Integrating approaches

• Various clinical applications by Francine Shapiro, 8/20/97
  
  

I'd like to clarify that EMDR is not offered as an "adjunct to" other therapies, but as an approach to therapy that facilitates the integration of different therapeutic modalities. The EMDR accelerated information processing model provides an overall theoretical framework large enough to embrace other effective modalities. Thus clinicians with primary previous training in hypnosis or cognitive behavioral approaches can utilized the EMDR model to reconceptualize their approaches and integrate them into a larger integrative framework.

I am doing EMDR based therapy not only during reprocessing sessions, but all the time as the EMDR model and the treatment effects I have experienced now broadly inform my work with clients. Therapeutic tools and models with which I was familiar prior to EMDR, now make more sense to me and I find new ways of using their methods within the EMDR framework.

For instance, a number of psychodynamic therapists have found EMDR gives them more powerful tools to work with transference (and countertransference) issues as well as ways of working through highly cathected, early primary process material. Those working with object relations and self psychological perspectives are finding ways to help clients work through incomplete developmental tasks that underlie their symptoms.

Andrew Leeds (ALeeds@concentric.net)

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