Integrating EMDR Therapy with Jungian Psychology: Enhancing Generalization to Accelerate EMDR Processing

Imagine if Francine Shapiro and Carl Jung were interviewing a patient together. Each would be listening and watching for material that the other might ignore, and of course, both would be looking for things they both valued. This course informs the therapist of valuable information that is often discarded.

C. G. Jung is notorious for integrating everything he could lay his eyes on, from myth and religion to science and art, astrology, Kabbalah, and even the esoteric science of alchemy. It was all fair game for inquiry. What others discarded, he sought out, searching for connections, and discovered value in this often-ignored material.

When integrating Jungian psychology with EMDR therapy, valued material increases with the new integrative perspective, thus accelerating processing. Shapiro always encouraged the integration of EMDR therapy with other models. Attachment Theory, Internal Family Systems, Ego State Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Exposure Therapies are just a few modalities that have been integrated with EMDR. Ironically, even though Shapiro identified EMDR as a psychoanalytic process at its core, Jungian Psychology has been omitted from the equation. This course is in the service of correcting this oversight.

This workshop identifies relevant parallels between EMDR therapy and Jungian psychology. Its purpose is to integrate the related Jungian concepts with the 8-phase framework of EMDR therapy. Additionally, more recent research is incorporated in the understanding of these parallels. This course instructs the participants in relevant Jungian language, then provides methods to identify and integrate this Jungian material during EMDR processing. The purpose of this integrative understanding is to enhance generalization following Shapiro's instruction, to use "briefer, less specific cognitions" (Shapiro, 2018). Jungian interpretation expands this idea of "less is more," utilizing less specific material beyond the cognition that enhances generalization and accelerates the EMDR process.