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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 4 of 4. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by pseudoname on March 29, 2006, at 11:15:39
Thought Field Therapy will be covered in a segment of this (Wednesday) afternoon's “All Things Considered” radio news/magazine show on NPR. The clip in the promo for it was hostile.
The show airs from about 4PM to about 7PM in most markets on public broadcasting stations. Find a station: http://www.npr.org/templates/stations/schedule/index.php
After 7:30 Eastern tonight, the segment will be be online. (After today, click through to the Wed, 3/29/06 broadcast) http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/
Posted by pseudoname on March 29, 2006, at 17:23:09
In reply to Thought-Field Therapy on radio today, posted by pseudoname on March 29, 2006, at 11:15:39
Audio archive & diagram of TFT: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5309328
It was mostly about how thought field therapy practitioners have gone into the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina to help people who are having emotional problems. Charity Hospital in N.O. trained 87 (!) staff members in TFT. The woman who coordinated it was “inundated” with positive reports about it, even the hospital CEO had some sessions he said were “beneficial”.
Roger Callahan, who developed TFT, said the most severe cases of major depression, anxiety, and phobias can be completely cured in *one* 15-minute session. It's hard to believe he actually meant that, but it's right there on the tape. (He also says, right there on the tape, that he just cured a case of malaria with TFT.)
Of course, if TFT actually worked, the fact that its creator makes extreme, undocumented claims for it shouldn't be held against it.
NPR taped a patient's first session getting TFT, a former nurse who had been suffering from sleeplessness, anxiety, and nighttime bingeing since the hurricane. The report described the tapping session. As instructed, the patient “stood, silently conjuring her private image of despair,” and she tapped various places on her body in sequence as the TFT therapist told her. She reported being relaxed. After 10 minutes of this, the therapist declared the therapy over and said her anxiety and depression would trouble her no more. The patient sounded relieved.
Then NPR came back several months later. The patient reported that several week after her TFT session, her anxiety and bingeing returned and persist to the present day. Amazingly, she still says the TFT sessions were successful. Despite the fact that TFT is supposed to cure people in one 15-minute session, the patient BLAMED HERSELF for the treatment failure, saying “I’m probably not a good patient.” She sounded really down about it.
That is *so* disturbing. Probably mostly because I've thought that way myself.
The report had a lot of quotes from Monica Pignotti (whom I've mentioned on Babble before). She was a highly advanced TFT practitioner, trained by Roger Callahan himself in his $100,000 secret voice technology course. But as she continued practicing TFT, she became skeptical of her own results. She developed her own controlled study to test the efficacy of TFT tapping points versus random “sham” tapping points. Both sham and real TFT had the same 97% (!) success rate. So Pignotti concluded that the “field tapping” ritual — the only thing that makes TFT unique — is just a highly suggestive placebo.
Callahan, who was also interviewed on the segment, dismissed Pignotti's conclusions. He said, “You don't take people from the depths of despair and depression in a few minutes... by any kind of placebo. I think most of the placebo talk is nonsense.” At least in the radio report, he didn't say how he then accounted for the success of Pignotti's sham group, though.
Both Pignotti and the other skeptic featured, James Herbert, emphasized that the TFT practitioners are not *intentionally* trying to mislead anyone. They genuinely believe they are curing people with the tapping treatment. Pignotti said it is actually because the they so desperately want to help people that therapists have lost their objectivity and cling to TFT ideas.
The segment concluded with an ominous-sounding report that lots of TFT teams just came *back* into New Orleans.
Posted by Tabitha on March 30, 2006, at 1:53:38
In reply to NPR’s treatment, posted by pseudoname on March 29, 2006, at 17:23:09
Therapy is 90% placebo anyway, so why criticize a particular technique for being a placebo? Personally I think TFT and EMDR just provide a focusing ritual. I do think it works somehow, but I'd guess that different rituals are interchangeable, like that woman discovered with the "sham" tapping points. I think there have been similar EMDR-debunking experiments that removed the eye-movements from the sequence and got the same results as the 'official' technique.
Posted by pseudoname on March 30, 2006, at 10:36:47
In reply to Re: NPR’s treatment, posted by Tabitha on March 30, 2006, at 1:53:38
I guess the question for me is, are the practitioners of Thought Field Therapy doing harm more than they're helping?
The benefit is NOT permanent, as they claim, so that's misleading the consumer. Also, the tapping is irrelevant except as an exciting ritual, so that's misleading, too. But if being misled a little helps the patients to believe it initially so that they do get the temporary benefit, is that a bad thing?
I would have to say yes, it is a bad thing to mislead patients. Temporary relief from some symptoms, especially if it's only one time, is just not worth it.
The woman whose problems returned a few weeks after her TFT treatment ended up BLAMING HERSELF for that. She seems worse off because of TFT: she has her original problems PLUS she thinks she's a unique failure at doing therapy.
In the TFT described in that broadcast, it quickly resulted in more harm than help.
This is the end of the thread.
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