Joseph Wolpe, an early psychologist who challenged the effectiveness of traditional psychotherapies, had served in the army as a medical officer to treat soldiers through ‘war neurosis’ during WWII. Soon enough, he saw how ineffective conventional therapies were and came to believe that talking about one’s experience was not sufficient to change behavior. So, he developed his own approach which emphasizes learning rather than analysis.
He turned instead to behaviorism (a theory in psychology), and the idea that certain forms of conditioning could be used to treat mental disorders. Teaching relaxation exercises to soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) allowed them to manage those fears. Wolpe reasoned that if the disorder arose out of a fearful response to a stimulus, then it was possible to change that response into something else entirely. In disorders such as PTSD, he argued, anxiety stemmed not from emotion but from fear – an emotional reaction to a stimulus. By teaching soldiers how to relax, they were able to control their anxieties.
