Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART): A Definition

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is a brief therapy that pairs eye movements with voluntary image replacement, where you deliberately picture a calmer scene over a disturbing one. Therapist Laney Rosenzweig developed it in 2008, building on her EMDR training, and designed it to finish in just one to five sessions.

Who created Accelerated Resolution Therapy?

Laney Rosenzweig, a licensed marriage and family therapist, developed ART in 2008 after years of practicing EMDR. She kept EMDR’s core eye-movement technique but built a different, more directive process around it, drawing on pieces of Gestalt therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and brief psychodynamic therapy. Becoming an ART clinician requires an existing mental health license plus training through Rosenzweig’s own training organization, a more centralized path than EMDR’s, where EMDRIA accredits many independent trainers.

How does an ART session work?

You briefly bring a distressing memory to mind while your eyes track a therapist’s hand or a light bar moving side to side, similar to EMDR. Instead of narrating what happened, though, you review the memory silently, almost like watching a film. Once the memory’s images lose some of their charge, ART adds its signature step, voluntary image replacement: your therapist guides you to deliberately picture a more positive scene in place of the disturbing one while the eye movements continue. Sessions typically run 60 to 75 minutes, with no homework in between.

Is ART backed by research?

Evidence is newer and thinner than EMDR’s. A 2013 randomized trial in Military Medicine found ART eased PTSD and depressive symptoms in active-duty service members and veterans more than a brief attention-control condition did. Rosenzweig, ART’s developer, co-authored that trial. An earlier 2012 open trial, which had no control group, reported similar improvements.

The first systematic review of ART for PTSD, published in PLOS Mental Health in 2024, found just five studies met its criteria and couldn’t pool them into a meta-analysis because the designs varied too much. ART isn’t currently named in the APA, WHO, or VA/DoD PTSD treatment guidelines the way EMDR is.

How is ART different from EMDR?

Both use eye movements, but the resemblance mostly ends there. EMDR follows a standardized eight-phase protocol built around bilateral stimulation and lets whatever surfaces come up in its own order. ART is more directive, asks for far less verbal disclosure, and is designed to finish in a handful of sessions rather than the six to twelve or more that significant trauma often takes with EMDR. See our full EMDR vs. ART comparison for the details side by side.

Can you practice ART on your own?

No. Voluntary image replacement is built to follow directly after therapist-guided work, with no standalone version, and it needs a trained clinician for anything as significant as combat trauma, the population most of ART’s research has studied. EMDR’s core mechanism is different: bilateral stimulation is simple enough to practice on your own for everyday stress, which is what EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, offers as guided visual and audio sessions. See can you do EMDR on yourself for where that line sits.