Clinical Biofeedback: Learned Control or Attention Placebo

Reviews the book, Evaluation of Clinical Biofeedback by William J. Ray, James M. Raczynski, Todd Rogers, and William H. Kimball (1979). It was the authors' intent that this book provide an exhaustive review of the published studies of clinical biofeedback from 1967 to 1977. The review was conducted in order to examine the following questions: (a) To what extent is biofeedback an active ingredient in the therapy process? Apart from placebo or "nonspecific" effects, what unique contribution does biofeedback make? (b) Is biofeedback the most efficient, cost effective therapy approach for a given problem? (c) What is the role of biofeedback in changing conceptualizations toward patient-doctor relationships? What the authors have presented is well organized, well written, and well presented. Unfortunately, they did not go quite far enough. The book may be a useful reference source to the researcher, but it does not offer much for the clinician. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)