The Noonday Demon

by Andrew Solomon

David Grand, a trained psychoanalytic therapist who now uses EMDR with all his patients, says, “EMDR can help a person to do in six to twelve months what couldn’t be done in five years of ordinary treatment. I’m not comparing in the abstract: I’m comparing my work with EMDR to my work without it. The activation bypasses the ego and activates deeply, quickly, and directly. EMDR is not an approach, like the cognitive or the psychoanalytic; it’s a tool. You can’t just be a generic EMDR therapist. You have to be a good therapist first and then figure out how to integrate EMDR. The oddity of it is a turnoff, but I have been doing it for eight years, and I could not go back to doing therapy without EMDR knowing what I know now. It would be such a regression, such a return to the primitive.” I always came out of my EMDR therapist’s office reeling (in a good way); and the things I learned have stayed with me and enriched my conscious mind. It’s a powerful process. I recommend it.