Why does a person feel the need to use that type of approach at all?

Offhand, I'd say that maybe the person has a certain amount of discomfort with the behavior a sufferer presents, and wants to make it go away. I can see that this kind of approach might have value if done with exceeding care and self-awareness, but it could also slip very easily into abuse. I feel this is true of most "treatments" that I see in psychiatry these days: whose symptoms are being addressed, the patient's, or the therapizer's? Is the purpose of a treatment to reveal, to open up -- or to conceal, to suppress, symptoms? Must the patient's fears and bad memories be recaptured, brought into the light, or must expression of them be avoided -- in whose interests? Are we protecting the patient, or the one giving "therapy"? My impression of "behavioral" treatments, the ones that permanently avoid delving into the past, is that it is primarily the latter, the "therapizer" who wants to avoid confronting his/her own fears. This may not be necessarily so, but I think without a high order of mindfulness, of awareness of the therapist's own motives, therapy can slip from true healing to merely covering over the patient's distress (temporarily) -- all in the name, of course, of "helping" (somebody).