Question

In her systematic desensitization sessions to overcome a fear of snakes, Rene develops a fear hierarchy of stimuli that cause anxiety. The hierarchy, from lowest to highest fear, consisted of seeing the word "snake", seeing a picture of a snake in a magazine, seeing a snake on TV, seeing a snake in the zoo, seeing alive snake in front of her and finally having a snake crawl on her. During the final stages of the systematic desensitization program, the therapist would ask Rene to:

Answer 1

Imagine touching the snake

Explanation:

Systematic desensitization was pioneered by Joseph Wolpe. This is a behavior technique that is used to treat some behavioral disorders such as panic disorder, anxiety, OCD, etc. This technique is based on classical conditioning. This technique is used to unlearned the behavior that is learned.

This systematic desensitization to start with the imagination power yourself and progression to the highest level of fear and then used the relaxation therapy. This technique is used in real life. The main goal of systematic desensitization is to desensitize the fearful situation related to any fearful objects such as snake, lizard, etc.

Thus in the last stage of the systematic desensitization program, the therapist asks Rene about the imagination of touching the snake.