Allan Botkin Psy.D.

Allan Botkin Quick Facts

Dr Allan Botkin received his Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) degree from Baylor University in 1983. For the next 20 years he worked as a psychologist on an inpatient PTSD unit at a VA hospital in the Chicago area. Dr Botkin and his colleagues at the VA were among the first in the nation to treat combat related PTSD with eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). The results of EMDR were consistently positive, and at times, very dramatic.

In 1995 Dr Botkin developed and coordinated a new program within the general PTSD unit which he called the Intensive Trauma Program (ITP). While providing therapy in the ITP, Dr Botkin experimented with a number of variations to the standard EMDR protocol. He accidentally discovered that one of these variations reliably resulted in his patients having an experience that they believed involved actual communication with the deceased person they were grieving. The first time this happened, Dr Botkin assumed that his patient had hallucinated. As more and more of patients reported the experience, it became clear that these after-death communications (ADCs), as they are commonly called by other authors, were healing his patients to a degree that he had thought was not possible. Over the next few years Dr Botkin further refined his procedure, which is now called induced after death communication (IADC) therapy.

As a psychologist who is interested in healing people who suffer profoundly from grief and trauma, Dr Botkin has chosen to not take sides in the philosophical battle between afterlife believers and skeptics. IADC therapy works equally well for patients from either belief system, and Dr Botkin lets his patients decide whether the experience was "real" or not. Although nearly all patients are convinced their experiences are real, regardless of their prior beliefs, even those who do not believe in the authenticity of their experience are healed to the same degree. Beliefs, as Dr Botkin points out, are inconsequential throughout the IADC procedure.

Dr. Botkin early retired from the VA in 2003 and founded The Center for Grief and Traumatic Loss, LLC in Libertyville Illinois. His book, Induced After Death Communication: A New Therapy for Healing Grief and Trauma was a Hampton Roads best-seller for 2006. Dr Botkin maintains an active private practice for those suffering from grief and trauma, and provides training in IADC therapy to professionals who are already EMDR trained. A list of trained IADC therapists is provided on Dr Botkin's website, induced-adc.com.