EFT---a whole new woo

Well, I have been a physicist -- and he's full of it. The trick is the play on words: "energy" is a precise term of art in physics, and "energy" is a freely used term for feeling good, and "energy" is a borrowed term used for what might have been called magic in more honest times. Shell games with the different uses for the same sequence of sounds is a classic trick for scammers of all kinds.

What is EFT?

An eft is an immature newt.

What D. C. Sessions said. It's a classic, perhaps even prototypical, example of woo equivocation. "Linear" is another word which gets this treatment: the precise mathematical meaning of a linear equation or a linear ordering on a set is conflated with "linear thought", a vaguely-defined thing to which some kind of "non-linear thinking" is deemed superior. What's really funny is when quantum physics is trotted out as "postmodern non-linear science", when the Schrödinger Equation is in fact a linear differential equation.

Making up your own words or using old ones in a new way is one thing. Leeching off the credibility of established, useful terminology is something else.

An eft is an immature newt.

Ah, but you see that's backwards. Where an eft precedes a newt, EFT supercedes Newtonian physics.

"How do you know she is a witch?"

"She turned me into a Newtonian!"

". . ."

"I got better. Relatively speaking."

If you check out the EFT website, somewhere amidst the nonsense they also admit that in Gary Craig's "own studies" he realized it didn't even matter where you tapped, as long as you tap yourself somewhere. So those magic meridians aren't so magic, eh? But that self tapping must be mighty powerful.
You can download their manual for free on the site, and it is just chock full of babble & miraculous recovery tales.
I don't know what to make of the list of papers listed in the "research" section.

If you check out the EFT website, somewhere amidst the nonsense they also admit that in Gary Craig's "own studies" he realized it didn't even matter where you tapped, as long as you tap yourself somewhere.

And so we come back around to bleeding the patient.

Deepak Chopra's stare from the upper-right corner scared me away immediately.

Nothing new about this one. I had some quack try to get me to do it back in the 20th century. There I am having delusions about random strangers stalking me and intending to attack me, and he wants me to start drawing attention to myself by chanting and tapping myself. But I'm the person with the problem. I'm the noncompliant patient. Feh.

Like orthomolecular psychiatry,EFT often finds its target audience among the SMI and their families: easy ways to deal with the serious,complex issues of mental illness.-Imagine if you can, someone with schizophrenia assure you that it's only an imbalance of vitamins or energy patterns...*and* they've found someone who can supply this re-balancing,eshewing all of those nasty pharmaceuticals,day programs,hospitals etc...and they have such *rapport*,as neither the client not the "therapist" actually believes in mental illness- but I digress:seriously,I wonder if the promulgators of these "therapies" actually (if they have sufficient person perception skills)*planned* it as such, because it seems to fit the deficiencies/tendencies of the SMI so well.

Simply stated, it is an emotional version of acupuncture except needles aren't necessary.

I'm sure it's every bit as effective as acupuncture too.

emotional version of acupuncture? by tapping certain places on your body? training for $600? what in the hell lends that a shadow of legitimacy?

i can't believe people buy into this crap.

"...that is why EFT often works where nothing else will."

When you have an invented problem, nothing works quite so well as an invented cure. "Studies find that the blue placebo scares off just as many evil spirits as the red placebo, without all that nasty redness. Buy blue today!"

I once fell for this sort of woo. Well, the ones where they invented enough sciency-sounding language to pacify me. Until I learned how to tell the difference between "science" and "sciency-sounding."

The unfortunate effect was that because placebo A worked on psychosomatic pain A, I also took placebo B for physical disorder B. Eventually physical disorder B put me in the hospital. It turns out woomeisters are not qualified to (or simply don't) differentiate between real problems and invented ones.

i am a physicist. it irks me greatly when woomeisters mix up scientific definitions with the colloquial or woomeister versions to spread crap remedies.

energy is one of the most overabused concepts. grr.

i think my meridians are getting entangled!

But it sounds so cozy and touch-feely.

EFT is not simply the brainchild of Gary Craig, but a derivative of Roger Callahan's TFT (thought field therapy). In pure psychoilogical sense, this is nothing more than CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). There have been a couple of legitimate studies attempted to examine its efficacy, but mostly it is practiced by new thought adherents and practitioners of dubious qualifications. Monica Pignotti, a formwe LCSW and now post-graduate candidate at FSU has a good blog outlining most of the politics and history of these topics.

Monica Pignotti

EFT sounds like a great alternative to conventional therapy for physical and emotional stress, especially for people who don't want to spend a lot of money on treatment. I just found a book that details even more techniques you can do on your own. It's called No Open Wounds-Heal Traumatic Stress Now. The focus of this book is all about Traumatic Stress but you can use the treatments to heal yourself for Phobias, Anxiety, etc.

Plus EFT is blessed with a stalker called Monica Pignotti.

She is a true Scientology intimidator and is very active attacking TFT, EFT and anything that she has tried and failed at in her career.

What I've found is that any alternative medicine usually attracts the nuts - and Monica Pignotti is a great one to look up... he scientology story is almost as good as Mr. Hubbard's version

Wrong. I did not "fail" at TFT. I was considered one of the leading most highly trained proponents until I did a controlled study showing that Callahan's $100,000 VT was not as claimed and published it in a peer reviewed journal. Too bad you're so far into woo that you cannot tell the difference between critical thinking and stalking. My involvement with Scientology was 33 years ago and it is about the only cheap shot the true believers have to take against me. The difference between you and I, Helen, is that my involvement with pseudoscientific practices is in the past, whereas yours appears to be in the present.

Oh and one more thing you might not be aware of, Helen. I don't recommend either TFT or EFT but if someone is determined to try it, I do not hesitate to recommend EFT over TFT because at least the manual can be downloaded for free and unlike TFT, there are no expensive trade secrets. With TFT people can have their pocketbooks drained by Callahan's overpriced VT that he charges clients $600 per hour for. I had a student that wanted to try tapping therapies and since she was determined and was going to do it regardless, I recommended she download the EFT manual for free and hold onto her pocketbook. That said, both are making claims that go far beyond the evidence for all kinds of conditions, including physical conditions and that, I do not approve of. Calling me a "nut" doesn't change this one iota, Helen.

Oops.. cybernut Monica Pignotti has arrived.

She reminds me of Debra Frisch (http://debfrischtimeline.blogspot.com/ )

Sorry about my comment attracting her here. She seems to have a lot of time on her hands - isn't she supposed to be working at the Florida State University. If you watch her, she spends all day commenting in Google groups and other sites. Great use of employers computer and time.

Calling me a "cybernut" doesn't make it so and is nothing more than an ad hominem. I have numerous legitimate scholarly criticisms published on the therapies I criticize. You also jump to unwarranted conclusions about whose computer I use to post -- I use my own since, like many people in the scholarly community, I do a good percentage of my work from home and no, it does not take me more than a few minutes to dash off a response to people. Your propensity to jump to unwarranted conclusions, the same one that likely led you into promoting pseudoscience, is showing.

The ones who seem to have a lot of time on their hands are the cyberstakers who are concocting elaborate photoshopped images and creating multiple blogs and posting to over 180 different newsgroups (I don't even come close to that volume) as part of an ongoing disinformation campaign against me by people who don't like the fact I have criticized their favorite pseudoscientific interventions.

I'm also highly amused that a proponent of a ridiculous tapping therapy that makes all kinds of ridiculous claims would call me a "cybernut" when she is the one who came in on this website, critical of the therapy she so vigorously tries to defend, with lame attacks on critics. Speaking of amusing, here's a great website that spoofs tapping therapies:

http://www.tappingforcash.com/

so the joke is on you, "helen" because the therapies you call me a "nut" for criticizing are the laughingstock of the internet, it would seem.

Wow... Monica replies to herself. Over and over again.

Good catch Helen.

Monica is really someone else: Psycho.

http://www.google.com/webhp?spell=1#hl=en&source=hp&q=deborah+frisch

There is no Monica Pignotti - she's a sock-puppet

Wrong. I am honest and up front about my identity. You, on the other hand are not. Now who's the anonymous coward? Not I. I have never been anything less than honest and up front about my identity. Your attempt to identify me with someone else who I have never had the least bit of anything to do with is lame. And for the record, I have never, ever sued anyone in my life. You must really feel threatened of my criticism of your bogus therapies to keep coming back here and ranting about me and if you look back on this thread, you will find that the reason I was brought onto it was through a favorable mention of my work by Citizen Deux who wrote "Monica Pignotti, a former LCSW and now post-graduate candidate at FSU has a good blog outlining most of the politics and history of these topics." That obviously really set you off. Guess your tapping quackery doesn't work for you.

You can learn EFT off a you tube clip for free and use it at your own leisure so I hardly think it's a money making scam. I think the point is that many illnesses can be relieved by looking at possible emotional blocks that may have stiffled our bodies energy flow and emotional growth. I helped my mum release a heap of child hood crap she was holding onto and making her more and more sick. No one is demanding cynics use the technique. Basically anyone who has had results from EFT only wants to share the easement in emotional or physical pain they felt....so sue them those evil dogooders!....whether or not it is a quanitfiable technique is irrelevant if it helps people in anyway and it's free and very easy. Maybe you could do some "tapping" on your negativity and fear of the unknown.

A sure sign of woo is when someone advises critics to use the technique being questioned to rid themselves of their "negativity" towards the technique. To promoters of woo, criticism and anything less than complete unquestioning gullibility equals "negativity" and "cynics". Such purveyors of woo don't stop to consider that perhaps it is they who have a negative attitude towards critical thinking, which is actually a very positive, life-enhancing skill.

And no, tapping techniques are not always "free and easy". What we often see is a bait and switch. When the "free" things don't work, which is more often than they'd care to admit, people are directed to practitioners who are more than happy to take your money.

Monica always has the last word,.. in fact, if you look around you'll see she talks to herself on most newwsgroups and blogs.

Once you've attracted Monica Pignotti, she's like a bad rash - impossible to get rid of.

I really agree with Helen, Monica is most likely Deborah Frisch... google the names and you'll see both can't find work because of their internet activities. Who's hire such a s nut that spends her days trolling online.

False, I have had no problem finding work and there are plenty of people more than happy to hire me. I am respected for my scholarly criticism and have never sued anybody. I am not Frisch. I don't even know who she is. You don't know me and I suspect it is your same propensity to jump to unwarranted conclusions that allows you get suckered into bogus therapies.

I see that clicking on "Jim"'s name links to a libelous posting about me. Jim is the one who is the online stalker, spreading lies about me, not I, so it is ironic he would try to flip this. I was not fired from FSU and I have impeccable references from FSU who will prove it to anyone with a legitimate reason to request such a reference. The only reason I left FSU was because I graduated and I left in good standing in every way. Graduates tend to leave the institutions they graduate from, not because they were "fired" but because they graduated. Duh.

If you want me to "go away", it's very simple. Stop posting lies about me that I have to refute because I have every right to protect my reputation. The only reason I come back here is that your lies are coming up on web searches on my name. You're the stalker here, not I.

If you look at the original posting of this blog entry, you'll see that it was a highly critical posting on EFT. Strange that you would focus your attacks on me, when the original poster, who I happen to agree with, was quite critical to begin with. The truth is that you have no rebuttal to the substance of my criticism against tapping therapies, hence your need to personally attack me.