EMDR – Getting Past Your Past
Francine Shapiro, PhD, is an American psychologist who is the originator and developer of EMDR (Acronym for ‘Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing’), a form of psychotherapy that was developed to resolve symptoms resulting from traumatic and other disturbing life experiences.
Dr. Shapiro is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, Executive Director of the EMDR Institute, Watsonville, CA, and founder and President Emeritus of the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, a non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and pro bono trainings worldwide.
In 1987 Dr. Shapiro observed, during a walk in a park, that moving her eyes seemed to reduce the stress of disturbing memories. Based on these initial observations she developed standardized procedures to maximize these effects, conducted further research and published a randomized controlled study in 1989 describing beneficial results. Based on the positive results of many rigorous scientific studies, EMDR therapy is now recommended as an effective treatment for trauma in numerous international practice guidelines, including those of the American Psychiatric Association and the Department of Defense.