Origins and resistance

It is important to differentiate between the initial discovery and the further development of EMDR:

In 1987, during a walk one day, I noticed that disturbing thoughts I was having were suddenly disappearing, and when I brought them back they did not have the same charge or level of disturbance as before. Because I had been using my own mind and body as a laboratory since a bout with cancer ten years earlier, I wondered what I had been doing to cause the change, since generally that type of thought took deliberate engagement to alter or dismiss. I started paying close attention to what I was doing and noticed that when that kind of thought entered my conscious mind, my eyes started moving in a certain way: a very rapid, ballistic, flicking movement. I noticed that when the eye movement started, the thought vanished from consciousness, and when I brought it back it was less valid and disturbing. It was not a moment of great epiphany, but simply interesting and intriguing. I thought I had stumbled upon a natural physiological process that influenced thought.

Since I viewed it as a natural body/mind phenomena, I decided to see if it would work if deliberately instigated and therefore I brought disturbing thoughts to mind and then moved my eyes in the same manner. The same thing happened. The thought shifted from consciousness and when I brought it back it was less disturbing. After finding that it worked consistently for me, I then experimented with other people to see if there was a similar effect for them. I found that I had to use my hand to guide their eye movements since it was difficult for them to do it on their own. Then I discovered that the disturbance would start to decrease for everyone, but for most people it would stop prematurely and I had to develop procedures around the effects of the eye movements to get consistent effects.

Over the past ten years, as more difficult problems were accessed, the procedures have gotten more and more refined and now include aspects of all the major psychological orientations: psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, body-oriented, client-centered, interactional, etc. It was a process of evolution which also revealed that the eye movement is only one form of stimulation that can be used. We now know that rhythmical handtaps and tones can have the same effect as the eye movements. So the name Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is an unfortunate one. Indeed, even the term -desensitization- is limiting. The lessening of disturbance is really only a byproduct of the reprocessing of information. The client also achieves insights, connections, cognitive restructuring, enhancement of self, etc. So, if I had to do it over again, I would call it Reprocessing Therapy. However, EMDR has such world-wide recognition, that we retain the abbreviation in the same way the AT&T does, even though telegraphs are not in common use.

As to how I was --able to overcome the resistance it evoked,-- I have to say it is not completely overcome. There abounds a tremendous amount of misinformation about EMDR, as well as the inevitable attacks that come with any innovation. However, we have encouraged experimentation on EMDR since the beginning and now there are 13 completed controlled studies, which makes it the most widely researched method used in the treatment of trauma. The most recent, rigorously controlled studies all indicate that 84-90% of single-trauma victims no longer have the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis after only the equivalent of three 90-minute sessions (a review and the citations are available at the website: www. emdr. com and in my new book: EMDR -- BasicBooks).

Those who are accurately informed about EMDR, have tried it themselves, or have dispassionately reviewed the literature are certainly accepting of it. It is exciting to enter with them onto a new plateau of protocol development, investigating ways to integrate the traditional wisdom of the various modalities into a more refined, comprehensive practice. Experts in various specialty populations (such as substance abuse, sexual dysfunction, complicated bereavement, etc.) have expanded the use of EMDR to a variety of presenting complaints. However, there are still a number of individuals who refuse to accept EMDR until it can be explained by traditional theories. Unfortunately for them, however, one cannot explain three-session positive EMDR treatment effects by traditional psychodynamic or cognitive-behavioral theories. For instance, according to the exposure/extinction/habituation theory of flooding which has been advocated as the primary cognitive-behavioral treatment for PTSD, there must be 15-50 hours of exposure for positive results. Even though the controlled research on EMDR has clearly demonstrated otherwise, I have actually heard cognitive-behavioral academicians dismiss the results as placebo, even though 15-month follow-ups have demonstrated robust and lasting effects. For some, it is hard to integrate new paradigms into standard practices. Therefore, unfortunately, I have to agree with Don Nathanson. The arrows may be fewer, but they definitely exist.

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