An investigation of therapists’ beliefs about how EMDR works

The aim of my study is to explore how EMDR trained Therapists explain to themselves and their clients, how EMDR works in clinical practice, in their views. A second aim of my study is to examine how EMDR trained Therapists’ explanations relate to their original clinical training. The Research Question is: Do CBT trained Therapists differ in the explanations they give about the therapeutic mechanisms of EMDR from, say, analytically oriented Therapists? Do Humanistic Therapists explain how EMDR works from existentially oriented Therapists? A third aim of my study is to examine how Therapists from different backgrounds incorporate EMDR into their clinical practice. The Research Question here is: Do Therapists from some backgrounds such as CBT find it easier to incorporate EMDR into their everyday clinical work than other types of Therapists? Research Methodology: I 24 shall use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in this research project. The quantitative method will be a short 2 page anonymous questionnaire which will be given out at the Conference for delegates to complete and return to the stand. I would hope to have at least 50 such Questionnaires completed by consenting delegates to the Conference. The qualitative methods will be a number of focus groups (maximum number of 12 people in each group) which I hope to run at the end of each day of the Conference. I plan to have 3-4 such focus groups from which the data will be gathered. The other qualitative method will be 1:1 semi-structured interviews either face to face at the Conference or by telephone (post conference) with consenting delegates attending the Conference. Altogether, I would hope to have a total of about 50 participants in the qualitative data gathering methods.

Conference

English

Timothy Dunn

Dunn, T. (2008, June). An investigation of therapists' beliefs about how EMDR works. Poster presented at the 9th EMDR Europe Association Conference, London, England