Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging experiments are under way to try to uncover what makes individuals buy under some circumstances and not others. This is of great interest at a time when market doctrines are becoming organizing principles for human societies—effectively our new “civic religion.” Psychologists are of course involved in those experiments. A remarkable assumption underlies these studies, namely that such phenomena can be understood essentially on the basis of individual behavior, rather than behavior of the individual embedded in a particular social context. We assume not only that the answer is contained within the subject’s brain, but also that the relevant information is available in imaging studies.

Consider the following example: On my frequent travels I often take the bus to the airport. The redcaps who load the luggage expect a tip, and typically get one. At the other end, the redcaps at the curb also expect a tip, and usually extract one. But what about the bus driver who pulls the luggage out of the bus? He is paid as a bus driver, not as a redcap. So does he get a tip? The expectation is not clear. What actually happens as the driver moves from stop to stop at the airport is the development of a pattern. If at the early stops no one (or only a few people) tip the driver, then that’s the way it is likely to go the rest of the trip. The pattern has been set. It’s ok if everybody saves his or her money. If, on the other hand, a slightly greater percentage of people at the first stop start whipping out their dollar bills, then this pattern begins to grow and dominate over succeeding stops. By the last stop, nearly everyone is ponying up. (more…)

It is now estimated that some 17% of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are plagued with lingering mental health issues that are not being well met within the VA system. Even if the intention were there to address these issues, the capability is not—neither financially nor technically. As we know, the reaction of the Veteran’s Administration to the work of Eugene Peniston was to move him to a desk job in Bonham, Texas, there to await his retirement. That is how management deals with inconvenient facts, and how established power snuffs out innovation. But we can help from where we sit.

There is an opportunity here for us, but also a real challenge. Since medical care is supposed to be available at no charge to our veterans, the government sets the bar on pricing irrespective of whether the required service is actually available. We have no choice but to meet the government’s price point. I therefore suggest that we collectively offer to treat veterans with neurofeedback at no charge. The most needy veterans right now are estimated to number around 2,000. That’s less than one per neurofeedback practitioner in the country, a number I estimate at about 6,000. But perhaps only about a third of practitioners will end up participating in this venture. On the other hand, not every veteran in need will actually arrive at our door. I expect that things will sort out in a way that each practitioner may end up with one or a few soldiers to work with. A practitioner may offer to treat just one at no charge, or perhaps just one at a time. In that manner, excess demand can be handled with a waiting list. (more…)

This week I thought I would simply share the data that I received from Leslie Hendrickson, and put together for the AAPB Poster. Collectively it makes the case for the Disregulation Model, in that it shows the systematic progression toward resolution of a wide variety of symptoms with a very limited set of protocols. In some instances, a subset of symptoms is initially resistant to remediation, and then shows improvement later. In these cases several different mechanisms must be operative. That is no surprise. What’s remarkable is the variety of symptoms that do respond to a simple, straight-forward self-regulation strategy, not that there are exceptions to this simple picture.

Leslie did not use neurofeedback alone. She also made nutritional suggestions when appropriate, and used homeopathic remedies as well. But our critics are even less likely to give homeopathy the credit than neurofeedback, so we have that base covered. And in one case Irlen lenses were provided at some point during the training process. This allows a distinction to be recognized between those symptoms that were correlated with the visual hyper-sensitivity and those that continued to depend on neurofeedback for resolution. (more…)

During the pre-conference period I had a chance to attend Daniel Kuhn’s workshop on erasing symptoms fixated by traumatic dissociation, in particular PTSD. Kuhn’s presentation had appeal for me in various respects. First of all, he found his way to the method from an academic origin in psychoanalysis, so this work represents a significant departure from his own beginnings. That sounds auspicious. Secondly, he applies the trauma erasure method both to major and minor traumas, seeing them both in the same terms, and as subject to the same rules. He refers to the “spectrum of PTSD”. We have similarly used the term “the penumbra of trauma” to describe the extension of the PTSD model to even minor traumas. Thirdly, he employs the memory model to describe both the original establishment of the trauma and the subsequent resolution. Fourth, he recognizes that quick resolution of the traumatic impact of the original event is possible, and that verbal techniques focusing just on the causative event can have favorable consequences that then generalize. This is similar to our own observation of the transformative experience, in our case observed randomly during the alpha-theta process. Finally, Kuhn is aware that early traumas can energize and enlarge later traumas through a process of concatenation in the physiological realm, and leading to a progressive kindling of the trauma response.

Daniel Kuhn became a traumatologist by virtue of his experience in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, in which he volunteered to serve as a young psychiatrist. He had been born in Israel but had subsequently come to the United States, where he received his medical training. The war caught Israel in a state of relative unpreparedness, and soldiers found themselves woefully under-trained and unequipped for the battlefield. The resulting sense of betrayal and low morale probably led to much more PTSD than would be expected in a battle-ready force. For his part, Kuhn was also confronted with novelty. PTSD was not yet under discussion, although terms such as shell shock and battlefield psychosis covered the bases. Lengthy psychoanalysis was out of the question as a remedy. And the idea of brain plasticity was not yet available to lay the foundation for devising a remedy. Nevertheless, in the urgency of the moment, Kuhn developed his very efficient method of verbally exposing the radioactive material and of leading the person to drain the experience of its subversive grip. (more…)

We just returned from our Advanced Training Course in Dallas, Texas, which was unusual because it was not populated largely by people who had come through our own Introductory Training Course at some time in the past. This made for a more lecture-oriented course than usual, and it also provided more of an engagement with the QEEG-based perspective on NF training. Jonathan Walker was in attendance, and it is well-known that he has gradually moved over time from the protocol-based training that he did originally to more exclusively QEEG-directed NF. This fruitful interaction at the training course makes this once again a topic for our newsletter.

Dr. Walker indicated that he has largely moved away from training according to power anomalies in the QEEG to training coherence anomalies. With that shift, he is also seeing more systematic changes in the QEEG that are consistent with training objectives. (We have gotten a similar message from Joe Horvat, who also trains coherence.) Nevertheless, the idea of adjusting training on the basis of in-session reports was foreign to him. After all, he does not do the hands-on training himself, so the whole notion that a single session could yield useful, observable change was a novelty. (more…)

We are living through the messy business of a new scientific revolution becoming established, and in the process we stand in awe of the scientific pillars and edifices of the status quo with which we have to contend. It seems like a David and Goliath kind of mismatch. Thus it was exceedingly satisfying to read an article by Alex Spiegel in the New Yorker recently, dealing with the messy history by which the Diagnostic Statistical Manual became established within American psychiatry. Read about it and you will feel better.

Imagine that the person most responsible for cementing the legitimacy of the DSM, Robert Spitzer, got his start in the mental health field by undergoing therapy that involved Wilhelm Reich’s orgone box. Somehow either the box or the accompanying therapy helped him to tame his anxiety, and to come to terms with his turbulent inner life, which was compelled to cohabit with his repressed affect. Resolution lay in a rational exploration of the “wilderness of the emotions.” Ultimately Spitzer helped to discredit Reich, and the FDA relied upon his paper among others in their persecution of Reich and his prosecution for fraud. (more…)