 Robert Todd Carroll
Unorthodox Therapy in New Orleans Raises Concern by Alix Spiegel NPR 3/30/06
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thought field therapyThought field therapy (TFT) is a New Age psychotherapy dressed up in the garb of traditional Chinese medicine. It was developed in 1981 by Dr. Roger Callahan, a cognitive psychologist. While treating a patient for water phobia:
Callahan attributes the cure to the tapping, which he thinks unblocked "energy" in her stomach meridian. I don't know how Callahan got the idea that tapping on a particular point would have anything to do with relieving a phobia, but he claims he has developed taps for just about anything that ails you, including a set of taps that can cure malaria (NPR interview). TFT allegedly "gives immediate relief for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD ), addictions, phobias, fears, and anxieties by directly treating the blockage in the energy flow created by a disturbing thought pattern. It virtually eliminates any negative feeling previously associated with a thought."* The theory behind TFT is that negative emotions cause energy blockage and if the energy is unblocked then the fears will disappear. Tapping acupressure points is thought to be the means of unblocking the energy. Allegedly, it only takes five to six minutes to elicit a cure. Dr. Callahan claims an 85% success rate. He even does cures over the phone using "Voice Technology" on infants and animals; by analyzing the voice he claims he can determine what points on the body the patient should tap for treatment. For $145 and one day of your time, Dr. Callahan's staff will train you to successfully treat people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, trauma, phobias and addictions. The training is restricted to "licensed or certified mental health, medical professionals, social workers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, or homeopathic physicians actively employed in their field." For $280 and two days of your time, Dr. Callahan's staff will train you to also successfully treat people with obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and panic attacks. For $100,000 you can take Voice Technology Training and have the whole world as your clientele:
Dr. Callahan has a theory that thoughts have fields and these fields have an effect on the body. He also claims that there is a one-to-one correspondence (isomorphism) between perturbations caused by negative emotions and specific energy meridian points on the body. He claims to know the exact algorithm (where to tap) for each kind of perturbation. How he knows any of this is not clear, though it appears he made up the theory to fit with ancient Chinese beliefs in chi and meridians, and he seems to have figured out the algorithms by trial and error. He seems not to have done any controlled studies to rule out confirmation bias and self-deception. He relies on anecdotes to support his beliefs and hence he cannot be sure that the effects he observes are not due to standard cognitive therapy techniques (including having the patient think about what frightens him or her) rather than to the tapping on particular pressure points. Monica Pignotti says she took Callahan's training and became a believer but then did a controlled experiment in which she treated half her patients with taps on the places taught by Callahan and the other half by tapping at random places. She says she got the same (good) results with both groups, which suggests that the power of suggestion (the placebo effect) is what is really at work here. According to psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld, "there's virtually no research whatsoever in published journals [on TFT]. Almost all of the supposed research rests on anecdotes, case studies, testimonials, or, in a few cases, controlled studies that are so poorly done as to be almost not interpretable." James Herbert, a psychology professor at Drexel University, claims that the "scientific status of thought field therapy is basically nonexistent" and there is "no evidence it does what it claims to do." Callahan seems to have discovered what shamans and witch doctors have known for ages. Bob Park explains very simply and clearly how the placebo effect works in contexts like TFT:
Like the folk healers of old, Callahan thinks it is his magic that is effecting cures at lightning speed. That his cures are long-lasting is dubious because there is a lack of follow-up studies to support this notion. One lady on the NPR program whose anxiety was relieved temporarily by TFT blamed herself for the lack of lasting peace of mind. She wasn't tapping herself enough, she said. See also acupuncture, chi, EMDR, Occam's razor, and yin and yang. further reading
Park, Robert L. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford U. Press, 2000). |
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©copyright 2005 Robert Todd Carroll |
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updated 12/03/07 |
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