UNEARTHING THE NONASSOCIATIVE ORIGINS OF FEARS AND PHOBIAS - A REJOINDER

In recent years numerous disagreements and controversies have ensued o ver the place of Pavlovian or associative conditioning in the etiology of specific phobias and other fear-related clinical syndromes. A majo r source of disagreement emerged from clinical observations suggesting that environmental aversive conditioning events could nor be identifi ed for many specific phobias. Pan of the controversy can also be trace d to disagreements over what constitutes a direct conditioning event a nd over what exactly is being conditioned in phobic acquisition. More fundamental, however, is confusion over the critical process variables involved in the conditioning etiology of human phobias and fear-relat ed clinical syndromes. We address some of the recent controversies sur rounding associative conditioning accounts of phobic onset in light of recent proposals that nonassociative factors account for the etiology of many specific phobias. The viability of the nonassociative positio n is questioned and alternatives are suggested that emphasize the comp lex and multifaceted processes involved in the etiology of specific ph obias. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.