A Comparison of Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) and Prolonged Exposure (PE) Therapy (Metapsychology Monographs)

Product Review

Program developer Edna B. Foa, Ph.D. summarizes Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy as a cognitive-behavioral treatment program for individuals suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The program consists of a course of individual therapy designed to help clients process traumatic events and thus reduce trauma-induced psychological disturbance. The standard treatment program consists of nine to twelve 90-minute sessions. (SAMHSA, 2003)

Frank A. Gerbode, M.D., psychiatrist, and one of the principal developers of Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) summarizes TIR as a procedure that involves tracing back sequences of traumatic incidents to their roots while completing the incomplete receptive cycles that have accumulated in the sequences. What must be assimilated and accommodated from a traumatic incident are one’s reactions to the incidentincluding one’s thoughts, sensations, feelings, and perceptions. (Gerbode, 1995)

Although there are some remarkable similarities between PE and TIR, there are also some very distinct differences. In this paper, I'll both compare and contrast Prolonged Exposure with Traumatic Incident Reduction.