Re:fractionation & emdr

In EMDR processing, the client needs to be at an optimal level of arousal, meaning, not numbed out and not flooded with emotion. But just right. For many people, this happens naturally. For some people, we have to use methods to activate a higher level of arousal, as the client has too much distance on their own material for it to process. Example: I use ego state therapy to access and activate dissociated material.

For highly dissociative individuals, and here I mean DID clients, the problem is that once the neural network is accessed, there is no spigot to turn down the volume, and the client feels flooded. Therefore, in the 80's, Dr. Richard Kluft and Dr. Catherine Fine published a number of fractionation methods to assist in titrating or diluting the intensity of affect to keep it in the optimal range.

There are many ways to titrate affect: they include the rheostat strategy, the videotape library method, a control panel, or anything else that enabless the client to modulate affect intensity.

Fractionation refers specifically also to the preplanning and selection, in collaboration with the client, of specific tiny pieces of a memory, sometimes along the dimensions of BASK elements (Behavior, Affect, Sensation, Knowledge). That is, for some individuals, they can process a piece of a memory first visually, while containing the other channels, and later op process, say, the body sensation component, and another time the emotional component. Sometimes these are held by different alter personalities, and sometimes one alter holds several channels of information. It's variable.

So yes, it seems counter intuitive to stop EMDR and chop up the processing, but it is necessary if the affect is too intense.

Sandra Paulsen Inobe, PhD
Sacramento California

Replies:

Re:fractionation & emdr, by mandala, 07/03/02 self-correction, by mandala, 07/03/02 Re:self-correction, by , 07/03/02

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