Blind Faith

Karin Kleiner, a volunteer in the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program, spent four weeks in Oklahoma City, working with rescue workers, victims, medics, and local therapists in a donated office space. Invited by the Red Cross, several clinicians flew to Oklahoma, paying for their own tickets, to lend their expertise. Since then, the Oakland-based Kleiner has worked with private patients, former prostitutes, and recovering drug addicts in San Francisco, and, most recently, Kosovar Albanian refugees in Germany. "All of them had lost their homes, many had lost their families or witnessed violence and murder -- there was a high level of trauma," she says. Kleiner and a handful of therapists were invited by Malteser, the emergency relief arm of the Order of Malta, a Catholic lay organization running the camps, to work specifically with children. She remembers the children, subdued and suffering from nightmares, clinging to her "like barnacles." One little boy, in particular, affected her deeply. "He had an incredibly angelic face," she says. "Then he would talk about seeing his cousin being beheaded, or trying to escape with his family on tractors and get into Montenegro. He just couldn't sleep; he would wake up screaming." By the time Kleiner left, the boy was playing soccer on his own.

The Humanitarian Assistance Program has provided training to mental health professionals in Warsaw, Belfast, and to those working with flood victims in North Dakota and earthquake victims in Turkey. The organization's goal is not only to heal those suffering from trauma, but also to explore how Shapiro's method can break the cycle of violence. The technique has been used to treat pedophiles and husbands who batter their wives.

EMDR's founder Francine Shapiro.

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RELATED LINKS

The Skeptics Dictionary
Entry for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR Institute
Access official publications and studies, clinician referrals, and training information

EMDRIA
Links to EMDR and trauma sites on the Web

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• Letters
  February 9, 2000

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"When you see what it's capable of doing, you can't turn your back," Shapiro says. "That kind of healing fills the heart. How could I not do it?"