Francine Shapiro
She turned bilateral eye movements into a trauma therapy.
Founder of EMDR, which pairs recalling distressing memories with guided bilateral stimulation to help the brain reprocess trauma.
terms
techniques
The past affects the present even without our being aware of it.
Who they were
Francine Shapiro was an American psychologist who originated EMDR in the late 1980s after noticing that side-to-side eye movements seemed to reduce the intensity of disturbing thoughts. She built it into a structured eight-phase protocol and founded the EMDR Institute. EMDR became one of the most widely used trauma treatments and is recommended for PTSD by bodies such as the WHO, even as debate continues over how it works.
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
Adaptive Information Processing
The mind heals trauma like the body heals wounds, once a stuck memory is unblocked.
The approach they founded
EMDR
Processes stuck trauma memories with guided recall and bilateral stimulation, so they lose their charge.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Shapiro — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.