Worried that they hadn't heard anything for days from the widow in the apartment next door, the mother said to her son, "Tony, would you go next door and see how old Mrs. Pierpoint is?"
A few minutes later, Tony returned.
"Well, is she all right?" asked the mother.
"She's fine, but she's rather annoyed with you," remarked Tony.
"At me?" the mother exclaimed. "Whatever for?"
Tony replied, "Mrs. Pierpoint said it's none of your business how old she is."
Joseph WolpeBorn 20 Apr 1915; died 4 Dec 1997 at age 82.South African-born American psychotherapist who helped usher in cognitive behavioral therapy during the 1960s; he devised a treatment to help desensitize patients with phobias by exposing them to their fears incrementally. He worked on systematic desensitization with a methodology designed to treat people with extreme anxiety about specific events, situations, things, or people. His approach involved developing a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations, learning relaxation techniques, then associating these situations with relaxation, beginning at the bottom, or least anxiety-provoking, part of the hierarchy. He founded the Association for Advancement of Behaviour Therapy and the Journal of Behavior Therapy. |
