EMDR: A Closer Look (Video and Video Manual) Since the 1980s, the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD has received increased attention from theorists and clinicians alike, resulting in a number of new treatment approaches. Among them, EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing) has gained popularity in recent years, although it has been and continues to be shrouded in controversy. In addition to addressing specific criticisms levied against EMDR, this videotape and companion manual offer a brief overview of EMDR's eight-stage model and discuss its application for treating PTSD, anxiety, and depression. The EMDR protocol is demonstrated and discussed on the video by its founder, Francine Shapiro, PhD, through a scripted roleplay in which an actress portrays a female client with PTSD symptoms. Commentary is provided throughout the videotape by Dr. Shapiro as well as several educators and researchers in the field, including Drs. Larry Beutler, Terence Keane, Kim Muesser, and Bessel van der Kolk. The accompanying manual is written by Jon Allen, PhD, Michael Keller, MD, and David Concole, MSW. Although EMDR: A Closer Look purports to provide the viewer with a critical appraisal of EMDR and its efficacy, the video presentation as a whole appears selectively biased, the "criticisms" appear benign and tend to be couched as "straw man" arguments, and no caveats or limitations regarding its clinical application are offered. The viewer may be particularly struck by a number of unsubstantiated claims espoused in the video. For example, Dr. Beutler at one point contends that "there are many more supportive studies of EMDR than of many other more widely accepted treatments," and that "a number of our most respected treatment approaches have much less and much poorer research foundations than EMDR." Yet, Beutler does not state which of "our most respected treatment approaches" he is referring to, nor does he offer any empirical substantiation of these claims, which leaves the viewer wondering what the basis of his claims are. By contrast, much less video interview time is allotted to the internationally known and widely respected PTSD researchers, Drs. Terence Keane and Bessel van der Kolk, who exercise considerably more caution in their comments regarding the efficacy claims of EMDR. While the authors of EMDR: A Closer Look acknowledge deficiencies in the theoretical rationale for EMDR since its inception, their efforts to provide "a conceptual framework that places it in the context of mainstream psychological theory" appear somewhat fragmented and haphazard. The manual states that EMDR draws on a variety of psychotherapeutic approaches, including "exposure therapy, behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, interactional therapy, client-centered therapy, and psychodynamic therapy" (p. 6). Similarly, the video illustrates EMDR's multifaceted nature by interweaving the eye movements with a number of superficially applied cognitive and behavioral techniques-including bits of exposure and desensitization, cognitive restructuring (identifying and superficially challenging such negative beliefs as "I don't deserve love"), and cognitive substitution (e.g., "What positive belief would you rather have instead?), together with rating ofSUDs levels, assessing validity of cognitions, and body scanning (identifying areas of bodily tension). As such, EMDR may appear to the viewer as: 1. a chameleon that can be blended into whatever theoretical model a therapist chooses to work from, but which itself has no theoretical grounding; and 2. …