reasons, but
reasons which have no relation to learning processes, is strictly speaking not
doing behavior therapy. I mean particularly, clearly, I think that Ellis is not
doing behavior therapy. Now, so it seems to me that everybody who is doing
something or sees himself as doing something other than learning-process-based
belongs somewhere else. And perhaps all of these people will sort of split off from
what I call behavior therapy.

DAVISON: Joe, in addition to your 1958 book, what other of your publications are
you particularly proud of, or feel have been particularly influential?

WOLPE: Well, there are two things. First of all, there was an article which I wrote
for the American Psychologist. which was "Cognition and Causation in Human Behavior
and Psychopathology." I think. It's not the exact title. Something like that. I
think that has been quite influential. The other thing is my book, The Practice of
Behavior Therapy, of which the fourth edition appeared about four years ago, and
which is a very much updated exposition of the variety of uses of learning-based
procedures.

Now this doesn't mean that necessarily, if a procedure appears and it doesn't seem
to have a ready-to-hand explanation, I'm going to say, no, I can't see the reason,
therefore, we don't use it. I'm interested in anything that works.

And I think a good example of this is about four years ago, I was approached by
Francine Shapiro in the context of her eye movement desensitization discovery. I
thought it was absurd when I listened to her. But then I tried it out, and to my
astonishment, in the minor context in which I used it, it worked stupendously. And
so I thought it was worth experimenting with.

Well, of course, a lot has been written since then. And also, there is, I think,
one could theory that works, which was put forward by a man called [? Marty ?] [?
Dike ?] in Queensland. He sees it as a kind of attenuated flooding, which the eye
movement distracts from the impact of the very strong continuous stimulus.

Anyway, the point is I'm just telling you that if a thing works, I'm interested,
even if I can't quite explain it.

DAVISON: Joe, do you think that better and more frequent dialogue between the more
cognitively-oriented people on the one hand, and the more conditioning- or
behaviorally-oriented people on the other hand, would be useful? Do you think
there's enough of that in our field?

WOLPE: I don't think that the issues have been publicly faced. I said a few minutes
ago that I saw the possibility of a splitting-off of the people that I call
cognitivists from what I call behavior therapists. But I don't think this should be
lightly done. And I think there should be an analysis of the situation and an
attempted resolution.

I have tried for several years to bring about a plenary session of the AABT, in
which essentially, the people who say everything is cognitive are one side and the
people who say that classical conditioning is also a major-- in fact, apparently
the major-- process that leads to learning-based psychopathology, on the other
side.

Now I think that a plenary session of this sort, and perhaps a series of plenary
sessions, could lead to a clarification of the field. Because what is happening now
is that the cognitivists do their workshops and their discussions, and the behavior
therapists do theirs. And the issues are simply not faced.

DAVISON: It's been very, very interesting talking with you today, and on behalf of
the membership and our other colleagues, I want to thank you very much for coming
in and having this conversation.

WOLPE: It's been a pleasure to talk to you.