Eye movement reprocessing went from alternative to establishment, and moving your eyes while talking about a trauma does seem to help you process it.

What these subjects mean

EMDR Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: a trauma therapy in which the patient recalls a memory while moving their eyes from side to side. Recommended as a first-line PTSD treatment; whether the eye movements themselves do anything is still argued about.

Trauma What overwhelming experience leaves behind, and whether it is stored in the body, the memory, or the loop between them.

What Scott Alexander actually said

Scott Alexander 12 Nov 2019 Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten

Eye movement directed reprocessing (alternative when the book was written, now basically establishment) where you move your eyes back and forth while talking about your trauma, and this seems to somehow help you process it better.

↗Book Review: The Body Keeps The Scoreslatestarcodex.com
12 Nov 2019

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"Evidence-based therapy" is a branding term rather than a scientific one, and in practice it is a code word for "not psychodynamic".

Shedler says "evidence-based therapy" is a branding term that in practice means "not psychodynamic". Alexander describes EMDR moving from alternative to establishment and says moving your eyes while talking about a trauma does seem to help. EMDR is a case where the label travelled, and the two accounts of why it travelled are not the same.

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