What Makes Psychotherapy Powerful: A Skinnerian Approach to Freud.

During his graduate school program in clinical psychology, Kohlenberg trained in the dominate therapy of the day, Beck’s CBT. However, Kohlenberg had read Skinner’s work and was so impressed with that approach he expected that one day a Skinnerian approach to psychotherapy would emerge. Eventually, inspired by the work of Steve Hayes, Kohlenberg, in partnership with Tsai, developed Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP). This workshop will begin with a review of the history and philosophy of FAP, then will progress to basic guidelines for conducting therapy: the three stimulus functions of the therapist and The Five Rules. Small group exercises will demonstrate methods and reveal therapist factors that may enhance or impede therapy. We also will address natural vs. contrived reinforcement, how operant and respondent behavior are relevant in therapy, the diagnostic value of the therapist’s reactions to patient behavior, and integrating strategies from ACT (Hayes) and DBT (Linehan).