• The emergence of behavioral therapies

Behavioral and cognitive therapies arrived in France in the 70s. Behavioral therapy precedes cognitive.

The behaviorist or behaviorist approach is based on a scientific approach based on observable facts. This approach refrains from interpreting behaviors as obeying unobservable internal factors such as the unconscious, drives, complex or other, even if it admits their existence. To define behavior, it wants to be objective and without a priori.

The first behavioral therapy was carried out in 1923 with a little boy named Peter, who was phobic of rabbits.

Peter’s reactions were then observed when he was in the presence of a rabbit. There was no question of understanding the reasons why this child was afraid, had he been traumatized? Did he have a bad experience? But, indeed, to change his behavior and his attitude towards the rabbit by conditioning him.

To understand and change behavior, behaviorism is based on the stimulus and the response specific to this trigger:

• Stimulus : I am shown a dish that smells good Response, : It makes me want, I’m hungry.
• Stimulus : I see an elevator Response, : I am afraid, I become anxious.

• Stimulus : The presence of the rabbit Response, : Childhood phobia.

To change the child’s response, positive elements were added in the presence of the rabbit:

• At the time, Peter was playing or eating his favorite foods. Other children who weren’t afraid of rabbits started playing with him in front of Peter.
• The rabbit was first brought to a remote cage, then as the sessions progressed, it was released and in contact with the child.

According to this approach, context is important. The individual does not act only according to his impulses or his beliefs but according to his environment. This current highlights the subject’s automatism without taking into account or without seeking to understand his emotional situation or his state of mind.

In order for the scenarios to be appropriate and constructive for Peter, at each session his body language was carefully analyzed and interpreted with care.

By multiplying his experiences, the child ended up playing with the rabbit and stroking it. He was no longer afraid.

To fight against disorders, the subject’s experience then becomes more profitable than simple verbal language.

There are other examples that involve the behaviorist approach, as is the case with addiction disorders: 

• A person who can not stop himself from eating or shopping outside, to change his relationship with the consumer society, he may refuse to go out with any means of payment.
• A drug user who wishes not to be tempted any more will change frequentation or regions.

J. Wolpe, H. Eysenck, BF Skinner, are among those who initiated behavioral therapies:

• Burrhus Frederic Skinner will develop the behaviorist approach with a new dimension, that of “operant conditioning”. These are the benefits drawn from the experience, its positive effects which will presage its renewal.

Behavioral therapies base their work on the theories of reflex, conditioning and learning to achieve change in the person.

• The cognitive axis

The cognitive approach will come to complete behavioral therapies towards the end of the 50s. It is Albert Ellis, a doctor in psychology in the United States who will develop the founding concept of this approach: it is not the environment, the context. nor the elements which surround the individual which are responsible for his disorders, but rather their interpretation. So, to help the person to evolve and change, it will be necessary to accompany him in the analysis of his judgments, his prejudices or his thoughts in order to modify them in order to react better.

Another American psychiatrist, a man named Aaron Beck, will abandon Freudianism in favor of cognitive therapy.

This approach focuses more on the subjectivity of perception, the mode and the structuring of the thought which explain the reactions or the behaviors of the individual. Cognitive therapy, in this case A.Beck and A.Ellis do not deny and even encourage the patient’s experimentation in his healing process. Moreover, behavioral therapies have never obscured the existence and influence of internal factors.

Behavioral and cognitive therapies in fusion

In 1970, behavioral therapies and cognitive therapies became behavioral and cognitive therapies: CBT.

CBTs do not all cover the same practices. In this current, there are as many CBTs as there are therapists. CBTs are constantly evolving, they are not closed to scientific research and new empirical evidence. Their theories are not immutable but adaptable according to the patient’s problem.