People who take heroin, morphine, and other drugs of this type — the opioids — present difficult problems to the therapist. One London drug clinic psychiatrist described them as, “feckless and irresponsible” and even “chronic and untreatable” (Bewley, 1973). The results of treatments summarised below may seem to support these gloomy views, but alternative explanations for drug takers' behaviour in terms of pharmacological and social reinforcement contingencies are possible (e.g. Solomon and Marshall, 1973). The issue is clearly more than academic. If we regard them as untreatable, why treat them? Many people do consider them treatable, and in this paper conventional and behavioural treatments are briefly discussed. It is suggested that although recent behavioural approaches have improved on other treatments they still leave some central questions unanswered.

Phobias have been defined as excessive fear reactions which are both persistent and unadaptive (Rachman 1974) and have been successfully treated by techniques such as systematic desensitisation (Wolpe 1958) and flooding (Malleson, 1959). Rudestam and Bedrosian (1977) have shown their relative effectiveness to depend upon the type of phobia. Although the client constructs a similar fear hierarchy graded flooding differs from systematic desensitisation in that he is not permitted to “escape” from an item on the hierarchy by returning to an earlier, less threatening one when he experiences fear. Instead, he is required to maintain the activity which has been specified until it no longer evokes anxiety. In the studies described below frequent verbal encouragement was used to elicit and maintain the target behaviours.

The following discussion relates our experience of teaching behavioural techniques of child management to single-parent mothers. We found that these mothers were able to conceptualize the theories of child behaviour and apply them successfully to their own children through the use of behavioural programmes.

In teaching behavioural techniques to parents we had the following aims in mind:

1. To initiate behavioural change

2. To maintain behavioural change

3. To foster the group members' ability to anticipate future problems and to deal with these with the minimum of professional advice. Firmer control of their children would result in greater feelings of self confidence for the mothers.

A Report on the NATO International Conference “Experimental and Behavioural Approaches to Alcholism” held in Bergen, Norway (August 1977).

Behaviour therapists everywhere should rejoice that such a conference received the support of the major military powers of the Western World. This unlikely teaming up with NATO is apparently just one example of the noble organisation's efforts to promote international goodwill. Possibly the ultimate achievement of the conference, however, was the promotion of inter-disciplinary goodwill by successfully gathering together 150 participants from the fields of behavioural psychology, anthropology, sociology, animal research and neuropsychology. The subject matter was wide-ranging, including symposia on the assessment of cognitive functioning in alcoholics, alcohol and crime, cross-cultural studies as well as on the behavioural treatment and analysis of excessive drinking.