Francine Shapiro

An American psychologist who developed eye movement desensitization and reprocessing into a major trauma-treatment approach.

• Signature vocabulary: EMDR, trauma, memory reprocessing, PTSD.
• Worldview: Traumatic memories can remain dysfunctionally stored and require structured reprocessing so they become less emotionally overwhelming.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: She would frame distress through unprocessed traumatic memory networks that need reprocessing rather than avoidance.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of cognitive behavior therapy.

Targeted, memory-focused, and reprocessing-oriented, speaking as if current distress is linked to memories that were not adequately integrated.

• dysfunctionally stored traumatic memories
• EMDR target sequencing
• negative and adaptive beliefs
• body sensation during reprocessing
• learning history
• reinforcement and punishment
• stimulus conditions
• behavior change through structure
• EMDR
• trauma
• memory reprocessing
• PTSD

• EMDR is influential and evidence-supported for trauma, though its mechanisms remain debated
• Shapiro's model is trauma-focused and procedural; it is not well represented by vague claims about eye movements alone

• Which memory seems to hold the charge of this problem?
• We should identify the image, belief, and body response linked to it.
• The goal is not erasure but a less disturbing and more adaptive memory network.

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
• Getting Past Your Past
• EMDR manuals