It seems that many elements of the behavioral approach, even the straight-forward behavioral approach, are successfully applied in psychoanalysis.
An alarmed patient arrives, he is laid on the couch, where he will lie for at least 10 minutes. Relaxation… On the couch, the patient is asked to start free association. Free associations can only be given out in a relaxed state; accordingly, in order to cope with this task, the patient has to relax even more. Now the client is brought back to the situation that might have been the cause of his tension, and, returning to it over and over again, the client lives it over and over again against the backdrop of an already calm relaxation.
The result is a classic method of desensitization, a typical behavioral approach in a psychoanalytic robe.