The best method for cure phobia is to cure anxiety attacks
During the last 50 years the best method for cure phobia is to cure anxiety attacks by means of regular desensitization.
The author of this method for cure phobia is Doctor Joseph Volpe. He has lived 82 years. He was born in 1915 in Johannesburg, Southern Africa. There he has received his medical education. He died in 1997 in his house in Los Angeles.
During the II World War Joseph Volpe was the officer of medical service of the South African army. He served in the psychiatric military hospital and some patients of this hospital suffered from the so-called “war neurosis” known today as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Doctor Volpe and his colleagues tried to use medicinal therapy and psychotherapeutic help for the patients to assist them in coping with injuring reminiscences of the battles and to cure anxiety attacks, but the results on the whole were unsatisfactory. Scientists think that exactly these failures have stimulated Volpe to search for new methods for psychotherapeutic help in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
In the post-war years Volpe studied the model of panic attacks in stressful circumstances in cats. The neurosis was formed as follows. An experimental animal was under the influence of electric current in the cage with the current-carrying floor associated with the strong light and sound stimuli until the unfortunate cat developed panic symptoms at the simple approach to the cage.
After the phobia has been formed, it was possible to investigate efficiency of various methods of treatment. It appeared that the most reliable way of phobia therapy was the gradual and regular presentation of stimuli causing fear during feeding the animals.
In the beginning, the cat with the phobia was fed in a room, where there was an “awful” cage, at a certain distance from it. Then a bowl with the meal was placed a little bit closer to the cage, then even closer, then inside the cage… Eventually the animal “was retrained” and could feel like completely easy in that cage, which more recently caused panic attacks and panic symptoms.
Thus, Volpe proved, that “…if at the presence of stimuli causing anxiety and panic, the suppressing of anxiety reaction could be realized, then it will weaken the association between these stimuli and anxiety reaction”. In other words, the fear can be eliminated if it is replaced with a condition opposite to this fear. In psychophysiology this phenomenon is known as the principle of reciprocal suppression. This discovery led to the creation of the method of regular desensitization.
In experiments with animals the food was used for the elimination of panic symptoms. But for the human beings this approach is not very effective with the exception perhaps for small children. As a result of the carried out researches, doctor Volpe came to the conclusion that for adult people the relaxation is the best way for the formation of the condition opposite to fear and tension.