The Method of Factors is a technique in cognitive behavioral therapy to organise a session of exposure therapy

Exposure therapy

Exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy intended to treat anxiety disorders and involves the exposure to the feared object or context without any danger in order to overcome their anxiety. Procedurally it is similar to the fear extinction paradigm in rodent work...

. Rather than generating a list of objects or situations in advance ( a static hierarchy

Exposure hierarchy

In Exposure Therapy, a hierarchy is a graded list of stimuli that will generate an escalating level of arousal, for the purpose of producing habituation....

) representing escalating levels of arousal and intensity of fear for a particular phobia

Phobia

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational...

, the Method of Factors involves identifying a fear-provoking stimulus, then identifying those features of the stimulus that control the intensity of fear. The hierarchy

Hierarchy

A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...

then emerges in the course of the exposure session as the patient seeks to maintain a moderately high arousal. Because of this emergent nature, it is referred to as a Dynamic Hierarchy

Recommended Reading

Brady A, Raines D (2010) Dynamic hierarchies: a control system paradigm for exposure therapy. The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, 2, 51-62 http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1754470X0800010X|doi:10.1017/S1754470X0800010X