A recent mini-revolution within psychology has involved the emphatic recognition that positive thinking and "learned optimism" can be self-fulfilling. Positive psychology, as the trend is called (www.positivepsychology.org), can point to solid evidence showing that people who hold a positive attitude are more effective in the world, attain greater success, make more adaptive choices, stay healthier, and heal more quickly than people who are more negative in their outlook (Seligman, 2002). Therapies that focus primarily on the problems and negative dimensions of a person’s life may be emphasizing the wrong part of the story. A positive orientation leads to positive outcomes.

While psychology cannot lay exclusive claim to this eternal principle, it can help people to learn how to acquire attitudes that have positive repercussions in their lives. Insight, will, and intention—the commonsense approaches—are often not enough to change deep attitudes. Energy interventions, combined with methods such as visualization and affirmation, provide one of the most powerful ways of initiating such shifts. Stimulating energy points while mentally activating a problem or a goal appears to 1) create instantaneous neurological changes that, assuming the procedures are carried out properly, deactivate the biochemical underpinnings of the problem and 2) activate an energy field and related biochemical processes that promote the desired goal.

The methods can be used to promote desired psychological states as well as to counter undesired states. If a man visualizes himself attaining a well-considered goal and disturbances instantly occur in his kidney and stomach meridians, his focus and effectiveness will be compromised. If a technique is applied that remedies the energy disturbances, he can move toward the goal without conflict in the energies that influence his thought and behavior. With these obstacles removed, energy methods combined with active imagination can be introduced to surround him with an energy field that organizes his body’s energy systems in a manner that corresponds with attaining the goal. Aligning the man’s subtle energies with his positive intentions is a powerful intervention.

Subtle energy may long remain an elusive concept, but if you are told that a positive person carries an energy that enriches others, or a negative person carries an energy that is self-defeating, you intuitively know what is meant, even if you cannot precisely define or point to these energies. Energy psychology adds to our repertoire techniques for identifying the energies that are involved with psychological problems or goals and for influencing them to support desired outcomes. Energy interventions do not take the place of will and insight; they simply enter from a different angle and have strengths that purely psychological interventions do not have.

In that sense, energy psychology provides such a vital and missing link between intervention and outcome that psychological practices which are not attuned to the actions of subtle energy may one day be viewed as archaic. While we may never be able to adequately explain subjective experience in physical terms such as neurochemistry, or even subtle energy, an understanding of the role of subtle energy begins to fill in our understanding about many other mysteries, from the way that stimulating a set of acupuncture points can rapidly neutralize an unwanted emotional response, to the persuasively demonstrated role of focused intention on physical events, to the equally well-established telepathic exchange of information, to the many reported instances where certain personality traits of an organ donor mysteriously appear in the organ recipient, to the way positive images and prayer can facilitate healing from a distance. Psychology does not have ready explanations for such phenomena, and some formulation of an energy field that holds information—perhaps with attributes we can barely imagine, such as a macro-level version of quantum nonlocality or unfamiliar space-time relationships—is the probable missing link.