Self-healing aspects of EMDR: The therapeutic change process and perspectives of integrated psychotherapies

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) (Shapiro 1989a, 1989b, 1995) is an innovative comprehensive approach to psychotherapy. While EMDR 's use of eye movements has attracted a great deal of attention, the effica cy of the EMDR method can be explained parsimoniously in terms of many diff erent types of therapy. Lang's (1985) information processing networks provi de a way to understand the Accelerated Information Processing model propose d by Shapiro to explain EMDR. A representative EMDR session is presented to illustrate the integrative components of EMDR's procedural elements and th e range of clinical effects. Therapeutic changes seen as a result of self-h ealing using EMDR are discussed from the perspectives of other psychotherap eutic approaches in order to understand the contribution of EMDR to the psy chotherapy integration movement.