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Evidence Based Treatments for Trauma-Related Psychological Disorders pp 205–228Cite as

EMDR Therapy for Trauma-Related Disorders

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Abstract

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an integrative eight-phase approach that emphasizes the role of physiologically stored memory networks and the brain’s information processing system in the treatment of pathology. It is guided by the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, which conceptualizes mental health problems, excluding those caused by organic deficits (e.g., genetic, toxicity, injury), to be the result of inadequately processed memories of adverse life experiences. According to this view, presenting symptoms result from memories of disturbing experiences that have been dysfunctionally stored, encoded with the original emotions, beliefs, and physical sensations (Shapiro 2001, 2012a, 2014). Since the model’s development in the early 1990s, a substantial body of research has confirmed the primacy of such disturbing life events for a wide range of psychological and somatic symptomatology (e.g., Mol et al. 2005; Felitti et al. 1998).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Francine Shapiro PhD

  2. EMDR Institute, Watsonville, CA, USA

    Deany Laliotis LICSW

Authors
  1. Francine Shapiro PhD
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  2. Deany Laliotis LICSW
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Correspondence to Francine Shapiro PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Ulrich Schnyder

  2. Dissemination & Training Division, National Center for PTSD, San Franciso, California, USA

    Marylène Cloitre

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Shapiro, F., Laliotis, D. (2015). EMDR Therapy for Trauma-Related Disorders. In: Schnyder, U., Cloitre, M. (eds) Evidence Based Treatments for Trauma-Related Psychological Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07109-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07109-1_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-07108-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07109-1

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