Introduction

Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is a self-administered, brief treatment that uses energy meridian treatment points and bilateral optical-cortical stimulation while focusing attention on the targeted negative emotion or symptom. TFT has been developed since 1980 by psychologist Roger Callahan, who treated 97% of 68 phobic patients successfully in an average treatment time of 4.34 min (Callahan, 1985). Callahan's uncontrolled study with treatments recorded in public view was replicated by psychologist Glenn Leonoff, with 97% success reported with 68 phobics in an average treatment time of 6.04 min (Leonoff, 1995).

Charles Figley and Joyce Carbonell noted that all of the newer therapies for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that they explored accelerated the therapy for trauma, in contrast to the lengthy traditional therapies. However, TFT was reported to be the most rapid treatment with comparable treatment success to the other new therapies:Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) treatment mean duration was 254 min, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) 172 min, Visual Kinesthetic Dissociation (VKD) 113 min, and TFT 63 min. More traditional therapies are estimated to take 1,200 to 18,000 min (20-300 hr of therapy)(Wylie, 1996).

In addition to phobias and traumas, TFT has been used clinically in the treatment of anxiety, addictions, anger, stress, obsessions, depression, jealousy, and other negative emotions. In addition to psychological diagnoses, TFT is now being applied to many other problems by physicians, naturopaths, chiropractors, dentists, acupuncturists, and other healing professionals. (Callahan & Callahan, 2000) The present uncontrolled study explores the range of problems amenable to treatment with TFT in the health care and behavioral health settings.