Spurious and Actual Improvement in the Treatment of Preoccupying Thoughts by Thought-stopping

Two clients troubled by preoccupying thoughts were treated by a version of thought-stopping described by Wolpe (1969) which has been infrequently reported so far. The frequency of spontaneous intrusive thoughts as they occurred within sessions was found to be a useful measure of clinical outcome, but it is suggested that careful control and definition of variations in procedure is necessary in order to eliminate spurious results. Treatment was found to produce an improvement which was maintained at follow-up.