EMDR therapy for trauma-related disorders

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an integrative eight-phase approach that emphasizes the role of physiologically stored memory networks and the brain’s information processing system in the treatment of pathology. It is guided by the Adaptive Information (AIP) model, which conceptualizes mental health problems, excluding those caused by organic deficits (e.g., genetic, toxicity, injury), to be the result of inadequately processed memories of adverse life experiences. According to this view, presenting symptoms result from memories of disturbing experiences that have been dysfunctionally stored, encoded with the original emotions, beliefs, and physical sensations (Shapiro, 2001, 2012a), 2014). Since the model’s development in the early 1990s, a substantial body of research has confirmed the primacy of such disturbing life events for a wide range of psychological and somatic symptomology (e.g., Mol et al, 2005; Felitti et al, 1998).

Book Section

English

Francine Shapiro
Deany Laliotis

Shapiro, F., & Laliotis, D. (2015). EMDR therapy for trauma-related disorders. In U. Schnyder & M. Cloitre (Eds.), Evidence Based Treatments for Trauma-Related Psychological Disorders (pp. 205-228). New York: NY: Springer Publishing Co