Course Description

Psychosis is often framed as a diagnostic endpoint rather than a meaning‑laden response to threat, disempowerment, and trauma. This workshop integrates EMDR’s Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model with the ICoNN (Identifying Cognitions of Negative Networks) case conceptualization framework to illustrate how psychotic experiences can be understood and formulated through a trauma‑informed lens. Drawing on contemporary research, lived‑experience accounts, and clinical examples, the session demonstrates how AIP‑guided formulation can clarify the traumagenic architecture underlying hallucinations, delusions, dissociation, and disturbances of self. Connections to the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) are examined to highlight how meaning, context, and systemic power contribute to the emergence and maintenance of psychosis. Practical tools for EMDR clinicians are reviewed, including assessment considerations, treatment planning, risk navigation, and preparation strategies for processing. Case material illustrates application of the framework in complex clinical contexts.

Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be able to identify at least three traumagenic mechanisms that contribute to psychosis and describe how these map onto the AIP model and PTMF by the end of the session.
2. Participants will be able to apply the ICoNN framework to formulate a psychosis case vignette, identifying links among identity, control, narrative, neurobiology, and trauma‑related pathways.
3. Participants will be able to describe AIP‑consistent EMDR treatment planning considerations for psychosis, including preparation, target selection, and risk‑mitigation strategies.

Session Level: Intermediate

Presenter(s)

Paul Miller, MD, DMH, MRC, Psych FRSA

Paul Miller is an author, psychiatrist, trauma psychotherapist, and researcher with nearly three decades of clinical and academic experience. Trained in Northern Ireland, I have worked as a psychiatrist since 1996 across public and private sectors. An EMDR Europe-accredited Consultant and Trainer, I served on the Council of Scholars for the Future of EMDR Therapy project, chairing the Training & Credentialing Workgroup. After substantive NHS consultant posts, I moved to the private sector in 2009 founding Mirabilis Health (2011), now a centre of excellence for EMDR research, training, and trauma therapy. I work extensively with first responders and co-developed the Acute Stress Adaptive Protocol (ASAP) with Professor Derek Farrell and Sonny Provetto (VT, USA). In 2022, I founded a psychedelic/neuroscience research facility exploring methylone for PTSD in the IMPACT Studies for Transcend Therapeutics. I hold honorary professorships in Ukraine and Northern Ireland and serve as Chancellor of OSMTH Ireland (UN NGO).