Deany Goes to Europe!

The Council of Scholars, an international group of thought leaders in the EMDR community is holding its annual Symposium at the EMDR Europe conference in Valencia, Spain next week after 3 years since it was first formed and the pandemic arrived!  With Deany at the helm along with co-chair Suzy Matthijssen, the Council will be taking their next steps around the seminal paper, What is EMDR Therapy:  Past, Present and Future Directions, published in the Journal of EMDR Practice and Research in 2021 with Deany as the lead author.  This is a critical time for the international EMDR community as the needs of our clients continue to change, inspiring new innovations and applications while at the same time, holding true to EMDR's core elements that distinguish it from other therapies in the field.  The next steps for the Council will include future directions in research, guidelines for best clinical practices and international credentialing of EMDR training programs and clinicians.  While arriving at a consensus is always a challenge, particularly in a professional community that has always valued new ideas, this is a critical time of rapid growth and change.  EMDR is no longer in its infancy; it is now in its adolescence and heading into adulthood!

Deany will also be presenting at the annual meeting of EMDR Europe Trainers and Consultants to discuss the proposed categories of EMDR therapy as presented in the paper:  EMDR treatment protocols, EMDR-derived techniques and EMDR psychotherapy.  As fellow trainers, researchers and clinicians, we will be examining the implications of these categories, how they could inform how we teach, how we practice and how we present EMDR to the consumer public.  Of course, these categories may need further refinement before we can even take our next steps, but the mission is clear:  we as a community are the gatekeepers of our method, the ambassadors of EMDR therapy to the world.  The future of EMDR is in our hands now.

For more information on the Council of Scholars, go to: http://www.emdrcouncilofscholars.org/