Francine Shapiro

Early life and education

Shapiro was born in the East New York section of Brooklyn. She had three younger siblings. Her father, Daniel Shapiro, was a car mechanic who owned an auto-parts store, managed a garage, and had a fleet of taxis. Her mother, Shirley managed the household. After her younger sister died at age 9 in 1965, Shapiro said it affected her deeply.

She attended and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn.

Shapiro studied English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1968 and completed her master's degree in 1975. In 1974, while employed full-time as a high school English teacher, she enrolled in a PhD program in English Literature at New York University. In 1979, having completed all but her dissertation, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Shapiro travelled, then settled in San Diego and set up a nonprofit organization, Human Development Institute, along with Shirley Phares-Kime. The institute provided weekend and 8-week NLP training sessions.

Over the next few years she participated in numerous workshops and programs exploring various stress reduction and self-care procedures. According to Robert Todd Carroll, she then enrolled in the Professional School of Psychological Studies, San Diego (a now defunct non-regionally accredited graduate training program). Her observations regarding the beneficial effect of eye movements, and the development of procedures to utilize them in clinical practice, became the basis of her dissertation. She received her PhD in 1988, and her thesis was published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 1989, followed by an invited article that was published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

Main article: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

In the late 1980s Shapiro invented and developed eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a controversial form of exposure therapy to which various other activities (for example eye movement) are required from the person being treated.

In a workshop, Shapiro related how the idea of the therapy came to her while she was taking a walk in the woods, and discerned she had been able to cope better with disturbing thoughts when also experiencing saccadic eye movements. Psychologist Gerald Rosen has expressed doubt about this description, saying that people are normally not aware of this type of eye movement.

Shapiro went on to devote herself to the development and research of EMDR therapy. She was a senior research fellow emeritus at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, executive director of the EMDR Institute, Watsonville, California, and founder and president emeritus of EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, a non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and pro bono trainings worldwide. The organization was a recipient of the 2011 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Sarah Haley Memorial Award for Clinical Excellence. Shapiro was designated as one of the “Cadre of Experts” of the American Psychological Association & Canadian Psychological Association Joint Initiative on Ethnopolitical Warfare, and served as advisor to a wide variety of trauma treatment and outreach organizations and journals. She was an invited speaker at psychology conferences and universities worldwide, and wrote and co-authored more than 60 journal articles, chapters, and books about EMDR, including the primary text Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols and Procedures. She was a licensed clinical psychologist and resided in Northern California.

In the early 2000s, peer reviewed systematic trials on EMDR have described it as a pseudoscience given the primary therapeutic mechanisms are unfalsifiable and non-scientific. A peer reviewed systematic meta analysis in 2024 found it as effective as other therapies.

Awards

As the developer of EMDR, Shapiro was the recipient of a variety of awards, including the International Sigmund Freud Award for Psychotherapy of the City of Vienna in conjunction with the World Council for Psychotherapy, the American Psychological Association Trauma Psychology Division Award for Outstanding Contributions to Practice in Trauma Psychology, and the Distinguished Scientific Achievement in Psychology Award presented by the California Psychological Association.

Death

Shapiro received a second cancer diagnosis in her later years.

She died suddenly at age 71 on June 16, 2019, at a medical center north of San Francisco not far from her home, after a long struggle with respiratory issues. The cause of death is unknown.

Publications

Books

• Shapiro, F (2001). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures. Guildford Press.
• Shapiro, F (Ed.) (2002). EMDR as an Integrative Psychotherapy Approach: Experts of Diverse Orientations Explore the Paradigm Prism. APA.
• Shapiro, F. (2012). Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy. New York: Rodale.
• Shapiro, F & Forrest, M S (2004). EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress and Trauma. Basic books.
• Shapiro, F., Kaslow, F., & Maxfield, L. (Eds.) (2007). Handbook of EMDR and Family Therapy Processes. Wiley.
• Solomon, M.F., Neborsky, R.J., McCullough, L., Alpert, M., Shapiro, F., & Malan, D. (2001). Short-Term Therapy for Long-Term Change. New York: Norton.
• Adler-Tapia, R., Settle, C., & Shapiro, F. (2012). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) psychotherapy with children who have experienced sexual abuse and trauma. In P. Goodyear-Brown & P. Goodyear-Brown (Ed) (Eds.), Handbook of child sexual abuse: Identification, assessment, and treatment.
• Shapiro, F. (2017) Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy, Third Edition: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures. The Guilford Press.

References

Sources

• Brown, S., & Shapiro, F. (2006). EMDR in the Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Clinical Case Studies, 5(5), 403–420.

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References

1. Shapiro, F. & Solomon, R. M. (2010). EMDR. In I. Weiner and W.E.Craighead (Eds.). The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology (4th edition). Vol. 2 Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
2. Olga Khazan. (July 27, 2015). "EMDR Eye Movement Therapy for Victims of Trauma and PTSD - The Atlantic". The Atlantic.
3. (April 15, 2015). "History of EMDR".
4. (1989). "Efficacy of the eye movement desensitization procedure in the treatment of traumatic memories". Journal of Traumatic Stress.
5. Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures. (3rd Edition. New York: Guilford Press.
6. (2023-08-20). "Science and Pseudoscience in Social Work Practice". Springer Publishing Company.
7. Fasce, Angelo. (2017-12-22). "What do we mean when we speak of pseudoscience? The development of a demarcation criterion based on the analysis of twenty-one previous attempts [¿Qué queremos decir cuando hablamos de pseudociencia? El desarrollo de un criterio de demarcación basado en el análisis de veintiún intentos anteriores]". Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin.
8. Warren, Penny. (July 15, 2019). "Francine Shapiro obituary".
9. McLean, Dan. (February 13, 1985). "Aiming at Superachievers NLP: Influencing Anybody to Do Just About Anything". Los Angeles Times.
10. M. Rosen, Gerald. (2023-05-23). "Revisiting the Origins of EMDR". Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy.
11. "Diploma mill". The Skeptic's Dictionary.
12. "Accredited Programs in Clinical Psychology". American Psychological Association.
13. (1989). "Eye movement desensitization: A new treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder". Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
14. (June 1995). "On the origin of eye movement desensitization". J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry.
15. Grimley, Bruce. (2014). "Origins of EMDR- a question of integrity?". The Psychologist.
16. Grimley, Bruce. "What is Neurolinguistic Programming, (NLP)".
17. (2009). "Interview with Francine Shapiro: Historical Overview, Present Issues, and Future Directions of EMDR". Journal of EMDR Practice and Research.
18. "Presentations".
19. "Publications".
20. Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures (3rd edition). New York: Guilford Press.
21. (2000-11-01). "Science and pseudoscience in the development of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing: Implications for clinical psychology". Clinical Psychology Review.
22. Novella, Steven. (2011-03-30). "EMDR and Acupuncture – Selling Non-specific Effects".
23. (June 2024). "EMDR v. other psychological therapies for PTSD: a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis". Psychological Medicine.
24. Carey, Benedict. (July 11, 2019). "Francine Shapiro, Developer of Eye-Movement Therapy, Dies at 71". [[The New York Times]].