Behavior Therapy: Background, Basic Principles, and Early History

Abstract

Abstract Behavior therapy has a complicated history and ever-changing web of intellectual allegiances and influences, including behaviorism, behavior science, cognitive science, folk psychology, and Eastern philosophical traditions, to name only a few. These schools of thought are extremely difficult if not impossible to encapsulate using a few simple properties that traverse and define every approach. Rather, behavior therapy is much more like a ‘family resemblance’ in which common essential properties play a role in a complex web of belief. Against this backdrop, therefore, it is the aim of this article to discuss the common essential properties related to the conceptual and theoretical background, basic principles and learning processes, and early history of first-generation or first-wave behavior therapy. The first-wave behavior therapists include such prominent figures as Joseph Wolpe, Ogden Lindsley, Nathan Azrin, and Hans Eysenck, to name only a few. The so-called ‘second-wave’ and, perhaps, ‘third-wave’ behavior therapy will be taken up in article Behavior Therapy: The Second and Third Waves .