Counterconditioning therapy using free association: a pilot study.

This article describes the treatment of 2 severely neurotic patients by desensitization using free association in conjunction with muscle relaxation. This therapy used no preplanned fear hierarchies; rather, the patients selected their own material and the rate at which they dealt with that material In each session. Procedures for teaching more effective interpersonal behavior were used with both patients following completion of counterconditioning. In both cases, the rate of improvement during counterconditioning was at least as rapid as that reported for counterconditioning using hierarchies of scenes. The use of free association is seen as offering important advantages where a patient's anxiety is diffuse, that is, where the sources of anxiety are difficult to isolate and scale for intensity.