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This study investigates changes of stress-related psychophysiological reactions after treatment with EMDR. Sixteen patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following type I trauma underwent psychometric and psychophysiological assessment during exposure to script-driven imagery before and after EMDR and at 6-month follow-up. Psychophysiological assessment included heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) during a neutral task and during trauma script listening. PTSD symptoms as assessed by questionnaire decreased signifi cantly after treatment and during follow-up in comparison to pretreatment. After EMDR, stress-related HR reactions during trauma script were signifi cantly reduced, while HRV indicating parasympathetic tone increased both during neutral script and during trauma script. These results were maintained during the follow-up assessment. Successful EMDR treatment may be associated with reduced psychophysiological stress reactions and heightened parasympathetic tone.

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This study was designed to investigate the question of whether psychophysiological changes during EMDR sessions are related to subjective and objective reduction of PTSD symptoms. During-session changes in autonomic tone in relation to session-to-session changes of subjective stress, trauma-related symptoms, and psychophysiological reactions during a traumatic reminder were investigated in 10 patients suffering from single-trauma PTSD. Treatment duration followed each patient’s individual needs and ranged between 1 and 4 sessions, resulting in a total of 24 EMDR treatment sessions from which psychophysiological data were completely recorded. Treatment with EMDR was followed by a significant reduction of trauma-related symptoms, elimination of the PTSD diagnosis in 8 of the 10 participants, as well as by significantly reduced psychophysiological reactivity to an individualized trauma script. Psychophysiological dearousal in sessions correlated significantly with decrease in script-related reactions in heart rate and parasympathetic tone, and with changes in subjective disturbance. Our results indicate that information processing during EMDR is followed by during-session decrease in psychophysiological activity, reduced subjective disturbance and reduced stress reactivity to traumatic memory.

Starting from the psychosomatic patients in clinico-medical wards and the inherent two primary alexithymic features ‘highly limited introspective capacity’ and ‘very low motivation concerning dynamic psychotherapy’, which we proved empirically, we describe the therapist’s attitude and the three steps of supportive psychotherapy which initially represent the most indicated procedure in this patient group. In Hannover, this supportive psychotherapeutic procedure is applied by student auxiliary therapists. On the basis of our empirical findings, the effectivity of supportive psychotherapy, accomplished by students, in the alexithymic psychosomatic clinico-medical inpatients could be clearly demonstrated. Furthermore, we comment on some previous psychotherapeutic findings with regard to Crohn patients. Starting from our pretreatment and our follow-up measurements, we were able to prove that patients who were treated by both supportive psychotherapy and psychoanalytically orientated inpatient ward psychotherapy, showed remarkable improvements at all levels of the measurement techniques. Finally, we outline some clinico-psychosomatic aspects with regard to secondary alexithymia.