Why cults rewrite history: the backstory of the Hoffman Process.

Originally posted January 22, 2020

If I were Deep Throat, I’d tell you to follow the money. If you were asking whether to register for the Hoffman Process, I'd say caveat emptor.

The core premise of spiritual work is to be honest with ourselves, our faults, and idiosyncratic distortions of truth. This applies equally to the healer. Psychological treatment helps you uncover parts of yourself that you’ve been hiding from and have cast their shadow over the rest of your life. You assume that your therapist has dealt with most of that material themselves and can provide a reasonably unbiased mirror. That trust is essential.

Cults rewrite history. A fictitious backstory portrays the guru as having access to privileged knowledge. It’s just a marketing plan. The online biographies of Bob Hoffman, the founder of the Fischer-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy, the Hoffman Process, or the Quadrinity Process, are awash in lies, inaccuracies, fabrications, or, in the best case, distortions. How could it be possible that any of these people actually met or worked with Hoffman? If they were honest, they could not demonstrate that Hoffman had the clarity to establish the trust required to do deep personal work. 

Hoffman was not a kindly, grandfatherly, “intuitive” who had everybody’s best interest at heart. He was a bully and a psychopath. He ran roughshod over everyone. If forced to testify under oath, almost all of Hoffman’s early associates would have to admit that he was neither gentle nor sympathetic. They might duck the issue, saying his methods were unorthodox, pig-headed, and unprofessional. He was a malignant narcissist.

His apologists will not agree he was the bully and liar I experienced, but I knew Bob Hoffman for over 25 years. I uncovered some of the lies he insisted he had to tell the world in order to promote his “very important” work. Most significantly, he lied about his relationship with Sigfried Fisher. He was Hoffman’s therapist for many years, but Hoffman created the fiction of a family friend with whom he shared convivial dinners. Hoffman also led a very closeted gay life. He was what I'd call a homophobe, but that is probably too much of a leap as I had to deal with his sexual and emotional abuse.

The Process claims it is not psychotherapy, but it does explicitly and purposefully dig into the roots of emotional conditioning. The first version, The Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy, was billed as an alternative to traditional therapy. The current version of the Hoffman Process is a choreographed emotional rollercoaster that promises an experience of unconditional love in a few days. It costs a great deal of money. It’s a hard sell that needs professional endorsement. In my view, it does not pass the conditions of ethical practice. One glance at the waivers you sign shows you’re in dangerous territory.

Volker Kohrn of the Australian branch of the Hoffman Institute Internation published a piece called 50 YEARS LATER, BOB HOFFMAN’S DREAM LIVES ON. The claims that he, Volker, or his copywriter use to describe the endorsement of Claudio Naranjo are not accurate. They are presented as if Naranjo had a strong hand in developing the Process, giving it a psychotherapeutic imprimatur. He did not.

Here are the claims:

• The renowned Enneagram teacher Claudio Naranjo did help Hoffman formulate his “world famous” process, but not in the ways described. Their relationship was far more complex and conflicted than either admitted. I have described my first-hand experiences in Bob Hoffman was a Lunatic, a Liar, a Criminal, & a Fraud.

• Naranjo’s medical education was at the University of Chile. He was a Guggenheim Fellow at Harvard for a year, a high honor worthy of note, but it does not include matriculation and graduation from the University. You could stretch it and say, “Harvard educated," but even that's inaccurate. It just sounds assuring to your affluent Western audience.

• Naranjo did not coin “Quadrinity” to point to four aspects of human nature, emphasizing the oft-neglected emotional and spiritual sides. The incredibly talented polymath Julius Brandstatter came up with the term. That’s a fact. But of course, if you were looking for a sign of genuine collaboration, why not falsely claim that Naranjo gets naming rights? Who, after all, is Julius Brandstatter?

• The writer claims that Naranjo helped Hoffman formulate the 8-day Process. Wrong. When Naranjo independently crafted a 3-day version of the Process for his SAT groups, Hoffman realized that a shorter process would be more marketable. Naranjo had no hand in formulating what is now known as the Process. Again, Julius Brandstatter and his lovely, professionally trained wife, Miriam, were Hoffman’s principal consultants. How do I know this? Hoffman told me. Miriam herself recounted the experience in great detail when I visited her at her home during the last years of her life. I stand by my presentation of the history of the Process. When researching my paper, The Ontological Odd Couple, I had detailed conversations with almost everyone who contributed to Hoffman’s Process. 

The Hoffman Institute International’s copywriter is batting four for four. I might be less critical of the Process if the current practitioners did their homework, but I beg the question.

Be highly cautious of psychological work channeled through a dead psychiatrist to a bespoke tailor with absolutely no professional training. Hoffman and The Hoffman Institute need Naranjo’s endorsement. To lend credibility to their product, they’ve invented a dubious backstory. Buyer beware. Undertaking this exploration outside the guidelines of professional therapy is risky. It certainly was in my case. 

Cults rewrite history as advertising copy.

How do they think they can get away with it?

As soon as I read the self-congratulatory promo that Lama/Guru/Rinpoche is “one of the most highly trained American-born lamas in the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition & author of many books….” I smell sexual scandal. It seems inevitable. Of course, the charming Surya Das is statistically a minority among all the practitioners who just do their work and practice, but my god, the sexually misbehaved fringe sucks up so much energy. 

His sangha included “five women [who] brought allegations of sexual misconduct by Surya Das to Dzogchen Foundation's board of directors in 2019. Three of them said Surya Das suggested that meditating while naked in his lap (based on the yab-yum image) would help their spiritual practice.” 

This guy is still doing his esoteric chant master gig. Really? Well, in the world of Trump, sexual misconduct is a requirement for higher office. Goddamn, what do I know? It may all come down to a kundalini lap dance, and I’m just another deluded jerk.

Ashutosh Jogalekar’s blog, koans, and a story about Heisenberg and Dirac

I have been single-mindedly focused on koan study for the past three years. For over thirty years, I’ve been “a serious koan student,” but there were gaps and less-than-assiduous application for one reason or another—none of which I’d recommend. The COVID lockdown had some fortuitous consequences—koans morning, noon, and night.

I was just working on a koan that pushed the boundaries. In addition to zazen and working with my teacher, I started doing a jig in front of the refrigerator (I live alone) and singing an off-tune (and sometimes off-color), made-up chant, something about how cold left-over pizza was perfect bodhisattva fare. Although a lot of humor in koan work gets squashed, I began to wonder if I was starting to abuse the glimpses of freedom that appear now and then. Following the rhythm of my dance and the odd taste of cold pepperoni, I asked myself what ways of working with koans might take me outside the ballpark. Experience says that some methods are more productive, but that differs from my question's direction. For example, I wouldn’t recommend starting work on the miscellaneous koan: “Count the stars” by lying on your back at midnight and mumbling “A fuck of a lot.”

An online koan enthusiast asked for documentation about the well-known and oft-repeated zen saying from the Jewel Mirror Samadi: “When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing.” I thought about how I would handle it as a koan.

And then I got a hint from a curious, not very Zen source. I found this anecdote about Heisenberg and Dirac in a blog (The Curious Wavefunction) by Ashutosh Jogalekar: “. . . The two were on a trip to Japan for a conference. The social Heisenberg used to dance with the young girls on the ship before dinners while Dirac used to sit watching. Once Dirac asked him, ‘Heisenberg, why do you dance?’ Heisenberg replied that when there were nice girls he felt like dancing with them. Dirac fell into deep thought and after about fifteen minutes, asked Heisenberg again, ‘Heisenberg, how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?’.

Either way, Heisenberg’s dancing or Dirac’s questioning might provide an entrance. But if I had to choose, I’d vote for dancing, but I’m not everybody.

Bob Hoffman was a Lunatic, a Liar, a Criminal, & a Fraud.

I’ve reached the end of the road with Hoffman and the Quadrinity Process.

This Fall, I began working with several professionals to isolate the transformational insight of the Hoffman Process. Hoffman’s ideas are not unique, and given the heavy dose of the Spiritualist Church, his Process is hardly worth stealing. However, we aimed to create an accessible format and shortcut the outrageously expensive series of staged emotional exercises now available. Undertaking an updated version of the “Process” also allowed me to review my long relationship with Hoffman, including his collaboration with Claudio Naranjo.

So, one last word: Bob Hoffman was a lunatic, a liar, a criminal, a fraud, and, in the end, a very ordinary and unhappy human being. His proponents and enthusiasts try to cast him as a kindly Jewish “intuitive,” which, I think, is a spiritually correct term for someone who stares into the void, hears voices, and then comes back to tell you the truth. It’s a step above an Ouija board, and as a total supporter of freedom of religion, if you want to believe that nonsense, put your money down and stake your life on it. Be my guest.

Hoffman, the Lunatic, was for many years a patient of the highly respected German psychiatrist Siegfried Fischer, who fled Nazi Germany and ended up at San Francisco’s Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital. At the same time, Hoffman was poking around in the Spiritualist Church under the direction of Reverend Rose Strongin, a relatively unknown psychic minister. I googled the lovely lady and found one reference to her in a 1963 copy of “Chimes, Largest Psychic Monthly,” which was the outlet for this form of communication. The summer issue included an article called “Visiting with Grandma” and the more esoteric “Begin Orbiting at Higher Mental Altitude” by Clara Mills Ward. It cost 30 cents.

Fischer died suddenly before Hoffman completed treatment and became Hoffman’s Spirit Guide. In 1968, as Hoffman told the story, Doctor Fischer’s disgruntled ghost appeared at the foot of Hoffman’s bed and supplied the missing piece that had eluded the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, “Negative Love.” But there was a way out revealed that night. Hoffman became the first embodied human to undergo a loving divorce from Mommy and Daddy. You, too (the angels cheer), can hear the story and help reduce Dr. Fischer’s negative karma. Hoffman will hand you the keys to the freedom to orbit at a higher mental altitude. Unlocking the door to that world, believe it or not, begins with an imaginary visit to Grandma, but it will cost a good deal more than 30 cents.

And now Hoffman, the Liar, begins to emerge. The man who became the channel for “Negative Love” could not be a malignant narcissist who’d undergone prolonged treatment at a psychiatric hospital--he had a psychiatrist friend through his wife’s family with whom he argued about the unseen world. Fischer’s son told me the argument is the only fact in his cover story, but I could have supplied that information independently.

The treatment, the divorce from mommy and daddy, was the cure for everything you wrongly believed about love; it was wrong and negative because you learned it from deluded parents who couldn’t tell the difference between a kick in the face and a kiss. When Hoffman psychically “read” your grandma’s emotionally stunted childhood, you learned that “everyone is guilty, and no one to blame.” I never heard of one case where Hoffman supplied hard, verifiable information about Grandma’s emotional life as a child. Your parents learned how to love from their parents, whose parents taught them what they learned, and so on, from generation to generation, all the way back to when everyone hung out in caves. People have some insight during the Fischer-Hoffman Process, I will grant that, and perhaps this hypothesis is the inflection point where a taste of freedom becomes available.

Another side of Hoffman the Liar appears with the creation of the public face for his “important work”: Hoffman was queer. Not in the liberated sense of my post-Stonewall generation but in the closeted, campy, hidden lives of American middle-class gay men who thought they had to blend in to be happy. Hoffman was homophobic and not at peace. Though a few friends knew that he was a homosexual--he claimed that was enough to land above board in honesty--he was conflicted, constantly bickering with lovers, demanding and frustrated. He also believed the universe owed him “true” love; he was always on the prowl. The guy was a total mess.

Now we get to Hoffman, the Criminal. Within a few months of finishing my Process of Psychic Therapy, Hoffman began stalking me. This was right out of the predator's handbook. I had zero sexual attraction to the man; I was 28, and he was about 50. I had a professional relationship with him as (I suppose) a spiritual mentor, and no matter how anyone tries to analyze the dynamics of the relationship, whether it was rape or a twisted consensual sexual encounter, California Law prohibits dating and certainly having sex with a patient or parishioner for a full two years after the professional relationship ends. He raped me 13 months after I met him and began psychic therapy. However, Hoffman’s psychosis placed him outside the law that governs ordinary people’s lives. He should have been heavily fined, restricted from his role as a spiritual teacher, or in jail. Instead, he continued to do precisely as he’d done in the past. I know at least three other younger men who found themselves in the same predicament. A cute guy Hoffman hired as an assistant hadn’t completed the Process. He claimed harassment and filed charges. They settled after Hoffman, kicking and screaming, listened to the advice of his lawyers. It included a non-disclosure clause.

Now, to the enterprise itself, Hoffman the Fraud. Sadly, I have to include Claudio Naranjo. Webster defines fraud as “wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.” Hoffman needed Naranjo’s imprimatur to cover his idiosyncratic work as psychotherapy, which it was not, and Naranjo felt that he had to play the role of John the Baptist. Hoffman wanted to rival Werner Erhart’s income, and I will never understand Naranjo’s trust in messages from “the otherside.”

In order to create this deception, they both needed to document Naranjo’s collaboration in the development of the Process. I refer to Naranjo’s description of his role in his book “The End of Patriarchy.”* It is not even vaguely close to what happened. I was present from the first moment Naranjo introduced Hoffman to SAT until he delivered his “Closure” mind trip of his first group process. I didn’t miss a session. I was never late for a session. I paid close attention, took detailed notes, and did every assignment. I tried to “make the Process work” because I’d had a life-altering experience. Naranjo’s description is a complete fraud.

I can forgive Naranjo for inflating the number of people who undertook their collaborative endeavor. Naranjo says 50, and it was 37 (+/-1). He says Hoffman was a silent witness and that Reza Leah Landman delivered the Process using written guidelines. After you left the room, Claudio, Hoffman wouldn’t shut up.

But far more egregious is the claim that the SAT Gourp experienced the entire Process. After Hoffman got the emotional release in “the bitch session,” he withdrew from any further collaboration. In November, he announced that the “Defense of Mother” would be an appropriate place to finish his work with SAT and announced that his rival group would begin in January. The Naranjo/Hoffman collaboration barely included a third of the Process. (For a thoroughly researched paper on all the sources and contributions, see The Ontological Odd Couple—The Origins of the Fischer-Hoffman Psychic Therapy Process).

Hoffman was always in the market for miracles from the nether world. He handed the Fischer-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy to Dr. Ernie Peci (Ernie was a lovely man, even if very New Age. The grandnephew of Pope Leo 13th wholly bought into Spiritualist dogma). Hoffman had been diagnosed with bladder cancer and had gone to Mexico to die or be cured. When he miraculously recovered, he returned to Oakland and wrested control of the Fischer-Hoffman Process back from Pecci, who’d just about had it anyway. Then Hoffman created an eight-day product he hoped would rival Werner Erhart and set up internationally. In the mid-1990s, he developed liver cancer. He again tried to bypass modern medicine. He went to Brazil and sought out a famous psychic surgeon named Doctor Fritz. In the non-sterile setting of a Sao Paulo kitchen, Hoffman went under the knife. Fritz nicked his liver, and Hoffman was forced to book an expensive air ambulance back to San Francisco for emergency treatment. Sadly, after an excruciating painful liver resection, the hope of miracles crashed. A psychic surgeon botched the job and helped the cancer complete its work. Dr. Fritz might as well have been a voodoo priest.

I don’t know if “Chimes, Largest Psychic Monthly” will accept my commentary on the old-time hymn “May the Circle be unbroken, Bye and Bye, Lord, Bye, and Bye,” but they’ve probably migrated online and charge your phone bill for readings from an Indian Call Center.

I can feel my critics lining up. “Why are you so hard on a Process that’s helped thousands?” By their records, hundreds of thousands. Hoffman enthusiasts even have a word to describe my attack: “Vindictive.” Yes, it is an attack. Why? Because it’s a lie based on a complete fabrication. “Gifted Intuitive” attempts to be “spiritual” and talk around the more rudimentary Spiritualist Church with real ghosts. “Kindly Jewish Grandfather” is a complete ruse if you ever met Hoffman. He was a rather dim-witted, uninteresting, bossy tailor who did not complete grade school, a psychotic who’d failed psychiatric treatment, a man with very fixed opinions who concocted an unscientific theory of personality development, and, to top it off--was a con man. Naranjo participated in this fabrication by withholding the truth and not vetting people he invited to teach his SAT students. Had he been slightly more transparent, I might have avoided the worst decision of my life.

I am telling you what Hoffman enthusiasts are hiding from you so that you can make an informed decision. A basic level of integrity is required for any personal work. Perhaps by following in the footsteps of Hoffman and Fischer, I am helping Hoffman relieve some of his karma for being a complete and total liar. I’ll hand “lunatic, criminal, and fraud” over to someone else. My pockets are not that deep. In the end, Hoffman was just a flawed, ordinary human being. But as I said, if you were willing to trust your psychological well-being to people directed “from the other side,” go for it. I strongly advise against it.

________________

*“first application was with a group of more than seventy people (culminating in Bob’s visit for the closure stage of the Process). This was a time when, in my work with people at SAT Institute, I was particularly interested in the process of turning groups into self-healing systems. There followed a second application in which Reza Leah Landman led a group of about fifty people (with Bob present as silent witness) using the format of written guidelines. (I produced these guidelines at a time of rare inspiration, and when I visited Bob shortly afterwards, he interestingly commented, quite spontaneously, that Dr. Fischer had been with me.)”

From The End of Patriarchy, by Claudio Naranjo 1994
https://www.claudionaranjo.net/pdf_files/inner_family/from_the_end_of_patriarchy_english.pdf