[2][1] In 1968, Diamond conducted a series of interviews with the left-wing Australian politician Jim Cairns, who was at that time a Labour Party Member of Parliament, and later deputy-Prime Minister.

[3] They were initiated by the Department of Political Science at Monash University, which was interested in researching the psychological motivations of politicians, but Cairns then continued them privately with Diamond over the course of a year.

[3] In the 1960s, Diamond was associated with Frank Galbally, a criminal defence lawyer in Australia, appearing as a medical witness in a number of homicide cases in which he successfully used novel approaches to argue the defendant's mental state as a mitigating circumstance.

[2][1] His approach with those who came to see him was first to diagnose the impediments to the flow of Life Energy, and then help overcome them by drawing on a wide range of modalities, including acupuncture, verbal affirmations, physical procedures, and herbs.

[2] Diamond argued that everything we encounter in our lives impacts our Life Energy positively or negatively – for example, our nutrition, our thoughts, our social interactions, and the music we listen to.

For example, a long-term patient with schizophrenia improved markedly when she began to play the piano that had been newly installed in her ward, and was soon discharged.

[8][5] Influenced by these and other examples, Diamond systematically investigated the effects of many aspects of music, including different styles, performers, composers, instruments, acoustics, and recording techniques.

A fundamental component of Diamond's approach to developing a person's creativity for therapeutic purposes was what he termed "cantillation", from the Latin word for "to sing."