cover image Transforming Trauma: Emdr

Transforming Trauma: Emdr

Laurel Parnell. W. W. Norton & Company, $21 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-393-04053-1

While recalling a traumatic incident, a patient in EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy is led through a series of patterned eye movements in order to gain permanent relief from severe symptoms. According to Parnell, a clinical psychologist and senior EMDR Institute facilitator, theories abound as to how EMDR works. Both consumers and professionals will relish Parnell's enthusiasm, vivid case histories and personal revelations. Clinical reports by EMDR practitioners suggest the therapy is most useful in the eradication of single traumas, often in only one session, although ""weeks, months or years may [first] elapse"" before the client trusts the therapist enough to allow this. Parnell includes an excellent description of the symptoms in adults of childhood sexual abuse. She follows this with a protocol almost identical to a common procedure of hypnotherapists, so she is unconvincing in her casual dismissal of the similarity of EMDR to hypnotherapy. Parnell's emphasis on authorized training in, and on personal experience with EMDR by therapists wishing to practice this modality, seems too insistent and, also, ironic, given that Francine Shapiro, who developed EMDR, initially tested the technique on friends without a qualm. Scientific evaluation of EMDR remains inconclusive, but those wishing to learn about it will benefit from this book, which complements Shapiro's own EMDR (Lifestyle Forecasts, Mar. 3). (May)