Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
EMDR from its originator. Included because the evidence base is now hard to ignore.
EMDR revolutionized the treatment of PTSD and has emerged as a front-line therapy for multiple forms of psychological trauma.
Shapiro sets out the full method of the therapy she originated, from the adaptive information processing model that underpins it to the eight treatment phases a clinician works through. The argument is that much psychological suffering rests on memories stored in a raw, unintegrated form, and that structured bilateral stimulation lets the brain reprocess them toward resolution. Around that claim she builds a working manual: how to take history, prepare a client, target a memory, and hold the procedure steady when material becomes difficult.
The third edition, published in 2018, widened the scope well past PTSD, adding chapters on complex trauma, addiction, pain, depression, and moral injury, with attention to both adults and children. For a therapist trained in another tradition, the book offers a clear account of what EMDR asks in the room, supported by transcripts, clinical vignettes, and reproducible forms drawn from Shapiro's own training practice.
About the author
Francine Shapiro
Francine Shapiro (1948-2019) was an American psychologist and the originator of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a structured therapy for the effects of traumatic and disturbing memories. She first reported the method in 1989 and set out its eight-phase protocol in her 1995 textbook. A senior research fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, she framed trauma as unprocessed memory, an account that gave clinicians outside psychoanalysis a shared vocabulary for how past experience shapes present distress.
Details
- 1995
- English
- Guilford Press
- Guilford Press, 3rd edition, 2018
- 568
- 9781462532766