Francine Shapiro: EMDR - A Crazy Idea that Works

As a young psychiatrist I was interested in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD – psychological reactions to severe traumatic events) and did a research fellowship on the subject with Charles Marmar at the San Francisco VA Hospital.

One Thursday morning, during our regular clinical case conference, we had a woman come in to tell us about her recently discovered technique for treating PTSD – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). That woman was Francine Shapiro, who developed the technique while trying to come up with an effective way of coping with her own trauma experiences.

Dr. Shapiro showed us the technique, which, as one of those attending said later, involved waggling her fingers at the patient while talking to him.

We were not a gentle or generous audience. People laughed, the questions were pretty hostile.

I was quite embarrassed. But it was hard to believe that this technique could really work on something as severe as PTSD.

The trouble is, it did work, and it does work. I just had an opportunity to use the technique to help a young woman exposed to assault and rape, and, once again, found that it can be remarkably effective at reducing the impact of traumatic memories – vivid memories that trigger severe anxiety reactions.

Since then EMDR has grown into a form of therapy that is used for many conditions. I don’t know that it works for everything it is used for, but it definitely works for traumatic memories.

My belated apologies to Francine for our disbelief.