Scientific studies of EMDR have shown that it is one of the most effective tools to treat posttraumatic stress disorder.  One of the lesser known properties of EMDR is that it also seems to be an effective psychotherapy method in a number of disorders that have part of their origins in dysfunctional implicit memory structures.  Some of these disorders are complex trauma based disorders like dissociative disorders and some patients with symptoms of borderline disorder, traumatized offenders, some forms of substance dependencies and chronic depression.

Many of these patients are challenging populations and some of the direct EMDR approaches may only be partly successful.

In this workshop an overview of the new areas for the application of EMDR will be given and participants will hear where and how EMDR can be used in a treatment plan. Also the research status of these new approaches will be reported. Some of the additional treatment strategies for EMDR with some of these populations will be explained practically (including demonstrations).

In this workshop participants will learn:  The EMDR-strategy of the inverted standard protocol for instable complex trauma patients with dissociative and/or borderline symptoms

• The use of resource activation in techniques like the absorption technique
• An empirically validated addiction protocol
• Strategies for the treatment of chronic depression that are currently empirically studied

Dr. Arne Hofmann is specialist for internal and psychosomatic medicine and is head of the EMDR-Institute in Germany. He learned EMDR in 1991 during a residency at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California and has introduced it in the German speaking countries.  He founded one of the first inpatient units for victims of complex psychological trauma in Germany and has helped develop aftercare programs after mass disasters like the train accident in Eschede 1998 and in the wake of the Tsunami in 2004.

In 2003 he received for his contribution to EMDR the Ronald Martinez Award at the EMDRIA conference in Denver.

Dr. Hofmann is a member of a German national guideline commission on the treatment of PTSD and a current Vice president of EMDR-Europe. He is teaching, researching and publishing in the field of psychological trauma and has taught at the Universities of Cologne, Witten-Herdecke, Boston and the Peking University. Currently he is guest professor at the Xihua university in Sichuan, a province in China that suffered from a great earthquake in May 2008. He also coordinates a research project on EMDR in the treatment of depression in a cooperation of centres in four European countries.