Is doing research, such as taking vital signs on patients, important?
Anything that helps verify the state of the patient before during, and after a session helps us understand where the patient is, whether he has had an abreaction, not a true feeling and indicates whether a resolution of a feeling has taken place. If there is no research, Primal Therapy becomes a business to make money and does nothing to advance the science of psychotherapy. We have done 4 brainwave studies, double-blind neurochemistry and biochemistry studies (all to be found in my book, Primal Healing) One third of our entire budget has gone to research, done often with outsiders who are not in the primal world. One of the key ways we know if a depression is lifting and by how much is the change in body temperature, controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. A therapist must know what nervous system she is dealing with in certain diagnostic syndromes. Ignoring all this is not science and does not help the patient who deserves all the knowledge that exists in the field.
