No Deus ex Machina

Biofeedback was once hailed as "the single greatest development in the history of psychology." The development of new machines in the '60s offered the possibility of monitoring one's own brain waves, heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature and other involuntary body functions. The theory: the buzzes, lights or other indicators of biofeedback machines instantly report the body's reaction to thoughts or feelings. Once a patient discovers, for example, which feelings or tensions are associated with a warning buzz or light in the machine, he can learn by trial and error to shift his thoughts or relax his tensions and thereby avoid the warning.

Suddenly, all things seemed possible. Joe Kamiya, a pioneer of biofeedback training, thought "people will soon control phobias and anxieties." Psychopharmacologist Barbara Brown (New Mind, New Body) predicted a drastic drop in the use of medication and the number of hospitals within a decade. Among other heady predictions: biofeedback would eliminate the need for psychotherapy, provide a foolproof birth control method (by teaching males to lower their scrotal temperatures), produce superathletes, prove the reality of ESP and enable mankind to solve problems during sleep by "programming dreams."

Mixed Results. With that kind of buildup, a letdown was almost inevitable. "Impossible expectations have been raised," Physiological Psychologist Neal Miller of Rockefeller University, a leader in feedback research, told a New York symposium last week. Indeed, actual gains have been modest. Researchers have helped some incontinent patients to gain control of their urination and defecation through biofeedback. Among other researchers, Dr. John Basmajian, a professor of anatomy and rehabilitation medicine at Emory University, reports success in eliminating foot drop -- difficulty in raising the foot while walking -- though efforts to extend the technique to cerebral palsy victims have failed.

The most common experiments -- to lower blood pressure and end migraine headaches -- have had mixed results. Biofeedback clearly can affect blood pressure. In one experiment, baboons were trained to maintain a large increase in pressure for 40 days. However, attempts to lower human blood pressure have generally not been significant or lasting outside the laboratory. Despite claims of 80% success, migraine research has been a headache for some biofeedback experimenters because of the placebo effect -- a certain number of ailments vanish, not as a result of biofeedback but simply because the patient has faith in the method. Says Miller: "Many of these headaches would have disappeared if the patients were treated with extract of watermelon."

The inflated hopes for biofeedback may have been related to the growth of interest in Eastern mysticism. Glowingly described by fans as "electronic yoga," biofeedback seemed to offer inner exploration without drugs, religion or psychotherapy. The revelation that biofeedback machines could monitor the brain's alpha waves -- associated with relaxation and meditation -- led to the proliferation of "alpha" institutes and training centers, many of them now defunct. "Getting high on alpha" peaked in 1973, when some colleges offered credit for alpha experience.

Limited Acceptance. One problem was that "electronic yoga" was upstaged by other marketable versions of yoga -- Transcendental Meditation, for example -- that do not require relatively expensive machines. Another has been the sheer quackery of some promoters who were quick to jump on the biofeedback bandwagon, and the limitations of the equipment for home use. According to Brain Researcher Robert Ornstein, "Commercial machines are not good enough to get alpha feedback, and certainly wouldn't help a person much. They might be fun."

With the faddish phase of biofeedback over, serious researchers are continuing to inch ahead, recording small but solid gains and winning limited acceptance from the medical establishment. In Ornstein's words, biofeedback still "needs a lot of work." Says Thomas Mulholland, former president of the Bio-Feedback Research Society and head of the Psychophysiology Laboratory at the Bedford, Mass., Veterans Administration Hospital: "It is one technique, and not the kind that will lead to a great theoretical breakthrough. I would say biofeedback will have arrived when it is unobtrusive again and taken for granted as one method in the stream."

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