Salter’s conditioned reflex therapy: what is it and how is it used?

This type of therapy focuses on developing habits of assertiveness and expression of emotions.

Broadly speaking, we can say that assertiveness is the ability to say "no" to requests or favors that we do not wish to perform. This term was coined by J. Wolpe in 1958, although A. Salter had already used the concept in his conditioned reflex therapy.

Salter's conditioned reflex therapy is a model of assertive therapy, which seeks to promote the patient's open expression, reducing inhibition and promoting action. The therapy focuses primarily on enhancing the patient's emotional expression. Let's see what it consists of.

Previous concepts: assertiveness

The assertiveness is a social skill that allows us to defend one's rights, interests and ideas in a clear and honest way, without hurting or harming others.without hurting or harming others.

One of the first authors who talked about assertive training was A. Salter. In 1949 he published a book entitled Conditioned Reflex Therapywhich talked about the negative effects of emotional conditioning and not being assertive. In his work he presented a model with different procedures to address assertiveness problems.

For A. Salter, assertiveness referred to a person's ability to express his or her emotions (excitatory personality). Lack of assertiveness referred to inhibition or difficulty in expressing emotions (inhibitory personality). (inhibitory personality).

However, although Salter was one of the first to speak of assertiveness, it was not J. Wolpe who coined the term, basing the concept on Salter's work. Wolpe first used the term in his book Reciprocal Inhibition Psychotherapy in 1958.

Salter's conditioned reflex therapy: features

In order to develop Salter's conditioned reflex therapy, Salter used the contributions of Pavlovian used Pavlov's contributions about conditioned reflexes and the knowledge of the fundamental and the knowledge of the fundamental processes of higher nervous activity, i.e., the processes of excitation and inhibition, as mentioned above.

Thus, Salter relates mental disorders to inhibitory processes (inhibitory personality), and mental health to excitatory processes (excitatory personality).

The role of the therapist in Salter's therapy is to to promote in the patient the overcoming of his or her inhibitions.. The aim is to allow the patient to freely express his or her own feelings. Many times patients have suffered excessive inhibitory conditioning that has caused them some suffering in previous stages of their lives. This occurred because such inhibition exceeded the person's social requirements.

On the other hand, Salter's conditioned reflex therapy focuses on two fundamental ideas:

1. The instruction offered to patients.

This will be aimed at patients to act more and think less.. Salter (quoted in Balarezo, 2003) points out in his work that "The healthy person acts without thinking and the sick person thinks without acting".

2. Use of the 6 basic techniques in psychotherapy

These 6 techniques are the following:

2.1. Externalization of feelings

It is intended that the patient expresses his feelings and thoughts freely, without inhibitions.

2.2. Facial expression of feelings

The patient is trained to learn how to Identify and recognize their facial expressions and the relationship they have with emotions and their expression..

2.3. Contradiction and attack when disagreeing with others' statements

This involves training the patient to express disagreement with the opinions or views of others. This can be done verbally and/or behaviorally.

2.4. Use of the word "I" deliberately in as many cases as possible.

The objective is the patient to use pronouns and words that allude to him/herself (e.g. I, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me). (e.g. I, me, mine...), and to do so more frequently than is currently the case.

2.5. Acceptance and recognition of praise

The patient should be able to recognize and accept praise, and should not use a false not to use an attitude of false modesty when being praised..

2.6. Encouraging the ability to improvise

The patient will be trained to improvise his or her behaviors and not to plan them excessively, so that they can arise spontaneously when the situation requires it.

Other techniques used by Salter

In Salter's Conditioned Reflex Therapy, special emphasis is placed on the patient focusing his attention on the here and now, i.e., paying attention to his own behaviors, that is, to attend to his own present behaviors, feelings and thoughts..

The therapeutic tasks employed by Salter focused on facing the problematic situations of reality (live). It could be considered in a way an antecedent to exposure techniques. He also employed relaxation techniques and pleasant imagery as tools to cope with and reduce anxiety, as well as to enhance appropriate or desired behaviors. These techniques could constitute the precedents of systematic desensitization.

Bibliographical references:

• Salter, A. (1949): Conditioned Reflex Therapy, New York.
• Zaldívar, D. (1994). Assertive therapy: a strategy for its use. Revista Cubana de Psicología, 11(1), 53-64.
• Balarezo, Lucio. (2003). Psychotherapy. Quito: Centro de Publicaciones de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, 150 - 154.