Re:Sandra

I want to clarify that I wasn't actually intending to make a point about the use of EM or EMDR in the treatment of DID. I might on another day, but that wasn't the point here. Rather it was to make a point that 1) with this population we can make observations that suggest the hypothesis that eye movements are not inert and 2) in the history of study of cognitive and neurological phenomena, it has often been in the observation of the most severe forms of pathology (and I beg forgiveness of the readership here, I'm not at all intending to cast aspersions on the DID population, but rather saying that DID is the most severe of the unresolved-trauma related disorders). Pathology informs us about normalcy; Oliver Saks and Luria's observations of behavior in cases of visual agnosia or aphasia are extremely important in understanding normal brain functioning. I'm saying, and yes it is a clinical observation, that observing this response in a single subject is like an A-B design, observe it again, and again in several subjects, and I'm entit
led to entertain - but not be fully confident in -- my hypothesis that something about eye movements causes traumatic material to be triggered in DID clients. Hear it again from other EMDR clinicians who have never met each other, and my hypothesis is strengthened.

One can't do controlled studies well on this population - too fragile, too complex. Single subject observations are where we are at this point.

When I say that the client suddenly has access to several channels of information I mean the following.

In the initial instance or "treatment," which we could call Treatment A if you like, we are talking (she's telling a story of a traumatic memory, from a relatively adult alter's viewpoint, about what happened to "her," meaning a child alter. It is from the third person in many cases, and she is describing knowledge of what happened. There may be some affective arousal "leaking" through from the child alter(s) but the client is largely contained. If we add eye movemetns or EM, which we can call Treatment B, suddenly she is having the full sensory recall, including sound, smell, sights, body pain, and may switch fully to BE the child alter, now in the first person (I), instead of the third person (she). Now this pattern is variable; some people switch without the EMs, and some people don't switch with EMs but just have access to the sensory channels in whole or in greater part. So granted, the variables aren't perfectly controlled, no doubt.

But I keep observing that there is something about EMs that reliably triggers sudden dramatic shifts in DID clients. Which is why those of us who use variations of EMDR to treat dissociatives (carefully, very very carefully, according to cautious protocols) are more likely to use tapping or auditory instead of eye movements. Again, by clinical observation, the auditory and tapping are less evocative and we retain better control and trigger less switching or flooding.

Now I grant you this is a clinical observation, not a controlled experiment, but it is not without value for creating hypotheses which can lead to single subject designs and which could some day lead to controlled studies.

And I welcome other people's clinical observations -- anybody have some?

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