When a client is treated with behavioral therapy founded on classical conditioning ideas, then the main focus is primarily to enable the client to unlearn connections learned previously between a certain stimulus and a maladaptive reaction. The point of this therapy is to teach the client new ways of dealing with an issue, such as helping a client to learn a positive response or to reduce old pleasure-producing, yet at the same time damaging habits.

Counter-conditioning is one form of classical conditioning therapy, and it is founded on the idea that a maladaptive response is decreased or removed by instituting another incompatible reaction. This is because two incompatible behaviors are not able to exist together at the same time, which is useful for taking away old undesirable behaviors and replacing them with desirable ones.