Abstract
A case of severe acrophobia which had persisted for 11 months was cured through 8 days of systematic desensitization followed by 24 days of in vivo desensitization. The patient was a 57-year old male who had been working as a career businessman for 28 years at a major electronic communication equipment company. He had had several traumatic experiences concerning height, but without subsequently suffering from height phobia. The onset of his phobia was triggered by conflict situations of avoidance-approach 11 months preceding the treatment. He began to experience panic attacks whenever he was higher than the 5th floor of any kind of building. In addition, his acrophobia soon generalized to the situation of commuting on a crowded train between his company and home, and also walking on underground streets. Upon his visiting the author's clinic, he was given a minor tranquilizer, which released him from the secondary agoraphobia to some extent, but had no effect on his acrophobia. Then the procedure of desensitization was undertaken following his strong request for more effective treatment, and was completed in the extraordinarily short period of 8 days. Moreover, he initiated in vivo desensitization and achieved it within 24 days. Factors enabling such extreme brevity of treatment were speculated as being the symptomatology and the patient's traits. No complications such as social phobia or other neurotic symptoms, the relatively short duration of the disorder, and his high intelligence (including psychologicalmindedness) , and strong motivation for the treatment, were considered to have facilitated the treatment.
