Psych 101

When dealing with clients, there are numerous clinical skills a psychologist has at her disposal. For example, I came across the technique described below while reading through one of my textbooks:

Spitting in the client's soup:
"When counselors determine that clients are getting a reward from maladaptive behavior, they may spoil the reward for clients by making them aware of the nature and consequences of this behavior"

Now the technique makes sense; by ruining someone's reward, it's not as reinforcing or satisfying and hopefully the client will be less likely to commit the maladaptive behavior.
So basically acting like a killjoy or your mom, may have some therapeutic value.

I'm really loving the name of the technique though, wonder how they chose that moniker as opposed to "Pissing in the client's corn flakes".