By Sanne Houben

It all started with Francine Shapiro walking through a park. She was thinking about a distressing memory, while she noticed her eyes were moving from tree to tree. The result? Her memory became less distressing. She applied this finding into her own practice and a new (and nowadays popular) intervention for post-traumatic stress disorder was born: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

During EMDR, the patient retrieves a traumatic memory, while the therapist induces eye movements by moving the index finger horizontally in front of the patient’s visual field. Hereafter, the vividness and emotionality related to the trauma memory will decrease. EMDR protocols differ per country, but this dual task exercise is central to all of them.

The popularity of EMDR was also visible in Dutch court cases. However, expert witnesses stated that EMDR-therapists were searching for so-called repressed memories (memories of an alleged traumatic event that are inaccessible) or new memories arose during or right after EMDR-therapy (e.g., false memories; memories of an event that the individual did not experience). So, the question is: what happens to the traumatic memory when it becomes less vivid and emotional?

Following false memory theories, less detailed memories will lead individuals to rely upon so-called gist traces (i.e., the meaning of information). As a result, individuals will be more likely to accept misinformation afterwards. In practice this means that a patient will more easily accept details (or complete events) suggested by a therapist. However, even when a therapist refrains from suggestion, the dual task (i.e., simultaneously retrieving the traumatic memory and performing eye movements) could cause false memories. That is, the more details a patient can remember of the traumatic event, more spreading activation will occur in the patient’s knowledge base. As a result, related, but not experienced, memories are activated as well.

For therapeutic settings, memory distortion(s) due to eye movements might not be an important question, because the main aim of therapy is to help the patient’s mental health. However, EMDR-therapists work with autobiographical memory. It is therefore important that they are aware of the reconstructive nature of memory, including repressed memories and memory distortions such as false memories. Though EMDR-therapists are aware of memory’s reconstructive nature and know that memory is fallible, they strongly believe in the concept of repressed memories. Acting upon this belief in clinical practice could elicit false memories.

Memory distortions are crucial within the legal domain. For example, in alleged sexual abuse cases, an eyewitness statement is oftentimes the only piece of evidence. Due to the memory distortions, the statements could include incorrect details. Or, worst case scenario, the entire event might be false. Victims should be taken seriously, but it is up to legal professionals to take into account the memorial consequences of EMDR, because relying on wrongful testimony could lead to wrongful prosecution and/or conviction, thereby contributing to legal miscarriages.

EMDR is effective in the treatment of traumatic experiences, but EMDR-therapists need to be aware of certain memorial side effects (i.e., false memories) of the intervention. Because, unlike Vegas, what happens during EMDR therapy, might not always stay in EMDR therapy.

Want to know more?

On May 27th, 16:00hrs, Sanne Houben will defend her PhD thesis entitled: “Do your eyes protect your memory? From memory myths to the false memory potential of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing”.

The defense can be followed via: https://phd-defence.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ or contact Sanne Houben (sanne.houben@maastrichtuniversity.nl) to obtain her thesis.