The history and development of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

Introduction The first paper on Eye Movement Desensitization (EMD) was published by Shapiro (1989a), a little over 20 years ago. Since that first paper, it would be fair to say that EMDR has been mired in controversy (Russell, 2008). Many psychologists have been trained in EMDR and are using it successfully in their clinical practice but many other psychologists are somewhat sceptical (which is fair enough), whilst others are openly hostile. In this paper, I would like to outline the history and development of this controversial approach to the treatment of trauma and describe the EMDR protocol in detail.

Magazine

English

Timothy Dunne

Dunne, T. (2011, February). The history and development of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. The Irish Psychologist, 37(4), 99-105