Psychoanalytic perspectives on accelerated information processing (EMDR)

Psychoanalysis and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are, in manifest technique, utterly different. Nevertheless, both may draw upon universal and natural processes of healing the mind. EMDR appears to facilitate the processing of emotional experience and review of defensive strategies. It may do so by inducing favourable changes at a neurobiological level, involving interhemispheric communication. Comparisons may be made with Bion's analogy of the mind as a digestive organ. Although initially framed within a cognitive-behavioural paradigm, EMDR is now used by clinicians of a wide range of backgrounds, including psychoanalytic. The clinical phenomena revealed by EMDR may have some implications for certain models of the mind within contemporary psychoanalysis, particularly concerning the past unconscious and the present unconscious.

Journal

English

Phil Mollon

Mollon, P. (2001, Summer). Psychoanalytic perspectives on accelerated information processing (EMDR). British Journal of Psychotherapy, 17(4), 448-464