Therapies for arachnophobia typically involve exposure—the more you face something, the less frightening it becomes. But what if someone is so afraid of spiders that even imagining them is too much to handle? These researchers came up with a new strategy: just expose people to things that kind of look like spiders. Participants were given a CD containing a slideshow of images ranging from the Atomium in Brussels to a Rastafarian, which they were instructed to watch twice a day for a month. Apparently, the approach worked — six months later, “six patients of [the 13-patient treatment] group opened the lid of the tarantula cage, and, of these, three touched the tarantula.”
We describe a new arachnophobia therapy that is specially suited for those individuals with severe arachnophobia who are reluctant to undergo direct or even ...
