Accelerated Learning and Positive Templates

In addition to the reprocessing of disturbing past events and present stimuli, EMDR is capable of incorporating *positive templates* through accelerated learning. Specifically, positive imagery, beliefs, and affects become enhanced. What is useful is learned and stored with appropriate affect, and what is useless is discarded. Generally, the client organically emits new behaviors consistent with the new sense of self that emerges. However, in many instances, the client will have to be taught new skills. For instance, no amount of reprocessing of traumatic events is sufficient to allow the chronic childhood abuse victim to be ready to go on a date in the present. There are many social skills and behaviors that will need to be taught. The clinician teaches the client new skills and behaviors through didactic/modeling/role-play/group interaction, etc., and uses EMDR to help enhance and incorporate the information. This assists clients to have a structured, nurtured learning experience before they try their wings in real life. As I noted in a previous post on this list, one of the potentials of EMDRs use of templates is to assist clients with severe developmental deficits. I am repeating it here to make sure it is not lost in the shuffle, since it is an important new avenue for exploration. It has led me to challenge psychodynamic therapists to identify in a more structured manner the way in which transference is used. Specifically, for those clients with severe childhood trauma, there needs to be a way to teach object constancy, ability to trust self-perception, ability to bond, love, etc. By using EMDR, clients are taught new skills and behaviors to help them in the future. I would like to see a more structured way to open the developmental windows that would allow the more severely troubled clients to lead happy and fruitful lives, not just ones without pronounced pathology. What is done intuitively by some clinicians can be systematized to aid many others. Many EMDR clinicians with psychodynamic backgrounds are presently exploring these possibilities. However, it is a fruitful challenge for the entire field.

I would love to hear from any clinicians who feel they can articulate what specific experiences they attempt to orchestrate clinically to allow clients to gain these important abilities. Specifically, transference experiences could be deliberately elicited by the clinician and EMDR applied in order to enhance them, help in their integration, and allow the positive effects to be generalized to real life. What specific types of experiences would have to be orchestrated in order to counterbalance the pronounced childhood deficits generally encountered as part of the clinical picture?

I would like to hear from other clinicians regarding any other areas of application this template capability might inspire. As an approach, EMDR is an integration of a variety of clinical orientations. As already stated, it offers therapists a new way to view pathology, and is structurally delineated, with a number of protocols for specific clinical complaints. However, the protocol evolution is an on-going process as more experts, with more areas of expertise become involved. Clinicians in the trenches should not underestimate their own abilities as experts.

• Integrating Psychodynamic Object Relations by David Grand, LCSW, 8/13/97
  • EMDR and Object Relations by Francine Shapiro, 8/12/97
• Object Relations by Philip Manfield, 8/26/97
• Further thoughts on transference by Philip Manfield, Ph.D., 8/26/97
• Personality Disorders by Philip Manfield, Ph.D., 8/26/97
  • Narcissistic Personality Disorders by Philip Manfield, Ph.D., 8/26/97