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The E-meter is a device for displaying and/or recording the electrodermal activity (EDA) of a human being. The word is a common abbreviation for Electropsychometer. It is also known in various applications as an ''electroencephaloneuromentimograph'', ''electrodermal activity meter'', ''electrodermal response meter'', ''electropsychogalvanometer'', ''electrogalvonometer'', ''electrogalvometer'', ''skin galvanometer'', or ''psychogalvanometer''. Devices similar to the Scientology E-meter have been used for more than a century by counselors of psychology and psychoanalysis. They have been used as an auditing tool in Scientology〔America's Alternative Religions, by Timothy Miller, 1995, ISBN 0-7914-2398-0;page 386〕 and divergent groups, as a research tool in many human studies, and as one component of the Keeler polygraph (lie detector) system. The efficacy and legitimacy of Scientology's use of the E-meter has been subject to extensive debate and litigation.〔〔 ==History== (詳細はDubois-Reymond in Germany first observed that human skin was electrically active, a phenomenon that is now generally known as electrodermal activity (EDA). The elements of EDA include moment to moment variation in skin conductance, resistance, and internally generated potential, measured between the palms or the soles of the feet, or between two positions on the same palm or sole. Other more complex activity in response to alternating current has been studied. In 1878 in Switzerland, Hermann and Luchsinger demonstrated a connection between EDA and sweat glands. Vigouroux (France, 1879) was the first researcher to relate these phenomena to psychological activity. In 1888, the French neurologist Féré demonstrated that skin resistance activity could be changed by emotional stimulation and that activity could be inhibited by drugs. The first EDA meter was developed in Russia 1889 by Ivane Tarkhnishvili. It was popularized for psychotherapy by Carl Gustav Jung in a series of papers published in German in 1906 and in English in 1919. Jung and his colleagues used meters to evaluate the emotional sensitivities of patients during word association. Jung was so impressed with the instrument, he allegedly cried, "Aha, a looking glass into the unconscious!" Jung described his use of the device in counseling in his book, ''Studies in Word Association'', and such use has continued with various practitioners. Volney Mathison (chiropractor, radio engineer, psychologist, and hypnotist) built an EDA meter based on a Wheatstone bridge,〔"Technically it is a specially developed 'Wheatstone Bridge' well known to electrically minded people as a device to measure the amount of resistance to a flow of electricity", L. R. Hubbard, in: "The Book Introducing the E-Meter", page 1. Quoted in: Kotzé report, The Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Scientology, 1972, Republic of South Africa. Section III, Chapter 8〕 a vacuum tube amplifier, and a large moving-coil meter that projected an image of the needle on the wall. He patented his device in 1954 as an ''electropsychometer'' or E-meter, and it came to be known as the "Mathison Electropsychometer". In Mathison's words, the E-meter "has a needle that swings back and forth across a scale when a patient holds on to two electrical contacts".〔 Mathison recorded in his book, ''Electropsychometry'', that the idea of the E-meter came to him in 1950 while listening to a lecture by L. Ron Hubbard: In 1950 ... I next attended a series of lectures being given by a very controversial figure, who several times emphasized that perhaps the major problem of psychotherapy was the difficulty of maintaining the communication of accurate or valid data from the patient to the therapist. ... it appeared to me that the psychogalvanometer showed most promise.L. Ron Hubbard told of that encounter in a 1952 recorded lecture: This machine, the electropsychometer, has been acting as a pilot since about the first of January 1952. Very early I wanted a pilot; I had to have some method of metering prectears which was not dependent at all upon opinion or judgment. And I went out and looked at the existing lie detector equipment and I could not find anything which would do a job of work. Now, Volney Mathison out on the Coast heard a talk out there one day, and I mentioned this fact. ... I had one of the fanciest electroencephalographs made and it didn’t do anything very much, police detectors didn’t do anything very much, and Mathison went to work and he floated a current within a current. This machine is relatively simple, but it’s a current floating inside another current .. And I am, by the way, very much indebted to Mathison just on this basis of all of a sudden having a pilot.Mathison began working with Hubbard in 1951 and that year filed application for his first E-meter patent, (U.S. Patent 2,684,670 ). After the partnership broke up in 1954, Mathison continued improving his E-meters with additional patents (, ), marketing them through his own company and publications, retaining many of the concepts and terms from his time with Hubbard. In a separate line of development, EDA monitors were incorporated in polygraph machines by Leonarde Keeler. Rigorous testing of the polygraph has yielded mixed results (see Polygraph main page), and some critics classify polygraph operation as a pseudoscience. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「E-meter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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