A Community of Heart Profile: David Blore

Nineteen ninety-eight has begun and we look forward to a year filled with exciting events regarding the use of EMDR around the world. Particularly noteworthy is our members' dedication to excellent clinical work and research and their pursuit of these goals as they translate them into their regions' cultures, languages, and mores.

One member who is an example of excellence in these areas is David Blore. David comes from Nottinghamshire and is an enthusiastic member of the EMDR Association of the United Kingdom and Ireland. He is a nurse and has advanced degrees in advanced professional practice (with a dissertation on EMDR) and in cognitive behavioral psychotherapy.

Originally from Birmingham, England, David went to Leicester to obtain his nursing credentials. David not only became a nurse in Leicester; he also met and married his wife, Susan, and brought their children, Simon and Yvonne, into the world there.

Although EMDR and psychotherapy are his passions, David has many interesting and unusual hobbies. He collects philosophy and psychology hardback books from 1880-1940 and recently acquired a first edition of Pavlov's 1927 English translation of the Russian. As David puts it, the volume is "the one everyone quotes but probably has never seen!" His other pastimes include learning Dutch from our colleague Ad de Jongh from Holland, computers, astronomy, listening to music and watching cricket and Formula 1 motor racing on TV! His ambition is to write his memoirs and spend more time traveling in Northern Europe.

David is a versatile clinician, a supervisor of nurses, and a facilitator for the EMDR Institute. David's major focus has been working with coal-miners. In fact, he was the first European to present at a Level II training in London, presenting a lecture entitled Tips from the Pits: A Proposal for an Extended Single Trauma Protocol for Using EMDR. He has published about this subject ~along with other topics~ and even received a celebration pewter tankard after making his first trip down a 700-meter shaft with a miner who had a fear of heights. The colliery manager was so impressed by his effort to return his miner to work that he inscribed the tankard for him!

One of David's major contributions to the EMDR world is his electronic journal. The EMDR Practitioner, (formerly Eye to Eye).

David explains the genesis of his magazine in the following manner: 

"Rapid dissemination of information has traditionally been a problem where a field of expertise is developing quickly. I saw a role in utilizing the Internet to 'keep the EMDR family together' (altruistic motive). I'm enthusiastic about EMDR (hedonistic motive)."

David's latest adventure will be to visit to Moscow in April to lecture at the Moscow Centre of Psychology and Psychotherapy on the use of EMDR amongst traumatized miners. We all look forward to hearing about his trip upon his return.