EMDR FORUM ARCHIVE, 2000
Re:EMDR and legal obligations
Sandra Paulsen Inobe, PHD · 11/25/02 at 8:31 PM ET
To my knowledge, no US court has ruled that EMDR effects or tampers with memories so that they can't be testified to in court. If anyone has any contradictory information, I hope they will post it here. Hypnosis is another matter, but EMDR is not hypnosis. However, we typically caution therapists to make sure that a client's attorney is aware that the client won't be a "hysterical witness" after EMDR, as if that's a bad thing. That's what the EMDR Institute trains people to say. I know from my experience with lawyers that they don't generally want a hysterical witness, just a truthful witness. But an attorney may sometimes want to either delay the EMDR work or to take a deposition sooner in order to capture the client's present state of agitation. It is also true that for a few people, a memory is harder to access after an EMDR process, as if it's gone. Not that it didn't happen, its just not in their face anymore. Typically, people are better able, in my experience, to report on the various elements of the memory without the high levels of agitation. That's what is meant.
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