EEG Biofeedback Training:
A Journey Toward Personal Autonomy
Siegfried Othmer, Ph.D. April 1994
"If you are going to make a big jump in science, you
will very likely be unqualified to succeed by definition." James
D. Watson
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Two views of EEG biofeedback have been presented. One is oriented toward the remediation of pathology, based on established clinical categories of disorders, and the other is based on increasing the competence, versatility, and stability of the brain generally. The former is grounded in measured EEG anomalies, the other addresses known brain mechanisms. These mechanisms are either subcortical, or their location on cortex is known from neurophysiology or from direct experience with EEG biofeedback.
The orientation toward canonical disorders portends trench warfare against the prevailing medical establishment, disorder by disorder, drug by drug, and it portends contentious interactions with other health disciplines who consider their turf invaded. An orientation toward a general increase in brain competence and self-regulation is more appropriate to the underlying phenomenology, avoids the compartmentalization of mental disorders, and opens up the promise of benefit to the many who do not meet clinical criteria for "disorder" but can still manifestly be helped by the training. It augurs in a time of focus on health and peak functioning rather than on disease and disorder; an orientation toward education rather than toward treatment. It establishes a new modality which is congenial to those already trained in the field of clinical and educational psychology. It particularly avoids the turf issue (vis-a-vis M.D.'s) of whether psychologists shall diagnose mental disorders on the basis of physiological measures such as the EEG.
We have presented above, in the most concise way we know how, a more comprehensive vision of EEG biofeedback, which will hope fully empower the clinician to wrest this technique from the hands of the exclusively left-brained researchers and make it his own. There is no need to be intimidated by the EEG. The combination of existing clinical wisdom with this tool is revolutionary in its implications for the future of mental health, and for the intellectual journey that we are all on. At its best, biofeedback aids function, not merely dysfunction. In the hands of the humane clinician, it gives flight to the soul.
"Tradition teaches that soul lies midway between understanding and unconsciousness, and that its instrument is neither the mind nor the body, but imagination. I understand therapy as nothing more than bringing imagination to areas that are devoid of it, which then must express themselves by becoming symptomatic." - Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
References
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Murray, G.B. (1981). Complex Partial Seizures, from Manschreck, T.C. (ed), Psychiatric Medicine Update, pp. 103-118. New York: Elsevier.
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