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For their help and encouragement with this paper, I would like to thank Clemens Loew, Lynn Preston, Kathy Roe, Sandra Shapiro, Ellen Shumsky and the Psychology of the Self members in Capetown, South Africa, where I presented an earlier version of this paper. And thank you, Monique.
It is my intention in this paper to portray a felt sense of the EMDR technique by detailing my experience with a patient. In addition, I would like to demonstrate the value of integrating this technique, which comes from outside psychoanalytic thinking, into our psychoanalytic practice, particularly Self Psychology and Intersubjectivity theories.1
I begin with the patient. I believe, along with Donna Orange (2007), that “each person … emerges as an unrepeatable individual in the context of relational processes of self and mutual regulation” (p. 7). Theoretical formulations should therefore be embedded, insofar as it is possible, in the details of both the patient's history and also the analyst/patient interaction, rather than vice versa. Accordingly, I will be applying theory to the clinical setting, rather then fitting the clinical work into the theory.
Monique is a large, attractive, exuberant French woman who is 46 years old. She leads an active, engaged life, full of friends and family and meaningful