Extinction phenomena: A biologic perspective on how and why psychoanalysis works

Abstract

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This article presents the view that much of the success of classical psychoanalysis is centrally predicated on its biological potency; focusing not on neuropsychology, but on the biology of conditioning. The argument suggests that features of classic psychoanalytic technique--the couch, meetings several times per week with both parties present, and free association--uniquely facilitate intense transferences of various sorts, and that these in turn constitute the multiple and diverse extinction trials necessary to best approximate extinction.

Keywords

• Imagination
• Classical Conditioning
• Aversive Conditioning
• classical psychoanalytic technique
• extinction trials
• transference