Treating Communication Apprehension and Avoidance: past Roots, Future Perspectives

Recent controversy in the treatment of communication apprehension and avoidance has centered around whether an individual's communicative difficulties are caused by communicative (skills) deficiency or psychological problems (anxiety). Such debates are not new; arguments about whetimr to treat communicative difficulties from a communicative or a psychological perspective date back to the founding Of speech communication as an academic discipline. If progress in treating communication apprehension and avoidance is to be made, methods of treatment must be devoid of labels based on historical assumptions, and individual analysis of communicative problems needs to be employed. TREATING COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION AND AVOIDANCE: PAST ROOTS, FUTURE PERSPECTIVES A review of the literature on communication apprehension and avoidance will usually guide the reader to one of two perspectives: treatments 1 based from a psychological standpoint, and treatments based from a communicative viewpoint (Page, 1980). However, such a dichotomy is plagued by the problem of bf....,ging the question when labels are employed. If one uses the label of reticence, the probleM is seen as stemming from a lack of skills, and rhetoritherapy is the preferred mode of treatment. When communication apprehension is used, the treatment employed is systematic desensitization, sine the problem is believed to be caused by high levels of anxiety or apprehension (Kelly, 1982). As Kelly has pointed out, these labels may not always be describing different probl.ems, and the term "communication apprehension and avoidance" has become the current buzz word to refer to people who cannot communicate effectively when the need or desire arises, regardless of casual factors.. In examining treatments from a psychological standpoint (using systematic desensitization) as opposed to treatment procedures from a communicative standpoint (using rhetoritherapy), one finds methods based on semantics that could be placed in either perspective--cognitive restructuring. Though cognitive restructuring has most often been identified with the psychological school, Phillips (1983) claims that it is nothing more than fancy psychological terminology for the rhetorical concept of persuasion. Pedersen (1980) neatly explains how the current mainstay of the psychological approach, systematic