Mr Anthony Hurst1, Dr Sarah Schubert2
1Systemic Psychology; University of Melbourne; EMDR Association of Australia (EMDRAA) Board Chair, Australia, 2EMDR Therapy Training Australia; EMDR Association of Australia Board Director; Northumbria University Newcastle, Australia
Biography:
Sarah is a clinical psychologist specialising in trauma treatment across the lifespan. She is a director of EMDR Therapy Training Australia and an accredited trainer and consultant in EMDR and trauma therapy for children, adolescents, and adults. Sarah is an editor of the Oxford Handbook of EMDR Therapy and the Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, a contributing author to Shapiro's (2018) EMDR textbook, and a contributor to the ISTSS (2020) international guidelines for PTSD. She serves as an EMDRAA board director. Sarah values flexibility and groundedness in theoretical knowledge, integrating mind and body approaches with compassionate authenticity.
Abstract:
This presentation examines the misconceptions that have led EMDR to be regarded with suspicion in legal settings, and the evidence said to justify that suspicion. The aim is to separate what is established from what is assumed, so that debate about the therapy rests on an accurate understanding rather than on conflation. We address several persistent misconceptions directly, including the belief that EMDR is a form of hypnosis and the belief that it is a memory-recovery or memory-retrieval procedure, clarifying how the therapy differs from each. We then turn to the eye-movement component and the false-memory research tradition, revisiting the memory wars and the paradigms on which the memory-contamination concern draws. The talk's specific contribution is a structured appraisal of how key sources have been cited in this debate, comparing what the underlying studies actually demonstrate with what is claimed of them, and contrasting the size of any laboratory effect on memory with the size of EMDR's established clinical effect. The issue under consideration is whether the characterisation of EMDR as a distinctive threat to memory reliability survives scrutiny of its conceptual and empirical basis. We conclude that this characterisation rests substantially on conflation and on the over-extension of laboratory findings, and that clarifying the science is essential wherever conclusions about memory are used to shape treatment access or legal process.