While the RCT provides precise assessments regarding sharply focused questions, it may miss many qualitative details of the process of healing due to the narrow focus of the RCT. In fact, when relevant clinical observations are made during the RCT, they are deliberately and systematically ignored -- discounted as being outside the predicted parameters of the study.

A disadvantage of the RCT for patients is that at least half of those who participate in the study are denied active treatment for the duration of the study.

An excellent resource on approaches other than RCTs for therapies related to healing is Braud, William and Anderson, Rosemarie, Transpersonal   Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Honoring Human   Experience, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 1998.

In addition to detailed discussions on transpersonal issues in research and research issues in transpersonal realms, this book has an excellent, concise summary of methodologies, including quasi-experimental, single-subject, action research, correlational, causal-comparative, naturalistic and field studies, grounded theory, theoretical, historical, and archival approaches, content analysis, textual analysis, and hermeneutics, narrative and discourse analyses, case studies and life stories, interviews, questionnaires, and surveys, meta-analysis, and other related issues.