Psychoanalysis and contextual analysis of phobias.

When phobic behavior is studied and analyzed as it changes in its natural contexts during treatment, new information develops about social, environmental, psychological, personality and bodily factors and their relationships in causing these changes. Contextual analysis, basing its approach on such studies, has conceptualized pathogenic (i.e., phobogenic) and therapeutic processes that have led to new approaches to treatment and a new understanding of familiar psychoanalytic phenomena. This effort to understand disturbed phobic behavior by analyses of innumerable samples of current change under varied conditions reverses the prevailing psychoanalytic approach of studying the reported past to understand the present, and makes possible the development of validatable concepts and more effective treatment, as well as setting the stage for more meaningful research and integration with other sciences.