In your mind's eye: Speculations on the neurobiology of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR)

Francine Shapiro, the originator of Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), stumbled quite by accident upon the potentially positive effects of eye movements in desensitising negative emotions and cognitions. Ironically, she wasn't the first to do so. These findings had been made almost two decades earlier by Antrobus and his colleagues (Antrobus, 1973; Antrobus, Antrobus, & Singer, 1964). What unified the findings of Shapiro and Antrobus, apart from their agreement on the utility of eye movements, was that there was no theoretical system which could convincingly explain the findings to the skeptical research community to which Shapiro began disclosing her findings. What distinguished their approaches was that Shapiro set out to vigorously sell her belief in their utility in the relative absence of explanations as to why that might be the case. Uri Bergmann, an EMDR Institute Facilitator in New York, has recently put together a speculative neurobiological hypothesis for the effects of EMDR. In this article, he draws on a growing body of research into the area, particularly the ideas of Harvard University sleep researcher Robert Stickgold, who first identified the physiological pathways that link EMDR to REM functioning. Bergmann' offers his thoughts on the matter in a form accessible to the neurologically naïve as a first step to understanding the neurobiology of EMDR.

Magazine

English

Uri Bergmann

Bergmann, U. (2000, September/October). In your mind's eye: Speculations on the neurobiology of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR). New Therapist, 9, 24-27