A Brief History of EMDR

Prior to the development of EMDR there was very little published research evaluating the effectiveness of any form of psychotherapy in the treatment of posttraumatic stress. In fact, before 1993 there was a total of 6 group studies published in the last fifty years about utilizing treatments other than EMDR. The obvious reason for this was the ineffectiveness of the available forms of treatment. Researchers rarely publish studies about therapies that are not effective unless they are attempting to dispute the results of previous research. The results from those six studies were not encouraging in that they revealed minimal positive outcomes and indicated high dropout rates for the participants in the studies. Consequently posttraumatic stress was considered one of the most difficult symptom presentations to treat effectively.

In the late 1980’s a student pursuing her Ph.D. in psychology was walking along a path in a local park. Francine Shapiro describes the scene.

Subsequent to Shapiro’s revelation she conducted her first formal study of EMDR.