Re: Dr. Paulsen

Your points are well taken. In this case, I'll add though, the person had been recommended to pursue EMDR and had turned, fearfully, to this list as a source of information. "Big Bags of Pain" are precisely the kind of thing that EMDR can be enormously helpful with in many peoples' lives. I'm was asked to respond about EMDR and did so. As between CBT alone or CBT with EMDR, I'd rather see someone with "Big Bags of Pain" get some relief. EMDR does that quite reliably in my experience. It would be strange to say otherwise, given that this is an EMDR list. Brian, in reading your many posts here I have not had the impression that you have had the opportunity yet to fully appreciate what EMDR can do for people. As I've mentioned before, when I was doing straight and narrow CBT, and trying to resolve peoples' emotional pain hind-side-to, that is, via cognitive restructuring and behavioral modification, my results were far more modest. What I have seen and see daily in my practice (which is a combination of EMDR, CBT, systems, self psychology, and even object relations now, in order to keep up with the marvellous shifts I have seen unfold with EMDR) is that affect IS primary, and the cognitions and behavior shift readily once we neutralize and detoxify the effects of early state specific learning. It is a marvellous thing to behold -- and all the blind men who held one piece of the elephant were all right. Janet, Freud, Jung, Perls, Kluft, Watkins & Watkins, Shapiro and many others. But it is an elephant, larger than we supposed. We haven't controlled for all the variables. The EMDR studies capture part of the truth. There is more to unravel, something that I'll wager has to do with the role of accessing state specific learning reliably during the EMDR processing, that I'm sure will reveal more.

In the meantime, Brian, and Don and the other skeptics out there. You are doing your skeptical job admirably. The truth will out.

Replies:

Re: Dr. Paulsen, by Brian, 3/30/00 Re: Dr. Paulsen, by Sandra Paulsen, Ph.D., 3/30/00 Re: Dr. Paulsen, by an australian client, 4/2/00 Re: Dr. Paulsen, by , 4/3/00 Re: Dr. Paulsen, by Sandra Paulsen, Ph.D., 4/3/00

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