systematic desensitization

British  

noun

1. psychol a treatment of phobias in which the patient while relaxed is exposed, often only in imagination, to progressively more frightening aspects of the phobia

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Example Sentences

Chief among these techniques is "systematic desensitization," the process a mother uses when she accustoms a baby to the ocean by dipping in one foot first, then a leg, then the infant's whole body.

From Time Magazine Archive