ABSTRACT
The majority of treatment studies have selected school phobics from middle-class families while truants have been generally reported as coming from lower socio-economic groups. The earliest reported behavioural treatment of a school phobic utilized Systematic desensitization (SD). Emotive imagery is a rather specialized technique that some behaviour therapists have found to be a powerful alternative to the normal relaxation procedures used in SD. In this procedure, the therapist develops imagined scenes which conjure up in the child feelings of excitement, self-assertion, and general 'positive effect' as a means of inhibiting anxiety. The child is held in the intensely feared situation until the anxiety begins to show signs of visible waning on the classical extinction model. Implosive therapy achieves this by confronting the child in imagination, vividly describing and exaggerating the child's worst fears. The most controversial procedure for treating school phobia is flooding. In this approach fears and phobias are directly confronted in real life, without any prior preparation.
