The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult

The old Tolman Hall UC Berkeley

I received an email from a Hoffman Process teacher about my last post, “Bob Hoffman, The First Encounter.” After noting that we hadn't spoken in perhaps 20 years, and acknowledging that indeed Bob Hoffman was a difficult guy and, by the way, sorry for the way he treated you, he then asked why I didn’t acknowledge that there are different people teaching the Process now? Why didn't I mention the “defense” of the parent? And why now did I write this “hit piece”?

I will answer this teacher’s questions in reverse order: why now did I write this “hit piece”? I have been writing about the Process for nearly 17 years. When the current owners of Hoffman’s “intellectual property” began to fashion a narrative about the Process that I felt conflated, confused and distorted some of the history, I meticulously researched and chronicled the early development of the Process in The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy which was published on July 31, 2004 and revised September 16, 2006. 12 other pieces followed, several critical of the Process, others talking about my experience of Hoffman and the Process, as well as my sexual abuse at the hands of Hoffman within 6 months after I finished the first 13 week Process, clearly a criminal offense. Nothing I wrote was a “hit piece.” I have been as honest and accurate as I can be about the facts and dates. I have carefully described the personal interactions as such and when I’ve stated an opinion, I’ve labeled it. If any of this does not match some other narrative, please present evidence to support the counter claim. Just labeling what I write “a hit piece” is not good enough. Ad hominem arguments are the bottom of the barrel.

Now to the “defense” of parents. I ended “The First Encounter” with a description of Hoffman’s unprofessional behavior with his students, patients--the people who signed up for the Process. I said that it was my opinion that it was borderline unethical and abusive. Hoffman claimed that he was “breaking down to build up.” I say he was acting out as a bully for whatever reason his own psychosis demanded, and it went unchallenged. I know I didn’t call him out and over 25 years I didn’t hear anyone really confront him despite an enormous amount of complaining behind his back. If you contradicted Hoffman, you would be considered unsuitable as a teacher or Process owner and that would cost you a career and money. I know several people who did try to confront him and were fired. He was a dictator who was also very interested in money. I stand by my assessment.

Our SAT group was the first and only Process that Hoffman did under the auspices of Claudio Naranjo, and, as I will show, it was incomplete. A lot has been said and written about Claudio’s assistance, most of that cast as approbation plus stamping it with the seal of legitimate psychotherapeutic practice. I cannot deny that Claudio did remain one of Hoffman’s supporters, and that he continued to see Hoffman as a kind of shamanistic healer through Hoffman’s death. I helped take care of Hoffman at the end of his life and remember Claudio’s visits well, but I want to review and question other claims.

I went back to what Claudio had written about the Hoffman Quadrinity Process in “The End of Patriarchy” to review his actual comments. I was an actor and participant in this history so it heightened my interest though it also colored it. Claudio describes his position as that of an ambassador between the intuitive world that gave birth to the Fisher-Hoffman Process and the world of scientific psychology, a role akin to that of John the Baptist. Leaving aside the preposterous messianic claims, he goes on to describe his involvement in the formation of Hoffman’s group process: “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.)”

This description is simply not accurate. I was in that group. Claudio was never present (perhaps briefly at the first session to introduce Hoffman. I can’t be certain, but he was definitely never present at any of the other sessions that followed). Bob Hoffman was not in any sense a silent witness. I have described the attitude of Hoffman in the group--after a few minutes of Reza Leah’s low key instructions, she invited Bob to take the floor and he did. I will also add that I am certain he hated the group process whether or not he told Claudio that Fisher had inspired the written guidelines. The pace was far too slow, and he had no patience for interpersonal work. The evidence I offer that it displeased Hoffman is that he ended the experiment before it was finished. After about three weeks into the prosecution of Mother, he announced that he and Claudio had agreed to end their work together, and that he would “take us through the defense of Mother” which would be an “OK” place to stop.

That occurred just after Thanksgiving. He also announced that he would be leading his own 13 week process beginning at the end of January in Tolman Hall, the facility of the UC Berkeley Psychology Department. He came up to me privately and suggested that I strongly consider taking part in that process. I remember our brief conversation very well. In my later therapy I recognized that this was the beginning of his predatory grooming.

The part he did feel had been “inspired” by Fisher was the physical, emotional, verbal, and I would add, necessarily violent expression of anger. It opened the possibility of a deep emotional catharsis after which the artificial process of understanding and forgiveness would foster a deep understanding that “everyone is guilty and no one to blame.” If our pain had been as great as we’d experienced in the Prosecution of Mother, her own pain had to be equally deep and debilitating.

The Defense Process entails envisioning your mother as a pre-adolescent child, telling her story. It is conducted in your sanctuary with your spirit guide as the interlocutor. Hoffman called these imagined scenarios “mind trips” and insisted that they were the channel for real information. You are instructed to ask questions about the origins of the Negative love traits and admonitions that you unwittingly inherited, one by one, leaving no stone unturned.

Of course in the real world, this is all “Best Guess,” or assumption, or hearsay, or fantasy or hallucination. If I were to be generous, it might be a “good enough” narrative to allow you to see that your parents suffered the same kind of programming that they passed on. The origins of the exercise were the psychic readings in the tailor shop on 15th street when Hoffman looked into your past and saw the incidents that excused your parents.

But I do not choose to be so generous. In my own case the narrative I created was so far fetched that it destroyed relationships with both my parents. I was actually led to believe that somehow I could get the root of my struggles with them. After I completed the Process, and the quirky working out of the loving divorce that Hoffman promised, I had so alienated my parents that they cut me off for nearly 20 years.

Of course this is not good psychological practice. That's a fact. It’s seeing a witch doctor. That's an opinion.

Claudio faults psychoanalyst Mauricio Knoble who observed in connection with No One is to Blame, “The traditional historical background was missing, as well as the scientific background, the theoretical foundation, the experimental data, the statistical validation, and the bibliography.” It’s a fair question to ask what he replaces it with. Claudio says [I] “hope that I may show that, while the ‘traditional historical background’ has not been known to Hoffman, his work is most congruent with it, as well as with the background of current psychological discourse.” My experience points to a less optimistic view of Hoffman’s methodology, one that skirts the necessary professionalism of psychological work.

The request that I take into consideration that a new cohort of Process teachers followed Hoffman and did not share his unorthodox, borderline practices leads into more New Age mire. The majority were people who came from the same mix who took the Process, members of the SAT groups, refugees from est and the work of Werner Erhard, sannyasins who had followed Osho in Antelope and Pune, and a few licensed mental health professionals. I will have more to say about this phenomena after I describe my experience of the first 13 week Process in Tolman Hall and the story of Hoffman’s stalking and abusing me, which by the way was a criminal action.

Here is a link to the description of "Tolman Hall, the first Hoffman Process. Hoffman the sexual predator grooms me."

Here is another link to my other writing about the Process.

© Kenneth Ireland, 2021