Client-centered and behavior therapies: Their peaceful coexistence: A case study.

Abstract

Recent theoretical attempts have been made to bring about a rapprochement between client-centered and behavioral therapies. This case report brings the discussion to an operational level and describes how both methods were successfully used with the same patient. It translates the patient's dynamics into behavioral terms, but cautions against extreme reliance on observable behavior to the exclusion of dynamics or covert behavior.

The destiny of psychological therapies: convergence or divergence?*

“…Desensitization per se emerges as clearly superior if only because of the speed with which it relieved the phobia. Naar (1970) endeavours to base his argument for the combining of client-centred and behaviour therapies on somewhat different grounds. After describing a case where he used the two therapies, he attacks behaviour therapists for their authoritarian judgemental role.…”

“….often sound callous in their implicit assumption that they know 'what is best' for their patients. There is the danger that human engineers may take their role literally and assume the responsibility for deciding how appropriate behaviour should be defined [Naar, 1970, p. 1561. Naar seems to suggest that the client-centred elements in a therapeutic merger would offset this tendency.…”

What, when and for what: A suggested multi/modal approach to therapy.

“…The more pronounced trend has been to bridge the gap between the behavioral and dynamic traditions and arrive at a conceptual integration of the three major approaches to psychotherapy, i.e., behaviorism, psychoanalytic and client-centered (Truax & Carkhuff, 1967;Patterson, 1968;Naar, 1970;Birk & Brinkley-Birk, 1974).…”