The Application of Behavior Principles in Therapeutic Education
THE JOURNAL There is a rapidly accumulating literature suggesting that the application of behavioral principles is as relevant to education as it is to the treatment of patients with psychological disorders. This makes i t possible to speak of a therapeutic educator with training in the application of behavioral principles that can be brought to bear on the teaching of children with psychological problems. Behavioral principles indeed have already been successfully applied in a variety of areas where modification of behavior is sought. These include the training of the mentally retarded, the rehabilitation of the physically handicapped and the treatment of children and adults with psychological .disorders. This fast application has come to be known as behavior therapy. Behavior therapy differs from traditional psychotherapy in that it starts from the premise that psychological disorders represent learned behavior and that known principles of learning can be applied to their modification. Unlike traditional psychotherapists who view a disorder as symptomatic of some underlying disease process that must be uncovered before the symptoms will change, the behavior therapist views the manifest behavior as the problem with which he must deal, and although he would not deny that this behavior may have lengthy and complicated antecedents in the individual’s past, he does not believe that i t is necessary to reconstruct this past in order to effect a change in the behavior. Once one accepts this premise, the exploration of an individual’s past with a view toward “understanding” his present behavior becomes largeljr an academic exercise that may well have relevance to the prevention of disor-