Francine Shapiro

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Francine Shapiro (February 18, 1948 – June 16, 2019) was an American psychologist and educator who originated and developed eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a controversial form of psychotherapy for resolving the symptoms of traumatic and other disturbing life experiences. In 1987, she claims she had an experience walking through a park that led to the observation that moving her eyes from side to side appeared to reduce the disturbance of negative thoughts and memories. Challenging this narrative, psychologists Gerald Rosen and Loren Pankratz show that Shapiro was actually involved in the pseudoscientific practice of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) from 1985, conducting workshops as well as writing about the practice. Rosen and Pankratz offer as evidence an image from the January 22, 1985 North County Times of Shapiro and Thomas Grinder as NLP trainers with their "eye access patterns" signage. They call Shapiro's origin story "fanciful". She claims that her experience...

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