GENERAL AND SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS OF THERMAL BIOFEEDBACK

Abstract

When the work above was conducted, Green and his group were thinking ofprocesses underlying development of voluntary control, not how to deal with health problems. Their program was initially named the Voluntary Controls Program reflecting their interest in the volitional aspects of human potential His concept of empowerment became more clinically relevant when the following events (described in the next few papers) unfolded, opening a doorway to empowerment in health care. Decades later, we have only begun to cross the open threshold of this doorway. We remain restrained-from realizing the foil potential of what has been opened for us-by societal forces that turn us toward interventions such as medications and surgery, rather than toward taking charge ofour own health. We will return to this theme later, but first let us see just how the focus became more clinical. Elmer and Alyce summarize some of the events that led to this conceptual change in the following sections from their book chapter in Biofeedback: Principles and Practice

for Clinicians Oohn V. Basmajian, Ed., 1st Edition, The Williams and Wilkins Co., Baltimore, MD, 1979). [Eds.}