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No. 2: Derek Farrell

Transcript

Lightly edited for readability.

BridgerAll right. Well, thank you so much, Derek, for making time for us.

DerekNot at all. Nice to see you again, actually.

BridgerYes. So nice to see you.

JenI know you’re busy this weekend, so I appreciate you taking a few moments to pop over here.

DerekNot at all.

BridgerAre all your responsibilities done for the conference?

DerekYeah, thank you. It’s bizarre, because they invited me to do this keynote in January, and I feel like I’ve not slept since. Then I finished it yesterday and got this heavy cold.

DerekSo, for your listeners, I apologize.

BridgerI don’t think anybody is going to be upset about a baritone English accent.

JenAbsolutely not. Maybe just play it on repeat.

BridgerI actually brought a book for you to read, if you would.

JenA bedtime story?

Bridger[Joking about Harry Potter as a bedtime story.]

DerekOh, okay.

JenWould you give a little summary for our audience of your keynote presentation and the intention behind inviting you to speak at EMDRIA again this year?

DerekIt’s interesting, because you don’t often see this at conferences: there was a synergy between the keynotes from last year’s conference and this year’s conference. That was very deliberate. Last year was intended, in a way, to start a debate about adaptive information processing, and this year was about looking at what both Sarah and I could add to that.

DerekThe brief was really about several things. There have been some highly critical articles published on EMDR, presenting EMDR as a form of pseudoscience. No disrespect to the authors, because you do need disruptors within our field, but it’s often the same suspects—the same names you see time and time again. When you look at the article, it became personal: an attack on Francine and an attack on the legacy piece.

DerekI spoke with Michael and with colleagues, including Chris and Ad, about whether we should respond. Ad’s view was very much, no—you’re only fueling the fire and stirring it up. Chris Lee was probably very similar. But I felt that we needed to acknowledge it, because it is too easy simply to say, ‘They don’t know what they’re talking about,’ or, ‘They’ve got their own axe to grind.’ In academia, there can be value in taking a deliberately critical perspective: people become activated, you get cited, and people become irritated with you. You don’t want to get trapped in that scenario.

DerekThe author makes a distinction between the backstory or mythology—the significance of things like the walk in the park—and then uses that to fuel the argument that we should not be doing a therapy because we do not know how it works. You think, wait a minute: that does not seem like a very logical argument either.

DerekComing back to the keynote, the sense was that we may need a realignment around what the adaptive information processing model is, and that perhaps it is more robust than it is sometimes presented. We need a stronger sense of where its boundaries are, and a deeper dive into that.

DerekThe second aspect was looking at the eight phases. The eight phases were developed first, and the theory of adaptive information processing came later. You had the name, the eight phases, and then AIP. What I wanted to talk about was that I do not think they are aligned particularly well.

DerekIt is a terrible name for a therapy—Francine said that herself. Maybe we should stop calling it eye movement desensitization and reprocessing because, first, you do not need eye movements, and second, it is not desensitization.

BridgerThis question comes out of how I was taking what you shared during Consultant Day: that discourse ranging from academic evidence to practice-based evidence will continue to shape our field and EMDR as we know it. Do you hope there will be an evolution in which we stop calling it EMDR? How radical do you think the implications may be?

DerekThat is a good question, and there are two ways of looking at it. One is that, if you change the name, you could argue that the critics have won. I do not mean that in a churlish way, but it concedes ground in a territory where I do not think we need to concede ground—ground that has not been lost.

DerekThere is also a reputational brand. If we, as an international community, decided to change the name, how would that affect international treatment guidelines? It becomes like ‘the artist formerly known as Prince’: the therapy formerly known as EMDR. Do we really want to go down that road? There is a reasonable argument for saying, this is where we are, and we work from there.

DerekThe second part is that Sarah is a very good example of what Michael was talking about with the MQ Foundation. When you look at meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials are what change the dial. Randomized controlled trials are hard, expensive, complicated, and take an extraordinarily long time. But you need the right quality and caliber of people within that process. If you do not invest in those people, they will not be there later on.

DerekSarah was one of the first recipients of a research award about fifteen years ago, and now, fifteen years later, she is an international keynote. That is where the synergy needs to be. To be blunt, it means investing in people of your age as early-career researchers. Giving someone 50,000 may be helpful, but it will not take them very far in RCT territory. It has to be enough money to invest in someone for three years so that they can conduct an interesting and robust pilot study.

DerekThen they can go to NIMH with a data set and publications and say, ‘We think this is worth investigating.’ That is how you get the two-, three-, or four-million-level grants farther down the line. It is refreshing that EMDRIA has seen this and recognized that the only way to address it is to put serious money behind it—and, at the same time, acknowledge that you are not going to get a return in three years.

JenYou are looking at a return in ten to fifteen years.

DerekExactly.

BridgerWith dedicated presentations coming out of it, advocacy work, and lobbying.

DerekYes, definitely. I was fortunate to be part of the MQ process from start to finish. Just to reassure people, it is an incredibly robust process. It is very detailed—a year-long interview process, with repeated stages of feedback, clarification, and nurturing. We are very confident that the three studies we arrived at are interesting, because these are not just financial investments; they are investments in people and investments in access.

DerekOne of them is based on a military veteran population. If it goes well, it gives us access to a very unique database. Is it a risk? Of course it is; all research is a risk. But does it have the potential to move the dial farther along? I think it does.

JenTo circle back a little: if AIP may need to be expanded in some way, if there is reconsideration of the title EMDR, and if we are now talking about a reconstruction or revision of the eight phases, what I hear as the continual thread is still, ‘This is what EMDR is,’ even through those revisions and that evolution.

DerekLet’s look at that in two different ways, because that is a good question. Revisions can be perceived as weakness or as some form of detriment. You are right; they can be viewed that way. But any good therapy does that. I first trained in prolonged exposure therapy in the early 1990s, and it is a different beast now. Cognitive processing therapy is much more sophisticated now than it was.

DerekWe should be living in an age where, when we get new evidence and more data, we are flexible enough to continue developing. One of my concerns about where we are as a community is that you often see bizarre or strange rules being applied, and they are treated almost as law.

DerekOne example was a video submitted for accreditation involving a four-year-old child. The therapist used eye movements, and the assessor rejected it, saying, ‘You should not be using eye movements on a four-year-old because the midline is not established, so they are not able to connect.’ But you can see the memory process; it works. What is the outcome? Why are we setting strange rules that are not really based in the evidence in front of us?

DerekThat comes back to one of the final points I was trying to make in the keynote: the client is the final arbiter. It is their process. We know as clinicians that EMDR works so much better when you adapt it to the individual rather than making the individual fit the method. Having a piece of paper beside you that says, ‘The rule says I cannot do this with somebody of your age,’ is bizarre.

DerekThe other essential part of what you are saying is that EMDR will always attract criticism. The point is that, rather than becoming defensive and remonstrating, we need to be strong and bold enough to step back and ask, ‘Have you got a point? Where might you be right?’

DerekIn the Rosen paper, one of the points is that you are getting all these proliferations within EMDR—EMDR 2.0, Flash, group interventions, and so forth—which are setting themselves up as their own little microcosms. Then they move to the next level: ‘Now we will have our own accreditation system. You can do this, but you cannot do this because you have not done our training.’ It dilutes the field.

DerekIt creates another ecosystem and another set of rules and regulations for a workforce that already has many rules and regulations. On the one hand, you can dismiss that criticism as irrelevant; on the other, you can step back and say there is a fair point. How does EMDRIA—or how does EMDR Europe—address that proliferation? As you know, if people do not feel relevant or do not feel part of a community where their voice is heard, they go and find another community.

BridgerI want to return to the MQ Foundation. This is a question I have wanted to ask you for quite some time: how is the qualitative tradition of research regarded within the MQ Foundation? What role can it play in this journey toward something more unified but not discriminatory? Is qualitative methodology appreciated? I would love to hear you speak to that.

DerekAgain, a great and very important question. On the one hand, we have been talking about the significance of randomized controlled trials. They are what drive major health policy and health economics, and we cannot get away from that. In fairness, though, many modern randomized controlled trials are trying to capture more of the beneficiary’s narrative within the process. Technically, you are right: it is moving toward mixed methodology.

DerekIt is not only about the specific numerical outcomes. Increasingly, RCTs incorporate stakeholder engagement, which captures much more of the qualitative aspect. My old psychology lecturer used to ask, ‘Do you want to be boringly accurate or deeply interesting?’

BridgerThe more RCTs adopt mixed methodology, the more opportunity there is to explore the relationships among RCTs—not merely add up their results, but examine the authors and look reflexively at that research community. We can ask, ‘What is our field doing?’ You need more than a number to do that. That is where I find such hope in a mixed-methods future for EMDR.

DerekThat is true. And, in fairness, funding agencies are not all aligned only with the RCT end of the hierarchy of evidence. They acknowledge that you need other tools and other ways of looking.

DerekOne project we have been involved in looks at death by suicide in the military veteran population in the UK. Every death is a tragedy. Proportionally, though, the numbers here in the United States are a much greater concern. One of the things we found through co-production was this: who first identifies when a veteran is becoming unwell? The family.

DerekBut in the triage and risk-assessment process, the family is completely ignored. They may ring the social prescriber, and the response is, ‘For GDPR reasons, I cannot talk to you. I can only talk to the client.’ You begin to see systems that do not link together. An RCT would never have taken you to that point. You reach it only by capturing those experiences and narratives between the numbers.

DerekWe see the same thing in humanitarian projects. Many donors are not particularly interested in seeing reductions on the Impact of Event Scale. They want to know what impact the work is having on the community. Is there enrichment? Is there healing? ‘Enrichment’ is a great word. It is about enrichment and how people make sense of it within that environment and lived experience.

DerekComing back to research and reinvention: the harder job is to look at somebody and resist the urge to argue with them because you think they are wrong. Instead, ask where they may be right. One place critics may be right is this: since the Oklahoma City bombing—which, in our community, became a birthplace of humanitarian trauma-capacity building—how much research has actually emerged from all those humanitarian projects? Not much.

DerekPeople feel rightly proud of projects that have empowered communities in many ways, and they usually come from a good place and a good heart. But there have been missed research opportunities and missed narratives. Humanitarian work is one area in which we could significantly upskill our research.

JenYou shared something—perhaps during the Consultant Day keynote; all the presentations are blending together for me—about impact on the community rather than only the individual. We are very systems-focused, including larger family systems and relational impacts. We can target an individual experience and reduce distress, but how does that translate back into a family system, relationships, a larger community, or society? When you said that, it really clicked for me.

DerekAn awful lot of the work is focused only on the individual. A client comes for therapy and gives you their narrative version of their lived experience—the way they have learned to tell the story. But you may get a completely different story from their partner. There is no such thing as one narrative; there are many narratives. Systemic work empowers us to search for the other narratives and other ways of making sense of what is happening.

DerekI worked with a BBC cameraman who had experienced something very traumatic. He came to therapy kicking and screaming because he did not want to be there, and he wanted to tell a story that showed how well he was and that he was absolutely fine. His wife sat beautifully for half an hour. Finally, she stamped her foot and said, ‘Okay, let me tell you what he is like to live with.’

DerekThe PTSD account did not come from him; it came from his wife. She said, ‘This is what is going on. He has not told you about his nightmares. He has not told you about his driving anxiety. He has not told you about his avoidance behavior.’ Capturing those multiple narratives is really critical.

BridgerOne of my final questions is about the relationship between the MQ Foundation and the EMDR Research Foundation. I do not have much awareness of whether there is an equivalent organization in EMDR Europe. As a qualitative researcher who is epistemologically focused on the nature of research, it seems that it could be difficult to maintain an invitation that holds the field together—especially amid generational transitions and a recent leadership transition. How is this being stewarded? How do we, as a community of researchers and practitioners, participate in that?

DerekThat is another great question, but let’s deconstruct it and be clear about what MQ is and what MQ is not. The call is focused primarily on early-career researchers—academics who are already affiliated with a university. The funding buys them out of some of their existing university responsibilities so that they can focus on the project.

DerekThat affiliation matters because, in a scientist-practitioner community, many clinicians work in private practice and do not have the same IRB or research-ethics mechanisms in place. With a university affiliation, those mechanisms already exist. Virtually all universities have the systems and procedures in place; it is the bread-and-butter part of academia.

DerekMQ is focused on postdoctoral research. It is for people who already have a PhD. It is not aimed at funding master’s degrees or PhDs; it is definitely postdoctoral. I do not want to disclose confidential application information, but MQ works with postdoctoral researchers at a very large scale across many fields.

DerekYou have a funder saying, in effect, ‘We are prepared to put this amount of money together. Can you find the right postdoctoral people who can match the call?’ Because this was the first time we had done it with MQ, we were never going to receive thousands of applications. Nobody knew the funding was available. The fact that we received around twenty applications was interesting.

DerekMQ initially worried that the number meant the process might not work. We had to explain that it was a different algorithm: the community did not yet know the opportunity existed. When the next call goes out in the autumn, some applicants who did not get through this time may return with stronger, modified applications and a clearer sense of what is being sought.

DerekAs you know, it is also about word of mouth. Someone may be told, ‘Instead of going for that bid, which is only 50,000, hold back and expand your methodology, because you may be able to go for the one with 400,000 in funding. That could help you secure tenure and position you for the next, larger grant.’

DerekResearch is all about relationships and trust. If you walk into a bank and ask to borrow two million dollars, they are not simply going to say yes. They want to know who you are, your credibility, and the likelihood of a return on their investment. Research is the same. When you have been doing it a long time, research organizations may eventually say, ‘We are not putting out an open call; we are giving it to that unit because we trust them and they deliver.’

DerekLet me give you an example from our military and veteran work. Have you heard of Charles Bonnet syndrome? It involves visual hallucinations associated with sight loss. It is quite common. Many people who experience it do not want to talk about it because they worry they will be seen as psychotic, developing dementia, or ‘going crazy.’ It is highly stigmatized.

DerekThe funders wanted to know how awareness could be increased. We used co-production to ask what the best way of communicating the information would be. What did we find? The best way was to create podcasts.

JenWhat? Absolutely.

DerekSo we created four podcasts—very much in the way you have done this. It is a popular, accessible, and inexpensive medium. If we had only created a training manual and sent it to A&E departments, ophthalmology departments, or opticians, it would probably have been deleted or placed on a shelf forever. We also hired an animation company to produce a three-minute video explaining Charles Bonnet syndrome. That has been much more effective than an RCT could have been for that communication goal.

DerekThe next link is this: perhaps 45 to 50 percent of military veterans with Charles Bonnet syndrome experience disturbing imagery. What would it be like to use EMDR with that client group? Now that the resources are in place, we can have a more concrete conversation with funders: ‘This may be worth investing in.’ Our unit’s raison d’être is the military and veteran population, but then we ask how the learning can translate to the rest of the population.

JenIt is fascinating to hear the behind-the-scenes account of how this develops. It develops over years—decades. It connects me back to the beginning of our conversation, when you said that this year’s conference keynotes were not just about this year; they continued last year’s conversation. The title was ‘The Future of EMDR.’ I remember seeing that projected while Suzy was preparing to present and thinking, that is a big statement. But it sounds as though there is a continuing plan. Turning a ship requires gradual shifts and naming these things over time.

DerekYou cannot make those transitions within a one-year cycle. You need somebody with a vision who can provide continuity. I think EMDRIA has been very blessed to have, in my humble opinion, a very visionary executive director. Going with an internal appointment for the next executive director is a smart move because the person is already acculturated. The lineage is carried forward. Suddenly you do not have a one-year plan; you have a ten-year plan. That is when you can begin making the big moves and major policy changes.

DerekTo come full circle, we need criticism. We need debate. We need people who can turn around and say, ‘I do not agree with you.’ We suffer when we cannot have those debates and discussions—when everything becomes siloed and people say, ‘You are wrong and I am right.’ We grow stronger through challenge.

DerekI will give you a metaphor. There is a biodome in Cornwall in the United Kingdom with an amazing array of plants and trees. In the center, they grew an oak tree that had been there for years as a beautiful centerpiece. Last year it fell over. The reason was that it had existed in an almost perfect vacuum: it had no resistance and no challenge, so its roots had not adapted and were not sophisticated enough.

DerekWith the MQ funding, we would like every one of those 400,000 investments to reap gold. I hope they will, but some may not. Even then, they will tell us something. They may tell us that next time we should not look in that direction; we should go in another direction. Not every randomized controlled trial has to prove the hoped-for effect. We can learn a great deal from finding that something did not make the difference we expected.

DerekWe are just finishing an eight-year study involving adults with intellectual disabilities. If you look only at the International Trauma Questionnaire, you may miss the point. Critics can jump on the headline and say, ‘EMDR was no different from trauma-informed psychoeducation.’ But the transformation may be located somewhere else. The finding may tell us that the instrument was not the right instrument for what we needed to examine.

DerekOf course, we would have liked an earth-shattering result that made EMDR the gold-standard treatment for adults with intellectual disabilities. But what the study gives us is a whole raft of information so that next time, instead of going one way, we can go another. That is how it works.

BridgerMaybe this is where we can land the plane. You said that we need debate, dialogue, and continuing conversation. It needs to happen in a format that is accessible and cost-effective, while also accounting for time—showing relationship, reflection, and a reflexive posture. That is so much of our hope for the podcast and for our writing: to offer a platform where people can hear that kind of conversation.

DerekDefinitely. The point you make about accessibility is important. People are not reading books.

BridgerRight.

DerekThey are not—let alone articles in gatekept academic journals. My students now use AI and say, ‘Give me a summary of that research.’ That is the way it is. It forces us, as a community, to become very clear about the core messages we want to communicate. That is the key.

BridgerDerek, thank you. As always, I really appreciate your time. It is always a joy to connect with you.

DerekIt is always nice to talk about it. Thank you.

JenYes, thank you.

What is Notes from the Hall?

Notes from the Hall is a 26 episode series from the Notice That podcast, recorded on the floor of the EMDRIA Conference 2026 in Anaheim. It is a window into the largest gathering of EMDR therapists in the United States, for everyone who was there and everyone who could not be. A new conversation releases every week.

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