TFT was invented and developed by Dr Roger Callahan, one of America's most distinguished and experienced clinical psychologists. After using conventional therapies like behaviour therapy for thirty years Callahan was dissatisfied with their poor results and became interested in an alternative therapy called Applied Kinesiology, which involves the body's energy meridians.
In 1980 Callahan was treating a patient called Mary who had a phobia of water. After eighteen months of treatment with various therapies, including hypnosis and behaviour therapy, Mary was little better. Then one day Callahan took a shot in the dark. He knew Mary described her fear as being felt in the stomach and he knew that the stomach meridian passed beneath both eyes. As Mary thought of her fear he tapped beneath one of Mary's eyes. Instantly Mary's phobia vanished and has stayed away to this day, more than twenty years later.
Callahan repeated this technique with other phobia sufferers and found it only worked with a small minority of patients. However he knew he was onto something and years of research, experimentation and development followed resulting in what we now know as Thought Field Therapy.
Eventually Callahan discovered that most emotional problems — including anxiety, depression, phobias, traumas and obsessive compulsive disorder — could be cured by tapping on the correct parts of the body in the right sequence.
He discovered menus of tapping sequences (called algorithms) which had an 80% success rate in treating various emotional problems. Dr Callahan had in fact tapped into nature's own healing system—a series of 'healing codes'. Later still Callahan invented the Voice Technology™ form of TFT which has a success rate of 97%.