EMDR Solutions: Pathways to

Healing

Robin Shapiro, Editor

360 Pages

W.W. Norton & Company, 2005

$37.50

Book review written by Ann Marie

McKelvey, LPCC

Are you are a clinician or a researcher who enjoys a book filled to the brim with many new

techniques substantiated with information and case studies? Then I confidently

recommend you purchase EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing as it will contribute deeply

to your clinical skills. 

Fourteen cutting edge EMDR clinicians show how they individually have developed and

utilized the Standard Protocol within creative and results-oriented frameworks. 

Throughout each stand-alone chapter we are steeped in case studies to use as templates

for our own work with clients.  Each chapter is a vehicle for yet another way to use EMDR

efficiently and productively.

EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing is written for therapists who work with a variety of

client populations including addicts

and alcoholics, couples, children, recovery groups as

well as Anxiety Disorder, Dissociative Disorder and  PTSD clients.

What I appreciated the most as an avid psychological reader was the vast diversity of

clinical experiences.  Each author brought to their particular chapter not only a different

subject matter but also different ways to engage clients in moving forward. I was

particularly grateful for the transcribed dialogues between client and clinician highlighting

specific techniques utilized in sessions.  

The chapter titles range from Robin Shapiro’s “The Two-Hand Interweave” to A.J. Popky’s

“DeTUR, an Urge Reduction Protocol for Addictions and Dysfunctional Behaviors” to

Elizabeth Turner’s “Affect Regulation for Children Through Art, Play, and Storytelling”. 

I particularly enjoyed Jim Knipe’s “Targeting Positive Affect to Clear the Pain of Unrequited

Love, Codependence, Avoidance, and Procrastination” as he shows the way to help clients

“process these positive aspects, disinvest from the problem, and go on to resolve the

conflict”.

As a licensed psychotherapist and certified coach I was disappointed that a chapter hadn’t

been devoted to the integration with EMDR to Coaching and Positive Psychology. These

three contemporary venues have carved out significant stature over the years for many of

us in the psychotherapy field.  As clinicians we have been discovering and exploring new

directions with EMDR while integrating other modalities with different populations. An

additional chapter on this particular subject would have successfully completed a

compilation of EMDR techniques, this time with highly functioning populations who

consider themselves living the good life and yet are ready to soar into new areas.  

So if you have been feeling a bit guilty around not being on top of the latest EMDR

techniques I challenge you to get the book, grab a cup of chai and start reading and

underlining…I predict you’ll be quite satisfied with your new level of learning as a result!

Happy studying!