ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides an overview of the issues explored in analytic therapy and how interpretation impacted on the presenting problems, along with the difference in approach in eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. Much of the his work in analytic therapy, related to the therapist gently interpreting using object relations theory to highlight the splitting of good and bad that was occurring in contemporary relationships. When the EMDR processing commenced he was asked to provide a target memory. The author chose an occasion from childhood at the age of eight, when his mother became very angry with him for scuffing a pair of new shoes and threatened to send him away to boarding school. Once the EMDR processing had begun with bilateral stimulation the author was struck by how the bilateral stimulation allowed a different and more powerful form of free association.
