ABSTRACT
When dealing with relatively isolated symptoms, particularly in cases where a patient's general adjustment to life is good, we may often find it easy and advantageous to apply one or more of the behaviour therapy learning techniques or treatment packages to the problem. However, when we are faced with complex cases involving, for example, multiple symptoms, depression and personality disorder, the technique-orientated symptom by symptom approach may be quite inappropriate. Very often behaviour therapy technology may have no ready-made technique to apply to a particular symptom or group of symptoms. Or even if treatment packages are available the treatment of symptoms one by one may become unwieldy and uneconomical for both patient and therapist. And, perhaps most importantly of all, the treatment of presenting symptoms individually may result in the omission from a treatment programme of those underlying problem areas which may be primary and causative and thus most relevant to treatment. In this last case the inappropriate application of technological treatment to presenting symptoms might reasonably be expected to result in relapse or the emergence of other symptoms.
