Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Life, meet Art. Art, Life.
Live blogging tonight!
Jake and I have been sharing yucks and generally having fun with the Sam and Max games. These retro mysteries are all about the wisecracks; the puzzles are usually trivial.
In the first game, Culture Shock, Sam and Max contend with a trio of former child stars who are roaming our protagonists’ neighborhood, promoting the mesmerizing video of cult-leader-wannabe Brady Culture. The video promises to teach viewers “Eye-Bo fitness,” eye exercises guaranteed to get you the girl/boy/job/foot massage of your dreams.
As if anyone would believe eye exercises could improve your life. Crazy, huh?
Meanwhile, purely in the interests of research (natch!), this afternoon I googled “psychology adults abused as children.” This search led me to this Amazon page for EMDR in the Treatment of Adults Abused as Children.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — Eye-Bo by any other name. What’s the big idea? One reviewer writes,
EMDR helps you to integrate the two halves of your brain and to heal from trauma that is trapped in your nervous system. EMDR is a very effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It isn’t quite as spectacular as the books make it seem, but it really can work.
Hmm. How does that work, again?
EMDR helps you to recognize that the abuse happened in the past, and is not happening in the present. Therefore it is easier for you to process your traumatic experiences because you don’t have to live as if the abuse is still happening.
I see. It’s that old right-brain/left-brain thingamobob. But are there any peer reviewed reports to support EMDR? After all, these are vulnerable patients who come to their therapist following a childhood of victimization. No one would take advantage of such folks by taking their money in exchange for unproven methods . . . would they?
As usual, Quackwatch has the dope:
Only one published study has directly compared EMDR with a no-treatment control group. Jensen (1994) randomly assigned Vietnam veterans with PTSD to either an EMDR group or a control group that was promised delayed treatment. EMDR produced lower within-session SUDs [Subjective Units of Distress] ratings compared with the control condition, but did not differ from the control session in its effect on PTSD symptoms. In fact, the level of interviewer-rated PTSD symptoms increased in the EMDR group following treatment.
The author concludes,
The proponents of EMDR have yet to demonstrate that EMDR represents a new advance in the treatment of anxiety disorders, or that the eye movements purportedly critical to this technique constitute anything more than pseudoscientific window dressing . . . .
Because of the limited number of controlled studies on EMDR, both practitioners and scientists should remain open to the possibility of its effectiveness. Nevertheless, the standard of proof required to use a new procedure clinically should be considerably higher than the standard of proof required to conduct research on its efficacy. This is particularly true in the case of such conditions as PTSD, for which existing treatments have already been shown to be effective. The continued widespread use of EMDR for therapeutic purposes in the absence of adequate evidence can be seen as only another example of the human mind’s willingness to sacrifice critical thinking for wishful thinking.
And now I get to kick back and watch. Will any EMDR fanatics come out of the woodwork to tear me a new one? Folks are always rarin’ to testify, it seems.
D.
I’ve never heard of EMDR. Hmmm. Sounds to me like you have the right take on it. You’re also correct in that folks are ALWAYS rarin’ to testify. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
Oooh, ooooh, let me! Let me!
The Quackwatch article is fairly out of date. Speaking as someone married to a Clinical Psychologist who specializes in PTSD treatments (and I’ve heard earfuls about EMDR), my understanding is that EMDR has been clinically validated as a PTSD treatment.
Here’s where the, uh, questionable nature of EMDR comes in: they can’t say what exactly about the eye movements makes it special – and they won’t authorize anyone to use their manualized (and tightly controlled) treatment unless you’re comparing EMDR to another specific treatment. They won’t let you, say, conduct a study with the following groups:
1. EMDR as manualized
2. EMDR minus the eye movements entirely
3. EMDR only replacing the eye movements with, say, toe-tapping.
Basically, what they’ve done is taken a proven PTSD treatment (prolonged exposure (PE) – there’s an element of EMRD that requires the patient to recount key parts of the event over and over and over again, much like PE), made it much easier for Joe or Jane Therapist to practice, wrapped some voodoo around it, and hitched a very lucrative training and certification program to it.
My wife’s not a fan of EMDR. She accepts that it does work – but only because it happens to mimic a better (but harder to perform) treatment.
Welcome, Serena!
Thanks, PS. You’re a gentleman and a scholar, particularly since you’re confirming my gut feeling from having read the Amazon reviews & Quackwatch article.
Bottom line, a true clinical scientist won’t be afraid to subject such things to intense scrutiny. Someone with a monetary axe to grind will run the other way.
I think this where I’m supposed to say something like “Hey! I work for a living!”
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