[2] Its proponents say that it can heal a variety of mental and physical ailments through specialized "tapping" with the fingers at meridian points on the upper body and hands.

He describes this field as "the most fundamental concept in the TFT system," stating that it "creates an imaginary, though quite real scaffold, upon which we may erect our explanatory notions".

[5] Callahan states that the process can relieve a wide variety of psychological issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, addiction, and phobia.

[2][10] In 2000, an article was published in the Skeptical Inquirer which argued that there is no plausible mechanism to explain how TFT could work, and described it as a baseless pseudoscience.

Devilly states that there is no evidence for the claimed efficacy of power therapies including TFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, and others such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and they all exhibit the characteristics of pseudoscience.

The authors stated that "In contrast to conventional psychotherapy research, the SCD methodology is not meant to compare the various treatments, and thus does not necessarily meet the criteria proposed for empirically validated treatments, although it does meet some of those criteria," and also stated that "Unfortunately, because of problems with client screening and data collection, the study fell short of reaching its goals.

The authors acknowledged that the study of TFT and the other three methods were incomplete, and noted that "these treatment approaches appear to be promising in helping clients remove the most painful aspects of their traumatic memories."

[14] A controlled study on Thought Field Therapy Voice Technology published in the peer reviewed journal The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice,[16] which showed no difference between the TFT VT and randomly selected tapping sequences, which provides evidence against Callahan's assertion that precise sequences derived from his claimed specialized technology make a difference in result.

One of the critics, Harvard psychology professor Richard J. McNally, noting the lack of evidence for TFT, stated that “Until Callahan has done his homework, psychologists are not obliged to pay any attention to TFT.”[24] Psychologist John Kline wrote that Callahan's article “represents a disjointed series of unsubstantiated assertions, ill-defined neologisms, and far-fetched case reports that blur boundaries between farce and expository prose”.