Francine Shapiro

Francine Shapiro (February 18, 1948 – June 16, 2019) was an American psychologist and educator who originated and developed eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a controversial form of psychotherapy for resolving the symptoms of traumatic and other disturbing life experiences.

In 1987, she claims she had an experience walking through a park that led to the observation that moving her eyes from side to side appeared to reduce the disturbance of negative thoughts and memories. Challenging this narrative, psychologists Gerald Rosen and Loren Pankratz show that Shapiro was actually involved in the pseudoscientific practice of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) from 1985, conducting workshops as well as writing about the practice. Rosen and Pankratz offer as evidence an image from the January 22, 1985 North County Times of Shapiro and Thomas Grinder as NLP trainers with their "eye access patterns" signage. They call Shapiro's origin story "fanciful".

She claims that her experience in 1987 led her to examine this phenomenon more systematically. Working with approximately 70 volunteers, she conducted additional research and published a randomized controlled study with trauma victims. After further research and elaboration of the methodology, she published a textbook in 1995 detailing the eight phases of this form of psychotherapy. The text is now in its third edition.

In more recent years, EMDR has been categorized as a form of purple hat therapy and pseudoscience.

Early life and education

Shapiro was born to Jewish parents in the East New York section of Brooklyn. She had three younger siblings.

Shapiro attended and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn.

Over the next few years she participated in numerous workshops and programs exploring various stress reduction and self-care procedures. According to Robert Todd Carroll, she then enrolled in the Professional School of Psychological Studies, San Diego (a now defunct non-regionally accredited graduate training program). Her observations regarding the beneficial effect of eye movements, and the development of procedures to utilize them in clinical practice, became the basis of her dissertation. She received her PhD in 1988, and her thesis was published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 1989,

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

In the late 1980s Shapiro invented and developed eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a controversial form of exposure therapy to which various other activities (for example eye movement) are required from the person being treated.

In a workshop, Shapiro related how the idea of the therapy came to her while she was taking a walk in the woods, and discerned she had been able to cope better with disturbing thoughts when also experiencing saccadic eye movements. Psychologist Gerald Rosen has expressed doubt about this description, saying that people are normally not aware of this type of eye movement.

Shapiro went on to devote herself to the development and research of EMDR therapy. She was a senior research fellow emeritus at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, executive director of the EMDR Institute, Watsonville, California, and founder and president emeritus of EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, a non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and pro bono trainings worldwide. The organization was a recipient of the 2011 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Sarah Haley Memorial Award for Clinical Excellence. Shapiro was designated as one of the “Cadre of Experts” of the American Psychological Association & Canadian Psychological Association Joint Initiative on Ethnopolitical Warfare, and served as advisor to a wide variety of trauma treatment and outreach organizations and journals. She was an invited speaker at psychology conferences and universities worldwide, and wrote and co-authored more than 60 journal articles, chapters, and books about EMDR, including the primary text Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols and Procedures. She was a licensed clinical psychologist and resided in Northern California.

In the early 2000s, peer reviewed systematic trials on EMDR have described it as a pseudoscience given the primary therapeutic mechanisms are unfalsifiable and non-scientific. A peer reviewed systematic meta analysis in 2024 found it as effective as other therapies.

Awards

As the developer of EMDR, Shapiro was the recipient of a variety of awards, including the International Sigmund Freud Award for Psychotherapy of the City of Vienna in conjunction with the World Council for Psychotherapy, the American Psychological Association Trauma Psychology Division Award for Outstanding Contributions to Practice in Trauma Psychology, and the Distinguished Scientific Achievement in Psychology Award presented by the California Psychological Association.

Death

Shapiro received a second cancer diagnosis in her later years.

Publications

Books

Adler-Tapia, R., Settle, C., & Shapiro, F. (2012). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) psychotherapy with children who have experienced sexual abuse and trauma. In P. Goodyear-Brown & P. Goodyear-Brown (Ed) (Eds.), Handbook of child sexual abuse: Identification, assessment, and treatment.