摘要：Almost all forms of psychotherapy depend on learning theory principles but most psychotherapists never learned them properly or else have forgotten them. The purpose of the present article is to provide a review and update of the four main types of learning and to illustrate how principles from them might be applied to improve psychotherapy. The four types of learning are verbal paired-associates learning, classical conditioning, evaluative conditioning, and operant learning. The first part of the article examines the four types of learning to identify their most important principles as far as psychotherapy is concerned. The second part of the article suggests how the main mental disorders treated by psychotherapists can be better treated by applying these principles. Lastly, given the public’s very low access to psychotherapists, some easily learnable self-help treatments are discussed.
