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Brandon Hamber

Violent Histories and Painful Memories: Reflections on experiences from Northern Ireland and beyond

Professor Brandon Hamber is the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace at Ulster University based at the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE). He is also a member of the Transitional Justice Institute at the university. He trained as a Clinical Psychologist in South Africa. He has undertaken consulting and research work, and participated in various peace and reconciliation initiatives in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Liberia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Colombia, the Basque Country and Sierra Leone, among others. He has published some 30 journal articles, over 25 book chapters and 4 books. Transforming Societies after Political Violence: Truth, Reconciliation, and Mental Health was published by Springer in 2009, and republished in Spanish by Ediciones Bellaterra. In 2015, with Springer he published Psychosocial Perspectives on Peacebuilding (Editors: Hamber and Elizabeth Gallagher) and Healing and Change in the City of Gold: Case Studies of Coping and Support in Johannesburg (Editors: Ingrid Palmary, Hamber, Lorena Núñez). He has been awarded The Paul Harris medal for contributions to peace by Rotary (2013), and was listed as one of the “Top 100: The most influential people in armed violence reduction” by the Action on Armed Violence Network (2013/2014). Professor Hamber is a board member of Healing Through Remembering (Northern Ireland) and Impunity Watch (Netherlands). He is on the Society Advisory Group of the British Council.
Abstract

Brandon Hamber

Violent Histories and Painful Memories: Reflections on experiences from Northern Ireland and beyond

Societies coming to terms with political violence not only have to deal with the impact of discrete events or direct psychological and physical harms but also a range of social, political, cultural, existential and spiritual challenges that extend beyond direct harm. Such suffering can only be understood relative to and dependent upon the context in which it is experienced. The address will, through referring to examples in Northern Ireland and South Africa among others, argue that context is a major, not a tangential, component of conceptualising how we recover from violence. Therefore, changing the context, and creating new processes of individual and societal meaning, are psychological interventions. This creates a responsibility on mental health workers and practitioners to find ways to change and influence the socio-political context.

Hee-Sup Shin

The neurobiological mechanism underlying EMDR therapy of fear disorders

Hee-Sup Shin, MD is director of the Center for Cognition and Sociality, leading the the Social Neuroscience group in the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Daejeon, Korea.
He received his MD in immunology from the College of Medicine of Seoul National University in 1974. In 1983, he obtained a PhD in genetics and cell biology from Cornell University, USA.
His research work is aimed at understanding how changes in calcium dynamics in nerve cells regulate brain functions. His work contains numerous publications and awards in the Republic of Korea and the USA.
Abstract

Hee-Sup Shin

The neurobiological mechanism underlying EMDR therapy of fear disorders

A psychotherapeutic regimen utilizing alternating bilateral sensory stimulation (ABS), also called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), has been used to treat posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD). However, the neural basis underlying the long-lasting effect of this treatment, has not been identified. Here, in the mouse we found a novel neuronal pathway mediating a persistent fear suppression driven by the superior colliculus (SC) activity. A long-lasting attenuation of fear memory was achieved in fear-conditioned mice by pairing visual ABS with conditioned tone stimuli during fear extinction. Among the visual stimulation protocols tested, the ABS-pairing induced the strongest fear-reducing effect and yielded sustained increases in the activities of the SC and the MD. Optogenetic manipulations revealed that the SC-MD circuit was necessary and sufficient to prevent the return of fear. The ABS treatment suppressed fear-encoding cells and stabilized inhibitory neurotransmission in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) through an MD-BLA feedforward inhibitory circuit. Taken together, these results revealed that the SC-MD-BLA circuit underlies the EMDR in the mouse, an effective psychotherapy for sustainably attenuating traumatic memories in PTSD patients.

Peter Liebermann

Between riding on principles and whateverism - where is EMDR going?

Peter Liebermann MD works in a private practice in Leverkusen, Germany. He specialises in psychiatry and psychotherapy, and is an EMDR-Trainer (EMDR Europe), part of the EMDR Trainer Cooperation.
He was co-founder of the German speaking Society for Psychotraumatology (DeGPT) and deputy head of the working group on acute traumatisation of DeGPT. He was also a founding member and board member of EMDR Germany (president 2005-2012) and has been treasurer of EMDR Europe till 11/2019. He teaches for various psychotherapeutic training institutions and is a member of the steering group of the German PTSD guidelines.
Abstract

Peter Liebermann

Between riding on principles and whateverism - where is EMDR going?

Both in behavioural therapy and in psychoanalysis, different treatment variations have developed over many years. This is often a consequence of the fact that patients cannot be treated ideally according to a theoretical model or treatment concept. In working with their patients, therapists experience the respective theoretical model as inadequate or the treatment technique as insufficient. This often leads to uncertainty and the questioning of the rule instead of reflecting whether there can be exceptions.

While both psychodynamic therapy and behavioural therapy (e.g. PE, CPT, NET, CBT…) are now integrative towards changed treatment approaches (despite a fierce debate about their significance), there seems to be a tendency in EMDR towards pure teaching with reference to the current version of Francine Shapiro's textbook.

EMDR has also developed therapeutic variants such as Brainspotting, ART, Flash-Technique, IEMT, etc., in addition to a multitude of different protocol variants that are no longer comprehensible.

So how do we deal with these developments? When does something still belong to EMDR?

Chris Lee

EMDR Therapy and Research: What have we got right and what can we improve

Christopher Lee is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University and has worked in a private practice alongside for 25 years. He is a clinical psychologist, a certified trainer by both the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA) and the International Society of Schema Therapists. He authored numerous publications on the treatment of PTSD and personality disorders . He has received several rewards for his research, including the Francine Shapiro award for research excellence and a special recognition award from EMDRIA for his work on having EMDR officially recognised by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the USA.
Abstract

Chris Lee

EMDR Therapy and Research: What have we got right and what can we improve

It is just over 30 years since Francine published her research on EMDR. In that time clinicians and researchers have found EMDR to be effective beyond addressing simple PTSD experiences. However, in some treatment guidelines, the evidence for EMDR is still considered shaky in several areas where we have some studies that demonstrate it is effective.

These areas include children who have experienced trauma, depression, early interventions, chronic pain and certain types of complex trauma populations such as war veterans. In addition, although it is known that EMDR does not work for everyone, we only have limited clues as to who might respond and who doesn’t. In this talk, recent research will be presented that addresses these issues together with how further examination of these issues might improve everyday practise.

Jonathan Lee

Dissecting the impact of BAS on specific memory phases: relevance for the mechanistic understanding of EMDR

Jonathan Lee is a behavioural neuroscientist interested in the mechanisms and functions of memory processes, in particular the phenomenon of memory reconsolidation.
He has a PhD in Experimental Psychology, and is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Birmingham. He published many papers and his current research focuses on the potential targeting of the memory destabilisation-reconsolidation process to reduce the impact of traumatic and addictive drug memories on anxious and drug-seeking behaviours.
Abstract

Jonathan Lee

Dissecting the impact of BAS on specific memory phases: relevance for the mechanistic understanding of EMDR

The mechanism of therapeutic action of EMDR remains controversial. Two prominent theories, that focus on the impact of BAS on fundamental memory mechanisms are (i) enhancement of memory extinction and (ii) impairment of memory reconsolidation through the taxing of working memory. Reconsolidation and extinction are memory processes that have been extensively researched in animal models; more so than in human studies. We have been using traditional behavioural pharmacological approaches to evaluate the impact of tactile BAS in rats on the various memory phases, including reconsolidation and extinction. In this way, we hope to shed light on the validity of existing theories.