An intriguing finding is that recidivism is a function of the number of training sessions. Half as many felons who were treated for 16 sessions were successful at remaining out of jail as were those who received 32 sessions. There is some effect of training even in a few treatment sessions. One of the rationales for this training is to demonstrate nonverbally to the client how biofeedback works. Temperature tracks GSR in a sluggish manner and may be measuring the same domains in anxiety of arousal, viz.
Prisoners notoriously become worse in correctional institutions.
It is a clich that we are very good at making seriously criminal adults out of moderately delinquent juveniles. Moreover, there is a general agreement in the field that we are unable to do anything positive with schizophrenics other than to put them into a chemical straightjacket or allow them to age out of their disease. Doug's insight that schizophrenics and criminals may be deficit in imagination, or oversupplied with frightening paranoid visions caused him to standardize a method of presenting graded trauma to patients, viz. Monitoring arousal through the venerable and well researched GSR permits a precise and useful control of a hierarchy of stress. Finally, applying Sterman's work with epileptics to a sub-ictal population resulted in a quantum leap in effectiveness.