Behavior therapy holds to an educational model of human development combined with adherence to scientific methodology. In treating abnormal and/or maladaptive behavior, this approach pays little attention to the client's prior thought and unconscious conflicts, but instead focuses on present causes of behavior and treats unwanted behavior differently according to different clients' needs.

Though its basic hypothesis remains unchanged since the 1900's, continuing behavioral research has brought four main types of behavior therapy:

1. Applied behavior analysis - sees behavior as a function of its consequences, focusing on actual behavior rather than cognitive processes. This approach uses behavior modification techniques of stimulus control, reinforcement, punishment, and extinction.

2. Neurobehavioristic stimulus-response - concerned with extinguishing the cause or causes of anxiety through systematic desensitization and covert conditioning. This assumes that the same laws of learning apply to both overt and covert processes

3. Social learning theory - stresses mediational processes, external stimuli, and external reinforcement, and sees current behaviors, cognitive processes, and environment as coming together to influence behavior. The treatment for environmental factors causing unwanted behavior depends on cognitive processes affected by environmental events. Here, the client decides which behaviors to change, using his/or her own self-directing abilities.

4. Cognitive-behavior modification - aims at cognitive restructuring, a process for understanding how the client interprets experiences affecting his/or her behavior. This approach emphasizes altering irrational ideas, perceptions, and interpretation of individual experience.

A client's commitment to change, along with effective client/counselor interaction, determine success in behavior therapy. The client is an active participant, encouraged to choose and set goals. The first job of the counselor is to identify the existing concern. Therefore, assessment techniques such as psychological tests, behavioral observations, self-reports, monitoring, role playing, and guided imagery may be used. Treatment techniques may include training in social skills, assertiveness training, self-control exercises such as progressive relaxation and biofeedback, and performance-based techniques applied outside therapy (for example, behavior modification programs used in classrooms).