EMDR FORUM ARCHIVE, 2000
Science and Pseudoscience
B. McFall · 12/22/02 at 12:48 ET
Sandra: From a 05/27/02 post you write: “It's not unusual for people to apparently access preverbal states in EMDR...." No wonder we see articles like: "Science and Pseudoscience in the Development of EMDR: Implications for Clinical Psychology" (in a 2001 issue of “Clinical Psychology Review,” by Jeffrey Lohr, U. of Arkansas professor of psychology, co-authored by James Herbert of MCP Hahnemann U. and Scott Lilienfeld of Emory U.) The article takes a skeptical look at the development and promotion of EMDR and concludes that practitioners of the therapy cloak it in scientific trappings while disregarding the scientific evidence against it. However, I must say that your “accessing preverbal states” even lacks any pretense of “scientific trappings.” Apparently Richard J. McNally of Harvard U., in a 1999 article, “EMDR and Mesmerism: A comparative historical analysis,” the Journal of Anxiety Disorders (13, 225-236), had it right when he provides a convincing and unflattering comparison of Mesmerism and EMDR, noting that they “have been two of the fastest growing methods in the history of psychotherapy, and they have been two of the most controversial...and that such reputedly breakthrough treatments are most likely to emerge from the periphery of the field, to be associated with brilliant promotional efforts, to be accompanied by dramatic claims of successful treatment of hitherto recalcitrant syndromes, and to be criticized by scientists as little more than elaborate psychosocial placebos.”
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