Roger Callahan

Professional Life
Roger J. Callahan is the founder of Thought Field Therapy. He studied at the University of Michigan and earned his degree in clinical psychology from Syracuse University. He has served as president of the American Academy of Psychologists in Marital and Family Therapy, as well as president of the Michigan Society of School Psychologists. Callahan was a professor at Eastern Michigan University, Syracuse University, and the University of Michigan. He was a research psychologist at Michigan’s Wayne County Training School and currently serves at the American Academy of Psychotherapists Treating Addiction as a fellow. He has been in private practice for decades as a clinical psychologist and has taught his Thought Field Therapy throughout the world and has authored numerous books on the subject. Callahan is on the board for the Association for Thought Field Therapy and maintains a facility in La Quinta, California.

Contribution to Psychology
Thought Field Therapy (TFT) was developed by Dr. Roger Callahan and draws on the body’s own energy field to relieve negative symptoms and emotions through a series of tapping movements. By identifying the healing code within the body, Callahan claims that TFT can help alleviate problematic situations when other treatments fail. Callahan states that TFT can address issues such as trauma, depression, anxiety, fear, stress, smoking cessation, and even weight loss. TFT is delivered through a series of tapping movements, aimed at targeted meridian points on the body, specifically in the hands and the upper body. Callahan believes that a person creates a specific thought for each experience, and by accessing the thought field associated with that particular experience, the thought, or emotion, can be changed, thus transforming negative feelings into positive feelings in minutes.

Callahan calls the information in the thought field “perturbations,” and states that these are directly related to a person’s thought about a specific problem. He believes that the perturbations are the source of the negative feelings and emotions and each perturbation is linked to a specific meridian point. He insists that tapping the related meridian point removes the energy block, thus allowing the healing energy to flow freely and the negative emotion or thought to dissipate. He claims that TFT can alleviate many psychological issues and can also be used for the treatment of physical ailments, including atrial fibrillation. Specifically, Callahan has attested that certain psychological conditions could be cured using TFT in treatments as short as five minutes. There is little scientific data to support the effectiveness of TFT and its validity has been largely debated within the mental health field.