Flooding (psychology)

Flooding is a psychotherapeutic technique used to help patients heal their traumatic memories. It works by exposing the patient to their painful memories, with the goal of reintegrating their repressed emotions with their current awareness.

'Flooding' is an effective form of treatment for phobias amongst other psychopathologies. It works on the behaviourist principles of classical conditioning. According to classical conditioning we learn through associations so if we have a phobia it is because we associate the feared object or stimulus with something negative.

If we were using flooding to treat a phobia we would expose a person to vast amounts of the feared stimulus. E.g. if a person was scared of spiders we might lock them in a room full of spiders. The idea is that whilst a person will be initially very anxious, the body cannot stay anxious forever. When nothing bad happens the person will begin to calm down and so from that moment on associate a feeling of calm with the previously feared object.

Psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe carried out an experiment which demonstrated flooding. He took a girl who was scared of cars, locked her in a car and drove her around for hours. Initially the girl was hysterical but she eventually calmed down when she realised that nothing bad was happening to her. From then on she associated a sense of ease with cars.

Flooding was invented by a psychologist named Thomas Stampfl.