I'm going to describe the unitary approach, a recent model for social work, and then use the model to pinpoint the place of behavioural procedures.

Social Work is — or aspires to be — a profession that carries out a planned change process aimed at helping people who are having difficulty with life tasks. These tasks range from coping emotionally and practically with the birth of a handicapped child, to keeping within the rules of society, to obtaining the basic supplies: food, shelter and satisfying personal relationships, and they require emotional, cognitive and material resources.

Various investigations into the relative effectiveness of different treatment procedures with agoraphobic patients (e.g. Emmelkamp, 1974; Emmelkamp and Wessels, 1975) have shown that in-vivo exposure is a common factor in successful aproaches. Emmelkamp (1974) has suggested that in-vivo exposure is the essential element of treatment which may eventually result in habituation. He has also demonstrated (Emmelkamp and Emmelkamp-Benner 1975) that group treatment can be just as effective as the same approach used individually, which has obvious implications for cost-efficiency.

Research in cognitive-behaviour modification (CBM; Meichenbaum, 1978) continues apace, and a particularly important area is the study of the “crucial ingredients” of successful CBM programmes. However, findings reported to date are not unequivocal. For example, in a recent article, Glogower, Fremouw and McCroskey (1978) report that the rehearsal of coping self-statements was a more effective component of cognitive restructuring than imparting insight into unhelpful self-statements in reducing performance anxiety about speaking in a group. A treatment condition which combined both procedures was most successful in general, but was not significantly better than rehearsal alone. The study was well-designed and implemented, and the authors were able to support their conclusions by referring to both self-report and behavioural data. The results directly contrast with those of Thorpe, Amatu, Blakey and Burns (1976), who sought to test similar hypothesis in a similar experiment in Britain. Glogower et al. correctly point out the differences between the studies include the relative youth of subjects, brevity of treatment, and few kinds of coping self-statement used in the Thorpe et al. study. They further indicate that a combination group has fared well in studies other than their own (e.g. Fremouw & Zitter, 1978), but that in the Thorpe et al. study the combination procedure, similar to the instructional rehearsal procedure, was significantly less effective than “insight” on self-report measures.

The integration of cognitive processes and behaviour change methods, generically known as cognitive-behaviour modification, has sparked off a series of heated arguments about the status of this hybrid (Greenspoon and Lamal, 1978; Ledwidge, 1978; 1979 (a); (b); Mahoney, 1974; 1977; Mahoney and Kazdin 1979; Meichenbaum 1977; 1979; Rachlin, 1977(a); (b); Wolpe, 1976; 1978). At the considerable risk of adding fuel to an already inflamed debate, I have drawn up a list of myths which the opposition to cognitive-behaviour modification has promulgated. Myths are, of course, a potent source of influence, and I am not at all sanguine that labelling the lines of opposition to cognitive-behaviour modification as ‘myths’ will change peoples' cognitions or behaviour. Nevertheless, in the interests of academic debate, and indeed in the pursuit of truth,* I have listed what seem to me to be the essential fallacies in the arguments against the cognitive-behavioural movement.