Science and pseudoscience in the development of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing Implications for clinical psychology

Exploring expectation effects in EMDR: does prior treatment knowledge affect the degrading effects of eye movements on memories?

“…The participants started to question the provided information, whereas they believed it at first. These results contrast the view held by several previous authors that beneficial effects of EMDR treatment are incidental and can be explained by credibility, expectancy, or experimental demand (Devilly, 2005; Herbert et al, 2000; Lohr et al, 1992, 1999). …”

“…Both psychotherapy outcome expectancy and treatment credibility are shown to be positively related to treatment outcomes (Constantino, Arnkoff, Glass, Ametrano, & Smith, 2011; Taylor, 2003). With regard to EMDR specifically, previous authors have asserted the view that beneficial effects of the treatment are incidental and might be explained by credibility, expectation for improvement, experimental demand, therapist enthusiasm, and therapist allegiance (Devilly, 2005; Herbert et al, 2000; Lohr et al, 1992; Lohr, Lilienfeld, Tolin, & Herbert, 1999). …”

“First Do No Harm:” Emerging Guidelines for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Reactions

“…Essentially, EMDR involves imaginal exposure exercises combined with bilateral stimulation, typically achieved by having the patient visually track the therapist's finger back and forth across his or her field of vision. A review of this controversial treatment is beyond the scope of this chapter; interested readers are referred to recent reviews by Davidson & Parker, 2001;Devilly, 2002b;Herbert et al, 2000;and McNally, 1999. These reviews of EMDR have consistently reached two general conclusions: (1) the technique is no more effective than standard exposure-based treatments, and perhaps even less so in the long term; and (2) the distinctive feature of EMDR-eye movements or other bilateral stimulation-are superfluous to its effects.…”

Is psychiatric research scientific?

“…Among these characteristics are (a) unfalsifiability (Popper, 1959), (b) absence of self-correction (Herbert et al, in press), (c) overuse of ad hoc immunizing tactics designed to protect theories from refutation (Lakatos,1978), (d) absence of 'connectivity' (Stanovich, 1998, p.116) with other domains of knowledge (i.e., failure to build on extant scientific constructs; Bunge, 1967), (e) the placing of the burden of proof on critics rather than on the proponents of claims (Shermer, 1997), (f) the use of obscurantist language (i.e., language that seems to have as its primary function to confuse rather 6 than clarify; Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 1999;van Rillaer, 1991), and (g) overreliance on anecdotes and testimonials at the expense of systematic evidence (Herbert et al, 2000). 1 The point of such lists is to enable pseudoscience to be identified and done away with, and indeed a number of papers have used such lists to condemn specific practices as pseudoscientific.…”