Bamboozled

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

In the middle of the night in 1968 in Oakland, California, Bob Hoffman was awakened from a deep sleep by the discontented ghost of his former shrink, Siegfried Fisher. Dr. Fisher, as Hoffman always called him, stood at the end of his bed and revealed to him a key piece of psychological insight that had eluded his mentor, Sigmund Freud, and the entire Viennese school: “Everyone is guilty and no one to blame.”

Thus was born the notorious concept of Negative Love and the "world famous" Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy; both have the dubious markings of revealed Truth, and Hoffman, the awakened Teacher—literally.

I listened to Hoffman’s psychic awakening tale many times, and although the basic outline never changed, I did manage to fill in some of the lacunae over my long association with him. For example, there is a lie embedded in the narrative—he confessed that he had been Fisher’s patient and not an old family friend or acquaintance from shul. That misinformation had been manufactured for marketing purposes, and Hoffman was a born salesman. But it never occurred to me to ask how his wife reacted to the whole affair. I think that they were still married at the time, but I don’t want to make any factual assertions without some evidence, so I can’t say if they shared a bed, and I don’t want to spoil the party with more misinformation. Did she even wake up? 

So how did a Jewish tailor with barely a high school education become a healer, a channel for this occult insight, coupled with powerful results of psychological investigation? Answer: the Spiritualist Church and, if you believe the proponents of the Hoffman Process enterprise, the gifts of a highly advanced, and compassionate, “intuitive,” the new moniker that has become the cover for knowledge that mysteriously surpasses the hard-earned therapeutic work of professional psychology. 

I chronicled as accurately as I could the creation of the “Process” as a psychological tool in “The Ontological Odd Couple—The Origins of the Hoffman Process,” and I tried to give everyone I interviewed a fair hearing. At the time, I imagined that I could resolve my long-standing qualms about Hoffman and his influence in my life by simply getting to the facts, but in fact, it only aggravated my personal pain. 

When my friend Stan Stefancic cautioned, “Remember that there's a lot of Claudio in the Process,” I thought long and hard to determine if Naranjo’s input was enough of a justification to accept Hoffman’s preposterous story. In a long rambling piece, Bob Hoffman, The First Encounter, I tried to understand why Naranjo took Hoffman to be some kind of modern-day shaman, and supported his work—I will not deny that Claudio did support Hoffman and tried to plant some professional practices in the Process. But it was a relationship fraught with jealousy on Hoffman’s part as well as a good deal of passive-aggressive behavior, all the while seeking Naranjo’s imprimatur. I asked myself the question, why do intelligent people believe nonsense, but again, I couldn't really find a good answer, nor in any way understand Claudio's infatuation with Hoffman.

 

To complicate the investigation, as if it were not already cloudy enough, Hoffman was a sexual predator. I had firsthand experience, and the effects of his abuse have lingered for decades. I tried to exorcise that demon by writing what became a long series of posts on my blog, beginning with Bob Hoffman—#GayMeToo. If the criteria for resolution is that I can forgive and forget, it has not been satisfied. At 77 I am resigned that his selfish and unethical behavior will be a trauma that I will carry for the rest of my life. I have given up looking for some reason why it happened. It makes no difference to me that he was a closeted, homophobic queer man and that it was a severe impediment to his happiness. It was. Yes, everyone is guilty, but I will continue to blame him. I have also given up trying to see some “wounded healer” motivation as a factor in his psychic therapy.  What’s the word? Bunk, as in complete nonsense.

So how was I bamboozled? When I read Henry Miller’s account of his experience just looking at a photograph of Madame Blavatsky, I understood him completely. Miller writes: “Now I don’t know if that had anything to do with what happened next, but I had a flash, I came to the realization that I was responsible for my whole life, whatever had happened. I used to blame my family, society, my wife . . . and that day I saw so clearly that I had nobody to blame but myself. I put everything on my own shoulders, and I felt so relieved: Now I’m free, no one else is responsible. And that was a kind of awakening, in a way.”

In October of 1973, I had such an awakening over several weeks of psychological investigation in Claudio Naranjo’s SAT group. It changed my life, and I will be forever grateful to Claudio for providing the platform for the experience. But I had the bad luck to have had Bob Hoffman standing in the room, shouting nonsense. That was almost 50 years ago. I gave the charlatan power over me, but damn it, I’ve taken it back. 

To the ghost of Bob Hoffman, if you’re still lingering around, there’s an open invitation to state your side of the story at the foot of my bed in my flat in the Himalayan foothills. It’s 12 and a half hours ahead of Oakland time, but if you can’t figure that out, Google has a nifty world clock application. 

Other Posts regarding Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

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

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

The Truth about Bob Hoffman

The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult. 

It’s a cult, damn it. Nothing more

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman 

Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple 

Sex in the bushes: the real story

In the wall-to-wall news coverage of despicable, unbelievable denials of sexual misconduct by people in high places—today Matt Gaetz, yesterday Donald Trump—I began to wonder about the prevalence of explicit sex innuendo, the circumlocution, the double talk, and outright lying about sex that we’re expected to countenance. People say that the times have changed, that we can be more open about our sex lives now in a way that we couldn’t be even a few decades ago—that this openness causes the problems as well as giving us a degree of freedom that our parents didn’t have. The real problem, however, has always been the lies about sex.

Yesterday I had the honor of hosting the distinguished Tibetan Rinpoche, Khyongla Rato, along with Nicky Vreeland Rinpoche and his attendant Lama Norbu for a small lunch in my McLeod Ganj flat. My friend Alex asked if I was going to leave up some of my own art, visual puns, combining Greek pottery figures with French primitive art from the late 19th century. It’s not erotic art, so there was no question of offending a celibate monastic.



the non-offending art

On the other hand, for anyone with even the slightest understanding of same sex relationships, it would tip them off that I am gay. Of course, they stayed up. I do not hide who I am, and certainly feel no need to be duplicitous, even when dealing with high lamas. I know I can trust them to accept me as I am. I am not going to complicate the relationship by lying or pretending.

For too long, actually, pretending has been at the root of the lying and duplicity that never seems to let up in the tabloid news. I've written about my relationship with Bob Hoffman, and my coming out in #GayMeToo. There was sexual abuse as well as bullying and coercion. But there was also lying and pretense. Hoffman argued that he couldn’t be honest and open about his sexuality because of the negative repercussions on his “important work.”

But the reality was that Hoffman couldn’t be honest with himself. And he tried to force me into that endless denial by accepting his self-justification. And for a while I did, but thankfully, his pretense was so shoddy and full of holes that eventually I got fed up.

After Hoffman took 50 or so people through his Process of Psychic Therapy in UC Berkeley’s Tolman Hall, and turned the Process over to Dr. Ernie Pecci, he retired to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, and as I later learned, to also deal with his first bout of cancer. At the time, he was in a relationship with a man named Harold, whom I met on several occasions. Hoffman eventually returned. I can’t remember if it was just to check in or if it was when he decided to curtail Pecci’s psycho-spiritual version of the Process, but I do remember that he and Harold were no longer a couple. I asked him what had happened. Well, he said, he’d discovered that Harold was being unfaithful. Oh really? Here’s the Poor Bob story.


The path into the bushes in Aquatic Park





It seems one day Hoffman needed to get out for some fresh air. He was in a back-to-nature kind of mood. He just happened to drive down to Aquatic Park in Berkeley, a notorious gay cruising place for furtive sex. He wanted me to understand that his excursion was of course entirely non-sexual, just to enjoy the scenery, but, while leisurely strolling along the lagoon looking for blue heron, who should he discover lurking, having sex in the bushes? Harold! Hoffman could now be the offended partner. They had it out, and Harold, in the face of Hoffman’s "righteous indignation," rushed back home to Piedmont and packed his bags. I was expected to believe this story. Of course, I didn’t, but neither did I confront Hoffman and challenge him. I couldn’t. Still in transference, I had to allow him the saving grace of pretending to be a virtuous man instead of dealing honestly with his promiscuity and anonymous sex adventures.

Lies build on lies. Justifications pile up sky high. At some point, there’s no escape. I didn't take down my innocent, humorous washroom art to sanitize my life for the Rinpoche. I learned the hard way: if I lied, there would be no end, or as the Zen saying goes, it’s turtles all the way down.

Other Posts regarding Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

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

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

The Truth about Bob Hoffman

The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult. 

It’s a cult, damn it. Nothing more

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman 

Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple 

© Kenneth Ireland, 2021

This Victim Refuses Silence

My rape, its aftermath, and my poor choices

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Many of my readers have told me that this post was difficult to read. It was also difficult to write, but I will not be silent. I originally wrote about my abuse in Bob Hoffman—#GayMeToo. I have expanded on it in two other posts: Forgive and Forget? Impossible and A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

I can find no silver lining in the story of my abusive relationship with Bob Hoffman, but even if there were one, the relationship was so muddy that I don’t know where to begin to look. It is a lot like trying to write about it. I feel that I cannot write because I would be obligated to disclose too much about what I consider personal failures. I cannot write from the position of a life that didn’t turn out, even though opportunities and avenues were most probably closed off to me by the events I’m going to describe. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that my life is not what my parents nor I envisioned for myself, but it has been my own life, and I am responsible for my choices.

Any light at the end of the tunnel would shine. It would mean that the residue of the abuse was over, and I would be able to forget Hoffman and our relationship. But that does not happen. It’s just not enough for me to declare “This happened,” and move past it as I’ve been counseled from many quarters, new age therapists, love and light gurus. I know that Hoffman’s selfish actions had an effect on me. Of course, they added unnecessary suffering. As I recently told a friend, every gay person I know would love to be guided by the loving, wise, and resourceful example of an older queer man or woman. But by the luck of the draw, I got a narcissistic predator. I’ve told the story of how Hoffman came into my life in some detail in my blog Bob Hoffman—#GayMeToo.

A friend recently told me that she had accomplished what the Hoffman Process promises, “putting the past in the past and obliterating the traces of your parents’ negative influence" in a 20-minute process of stamping out any memories of them in a ritual practice. Only time can judge its effectiveness. Only future actions that do not bear the imprint of past missteps can be trusted as indicators that the past is truly in the past.

As I've watched the #MeToo movement unfold in the press, all the attention has been focused on the bad actors. Whether famous men Epstein, Weissman, Trump, Cardinal Pell, or ordinary men like Hoffman, we cannot allow any one of them to escape the consequences of their actions. But it occurs to me that what’s still missing are stories of the victims.

And so I have decided to write about my abuse. The only possible path I see to freeing myself is a thorough investigation of what occurred, including my own missteps. If my writing really leads to liberation, “the function of freedom," in the words of Toni Morrison, "is to free someone else;” so I will write as candidly as I can. I had hoped to avoid a painful and lewd description of the sexual encounter as I describe some of the repercussions, but I find I have to talk about some of it.

Bob Hoffman, my therapist and mentor, invited me to dinner less than 5 months after I completed the first 13-week Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy. After some very awkward conversation and a few glasses of wine, I found myself on the living room floor of my shared apartment naked, on my stomach, being brutally raped. After Hoffman had his orgasm, my anus was bleeding. Then the situation became surreal—I listened to apologies which were actually blame shifting—he told me that pain was normal when a man first had anal sex and that in time I’d learn to enjoy it—that anal sex was an important part of spiritual development because it mirrored the reality of the mother-father god, both active and passive. I remember this statement after all these years because of the horror and lunacy of justifying rape in the name of some intrasex godhead. I didn’t throw him out as I should have, had I been capable of it, but when he asked if we could have another date, I did say no. However, in true co-dependent fashion, I left the door open to further contact as friends. I realize now that I had to—I was still in transference with him. In fact, we maintained a strained acquaintance until he died.

I came out as a gay man in the Hoffman Process, but the process wasn’t coming to terms with a part of myself that I’d left hidden, festering under parental and societal disapproval. It wasn’t part of a program of careful analysis and self-discovery. I wasn’t led by a professional to see layers of self-deception. Rather, I stood uncomfortably in the doorway to Hoffman’s office, while he, red in the face, screamed that I was gay, told me that I was playing games, and couldn’t love myself. This only reinforced my own learned, negative views of being gay. I sensed the same angry, defensive stance in the way he dealt with his own homosexuality, and he certainly displayed its brutality when he forced anal intercourse.

Hoffman was both a narcissist and a predator, but I was in such denial that I allowed myself to be manipulated. Over the course of intermittent conversations that spanned more than 25 years, I discovered that he lied about many things; he exaggerated; he made empty promises; and he entertained grandiose ideas about himself. Dr. Fisher, the being whom he called his spirit-guide, had not been, as he proclaimed publicly, a family friend but rather his therapist; he felt he was destined to have a young lover because the immense contribution he was making; he had singled me out when he first saw me in Naranjo’s SAT; he started frequenting the only gay bar in Berkeley to stalk me, and not because, as he told me then, he usually stopped in to relax on his way home. The truth is that initiating a sexual relationship with me was a criminal violation of his professional responsibility as a therapist, mentor, and spiritual guide, but his psychosis did not allow him to understand this.

In true predator fashion, he groomed me. He told me that, if I played my cards right and listened to him, I was destined to become a leader in the gay community; that I had extraordinary powers, like his spiritualist mentor—I think he named her Florence Becker, though he was vague—had singled him out as a person of great psychic abilities. He also insisted that I was attracted to him, and he knew it because he was a powerful psychic, as well as the fact that I had an erection during our encounter. Recalling this fills me with disgust. I recall that most people around Claudio viewed Hoffman as a buffoon, a con man, or, at best, a crazy wisdom seer. I thought he was unintelligent and crude, plus being sexually repulsive, yet something compelled me to continue to place my trust in him.

Within a year of our encounter, I’d left the Jesuits, moved to San Francisco with my SAT friend Hal Slate, and began experiencing the burgeoning Castro gay scene of the ‘70’s. I became promiscuous, but, at the same time, I was very unhappy and frustrated with sex itself. I could not achieve orgasm. I cannot claim that Hoffman’s brutal abuse was the direct cause of my sexual dysfunction, but I am certain that it played some part. But my solution to the problem became more of a problem. As in my college days and my life as a Jesuit, alcohol became an antiseptic for the wounds. But now, pot, and eventually cocaine and methamphetamines, became a way to lubricate sexual activity.

There is a very high rate of alcoholism and substance abuse among victims of rape, and that is certainly part of my story. Drugs opened up a whole new world for me, though they took an immense toll. Eventually, the number of days of work I missed because I was still too high to work safely began to outnumber the days I was late because I was hungover and unable to get out of bed. This December, I will be 10 years free of drugs and alcohol. The 12 Step Program does not encourage playing victim and always redirects a person to recognize his or her own part in the matter. However, facts and situations do matter. Hoffman’s sexual abuse, the threads of our relationship, and my part in the matter are all part of the equation.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Emily Dickinson

Here are the pieces that I've written about Hoffman. Although I have tried to be objective, it is impossible to take a disinterested position regarding the Process. Hoffman sexually abused me about 6 months after I finished my first process.

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy
#GayMeToo
The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman
This Victim Refuses Silence
A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?
Forgive and Forget? Impossible. An inquiry into Victimization.
"Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple."
New Age Miracle or Fraud
Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?
Science vs. Spooks
Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

© Kenneth Ireland, 2020

The Many Voices, a Note from Jon Joseph Roshi

by Jon Joseph Roshi

Jon has allowed me to repost his commentary on the koan "Little Jade."
I will attest that the monsoon has finally let up. Thank you, Jon.\

Nora Reza

A treasury official retired and came home to Sichuan, where he sought out Wuzu to learn about Zen. Wuzu said, "When you were young, did you read a poem which went something like:

“She calls to her maid,
‘Little Jade!’

not because she wants something
but just so her lover will hear her voice."

The official said, "Yes, I read it."
Wuzu said, "That is very near to Zen."

~ PZI Miscellaneous Koans; Entangling Vines, Case 98, Notes


This is too rich a story-koan to leave its many parts unvisited, so I would like to sit with it again this week. The above exchange is deeply touching for me: a mistress of the house is calling to her lover through her maid, Little Jade. It is very near to Zen, says the teacher Wuzu. I have a warm memory of this koan, when a few years ago, at St Dorothy’s Rest, a moldering century-old building deep in a redwood forest, we were holding a week-long retreat. I walked into the kitchen to help with cooking, and found my retreat roommate, a former Jesuit novitiate, rooting and clanging through the industrial pots. He was calling out, “Little Jade! Little Jade! Where are you, Little Jade?” At that retreat, unbidden, he gave me a pair of new white socks, which I still have, though they now have holes in the toes.

It was all the more unsettling and heart-rending, then, to read my Little-Jade friend’s recent blog posts on revisiting his first major love encounter as a gay man. What he thought was a friendship of growing mutual love and respect turned out to be forced sex and rape, a pattern of emotional abuse that lasted for a quarter century. “I can find no silver lining in the story of my abusive relationship with B, but even if there were one, the relationship was so muddy that I don’t know where to begin to look,” begins his blog.

So, how to resolve, for him, the many decades-long pain that recently revisited him? “It is my ghost,” he wrote me from Dharamshala, in India, where he now lives. An acquaintance of his and follower of the same psychic-spiritual school from those days wrote that she herself was able to put her shadow behind her by “obliterating the traces of her parents’ negative influence" in a daily ritual of stamping out her family’s memories. She suggested my Little-Jade friend try the same. “Only time can judge its effectiveness,” my friend writes sardonically.

Last night I checked in with him via WhatsApp. McLeod Ganj, like all of India, is under stay-at-home orders; the dark downpour of the monsoon has not let up for weeks. “How are you doing?” I asked my Little-Jade friend, who is alone in his small apartment all day long. We talked about the dark nature of his posts and laughed about Little Jade in the kitchen years ago. Despite the need, he felt, to write of his experience, he does know that “the Little Jade poem has been written more than once,” and that “it comes in more than one voice.” The variations of the Little Jade poem have allowed him to fall into some deeply satisfying love relationships in his life, he says. “I now write my own Little-Jade poem.” I sent him Tony Hoagland’s piece, A Color of the Sky, one of my favorites (fragment below):


Last night I dreamed of X again.
like a stain on my subconscious sheets.

Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.


Perhaps the rain will let up soon. That would be very near to Zen.

___________________________




P. S. Here are two links to the writing Jon refers to:
This Victim Refuses Silence

A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

During the very first Hoffman Process, under the direction of Claudio Naranjo, I had a breakthrough that radically altered my life’s trajectory. I saw the reality of a circumstance in my life that I’d been struggling with since puberty, and, at least for an instant, I experienced enormous freedom. There was no turning back

I was, however, as naive about the workings of my mind as I was about my sexuality. Because my insight involved sex, the fire was bright and ferocious. Although I had been warned that the power of the libido was enormous, I had no idea that it was no match for the power of self-deception. As the Indian Buddhist monk Shantideva wrote, “By the mind the world is led . . . The mind swings like a firebrand; the mind rears up like a wave; the mind burns like a forest fire, like a great flood the mind bears all away.” When my sexually awakened life began to present its own difficulties, I returned to the well where I’d first tasted freedom, expecting to dredge up water to put out the fire, but it had gone dry.

My mind always tagged Hoffman with that sense of freedom. This proved problematic because Hoffman himself was problematic, and for many reasons other than the fact that he raped me. I will not blame Hoffman and his behavior for allowing my life to deteriorate, but I do trace the roots of the problem back to him. He stood for nothing other than enhancing his self-image, position, and power. He was not professional—in fact, he was as vehemently anti-professional as he was anti-intellectual. This of course, came from deeply unresolved feelings of inadequacy, but I was trapped listening to an important person in my life denigrate what I cherished most. He was gay but consciously took a stance against the emerging gay liberation movement. He lied about his own life. He was a fraud.

When I could not stomach him anymore, I looked for some other figure to guide me, beginning a long series of teachers whom I could not trust. I switched my allegiance to Scientology, then to the Gurdjieff work, and then the Landmark Forum—grasping for something outside myself to deliver me from problems I created myself. For many years, I stumbled around, fumbling for solutions, sabotaging my relationships, throwing all my energy into poorly conceived plans to get my life on track, and ending up disappointed, all the while using alcohol and drugs to soothe my frustration.

Why do I feel so strongly about Hoffman? Why can’t I put his abuse in the past and even honor the work that has been beneficial to many people? Listening and reading the reactions to my posts, several friends have commented that often, those who assume spiritual leadership, even if they do have spiritual gifts, seem to be hopelessly entangled with predatory, abusive, and larcenous behaviors. One wonders why so many people continue to be swayed. Does setting an example make any difference at all? Of course, we all have faults, but some leaders can't be open and honest. Many are simply charlatans who obscure the truth for their enrichment, but some have had genuine, enriching, enlightening experiences.

Forgiveness is the clearest path to putting the past in the past. But one thing is sure: the abuse of a teacher, a therapist, and a spiritual guide cannot be forgiven or excused in any way. Here in India, particularly among the practicing Buddhists I live with, the key is compassion. It has a different nuance than the Western notion of forgiveness. It doesn’t offer an easy promise of freedom. Coming to understand Hoffman’s influence on me required rigorous self-investigation. I discovered that forgiving him would be an act of compassion for myself.

The introspection that Buddhist teachers advocate looks something like what Fyodor Dostoevsky describes in Notes from the Underground: “You look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame, and consequently there is only the same outlet left again—that is to beat the wall as hard as you can.”

Hoffman said over and over, “Everyone is guilty and no one to blame.” In the crude psychological model of his Process, this refers to what might be understood as intergenerational guilt. Hoffman’s understanding of forgiveness was a kind of psychological jolt or emotional release, but as a tool for self-analysis or understanding, it is, in my experience, a blunt instrument. The trauma passed from parent to child involves a complex psychological mechanism; it’s a disorder which, like much of Hoffman’s work, painted all negative behaviors passed from parent to child with a broad brush. Treatable psychological disorders, stage fright or anorexia, for example, are lumped together with severe depression, and the solution is always the same: after experientially touching the repressed anger through a bitch session, or bashing as it now called, the client traces the origins of the negative influence back to his or her parental figures. Then, there is usually a staged emotional release that allows a release.

In the 12-step world, there is the counsel to make amends—when you discover that your actions caused harm, even if your mind was hijacked by alcohol or drugs, you are required to clean up the mess you made. Over 25 years of intermittent contact with him, I found no evidence that Hoffman ever felt obligated to make amends to anyone. I certainly don’t feel any need to make amends to him. Ironically, I was in such denial that I thought that if I made an effort to repair my relationship with him, it might bring some order to my life. I finally realized that the person I needed to make amends to was myself.

At least from my prejudiced point of view, Hoffman suffered from internalized homophobia. I never saw any change in his behavior. On the contrary, I saw him enter into relationships with younger men, try to dominate them, and then sabotage the relationship. I met two other young men whom he singled out for his attention, but this was not reciprocated. I have no way of knowing if they involved sexual encounters such as I experienced, but I do know that he was insistent that these men have a romantic relationship with him and that the men found their relationships with him “complicated.”

And this brings me to my own life and living my amends. I am blessed. Now in my mid-70s, I lead a relatively quiet life in northern India, surrounded by many interesting and dedicated monks and nuns from most of the Buddhist traditions. I have many wonderful Himachal friends, Hindus, but also Muslims, mostly young entrepreneurs from Kashmir, and I cherish my friendship with several other fellow expats. I know several very creative, amazing young Indians. It was one of them, Kumar Abhishek, who asked me a question about continuing my relationship with an abuser that inspired so much of the self-reflection here. My own path is clear: to continue the rigorous work of self-investigation, to help where I can, to never exploit another human for my own pleasure or greed, and to speak the truth when required. At this point, this is the place where my abusive relationship with Bob Hoffman and the Hoffman Process has taken me.

One of my Buddhist guides, Jon Joseph Roshi, sent me this poem, which captures the irony of the teaching. As my capping verse, I’ll end with these lines from “A Color of the Sky” by Tony Hoagland.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store   

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,   

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

It’s been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

___________

Here are the pieces that I've written about Hoffman. Although I have tried to be objective, it is impossible to take a disinterested position with regard to the Process. Hoffman sexually abused me about 6 months after I finished my first process.

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

#GayMeToo

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman

This Victim Refuses Silence 

A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

Forgive and Forget? Impossible. An inquiry into Victimization.

"Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple." 

New Age Miracle or Fraud

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

Science vs. Spooks

Jonestown and our Deliverance from Cults

© Kenneth Ireland, 2020

Forgive and Forget Hoffman?

When an old friend who also knew Hoffman read my account of his raping me, she wrote that she embraced me with “angelic frequencies to find healing for your heart.” An even closer friend here in India read it and asked, “Why did you see him after that? How could you remain his friend for more than 25 years?” I will try to answer this difficult question while being grateful for the prayer for my healing. Perhaps the two are congruous.

The first friend I mentioned said something about “victimhood.” She also emphasized forgiveness, as if in my self-examination, I was somehow not understanding enough of Hoffman and his predatory, abusive behavior. I know that playing the victim card is not particularly powerful or useful, so I was led to further self-examination. Playing victim is defined as “the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy, or attention seeking.”

Let me be completely clear: I do not forgive Hoffman for his behavior. As I wrote in earlier posts, Hoffman had a professional relationship with me for over 8 or 9 months, yet he stalked me, he groomed me, and then he raped me. By rape I mean uninvited, forced anal sex, outside any ethical or legal time frame for a therapist or spiritual counselor, which was the designation Hoffman used to skirt not having any professional training, much less a license, to be “dating" a client. Hoffman was aware of what he was doing. These are facts. I am not exaggerating or fabricating them nor am I trying to manipulate others or looking for attention. Telling my story is a coping mechanism that I own.

I met Hoffman through my work with Claudio Naranjo, and, because Naranjo recommended him and supported Hoffman’s Psychic Therapy, I ignored my first impressions that Hoffman was an uneducated, unprofessional, bumbling fool. I recounted that first encounter in some detail in The Ontological Odd Couple—The Origins of the Hoffman Process. “At our group’s first meeting with Bob Hoffman, . . . it was soon obvious that he was not educated in any psychological discipline, but he dominated the room, alternatively talking then yelling in a kind of dumbed-down jargon filled with what became known as ‘Hoffmanisms.’ The paradoxical definition of ‘negative love was illogical logical and nonsensical sense,’ and if we didn’t understand that, we were just playing dumb out of negative love; if we thought he was too well dressed, it was negative transference and an indication that we didn’t love ourselves. . . . ”

The current proponents of the Hoffman Process have refined Hoffman’s double negative gibberish, but even when Hoffman’s characterization of “Negative Love” first appeared in print, “Getting Divorced from Mother and Dad,” one phrase was excised: “. . . It is illogical logic, nonsensical sense, and insane sanity, yet masochistically true or we wouldn’t behave in such a fashion.” Attributing negative behavior to masochism has been expunged, but Hoffman repeated it often and loudly.

Another Hoffmanism was “righteously indignant,” which he used to justify his anger towards clients or a staff person with whom he had an issue. He was a very angry man. He liked to say that he had “to tear down to build up.” Nearly everyone I know who was close to Hoffman would be forced to admit, if they were entirely honest, that they ran afoul of him at one point or another. Often, the solution to resolving personal conflict was to force a person to redo the therapy so that the object of his displeasure could “put their awareness on their unawareness”—there was obviously something that he or she had missed. They were acting out, and Hoffman was the object of their negative behavior—it always fell to the other to assume responsibility. I personally reviewed the Process 3 times.

In a professional setting, Hoffman’s confrontational behavior towards clients was problematic. On very little evidence, just a turn of phrase or a misused word—his understanding of a Freudian slip, he would assess a person’s character, label some trait as “negative love,” and go on the attack. He was relentless and often cruel. And in my case, after all the shouting accusations, I discovered that although he was accurate in pointing to my obvious homosexuality, his “clairvoyant evidence” about my Father was entirely wrong.

Another Hoffmanism, a characteristic of Negative Love, was “giving to get.” When we were in the thrall of our parents’ negative love, we were deceived into believing that if we acted like them, we would get their love. ” See Mommy,” he would say, “I’m acting just like you. Now will you love me?” But Hoffman posited true love as the straightforward giving and receiving of affection without expectations. When, in the early 70s, he read about the Tasaday tribe on a remote Philippine island, who lived a simple life without anger or hoarding or amassing wealth, he thought that he’d discovered the Holy Grail. When the Tasaday turned out to be a carefully crafted hoax planted by Philippine politician Manuel Elizalde, a crony of Ferdinand Marcos, it mattered little to Hoffman. Like so many nuances, they were denied or papered over. I think that Hoffman’s understanding of love was actually no deeper than the sentimental Bing Crosby song “True Love,” which used to be sung at the graduation ceremony.

The truth was that Hoffman was almost entirely motivated by money. He tried to calculate how much money Werner Erhardt made doing his est training. I heard him speak of Werner Erhard and Swami Muktananda in extremely deprecating terms. He had nothing but disdain for anyone he considered a cult leader. He thought of himself as the anti-guru guru. The only person whom he never talked badly about was Naranjo. Naranjo was his path to legitimizing the Process in the professional world. However, privately, he thought that Claudio never really got the Process on the deep emotional level that Hoffman demanded. He told me this several times, and I was appalled.

This is the kind of behavior characteristic of cult leaders, and Hoffman, despite his protests, matches most of the criteria for a cult leader. I think that this is the place to make the notation that the current owners of Hoffman’s intellectual property and the Process teachers are often people who have a history in various groups widely considered cults, from est to Life Spring and Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh’s ashrams.

To return to my friend Kumar’s question: Why did I continue to try to be his friend for nearly 25 years? He sexually abused me. He was not particularly smart or intellectually interesting and stimulating. He was an angry man and quite unrestrained in displaying his anger. He attacked anyone he considered a rival. He was self-righteous. He could be generous, but there were always expectations.

I’m sorry, Mr. Kumar. I haven't answered your question, but I hope I’ve at least laid the groundwork for a more satisfactory explanation. I’m not looking to make a compelling, water-tight case for why I continued to be friends with Hoffman, but I’d like to arrive at a place that allows for some peace of mind.

_______________

It seems that there are several more chapters to write.

Here are the pieces that I've written about Hoffman. Although I have tried to be objective, it is impossible to take a disinterested position with regard to the Process. Hoffman sexually abused me about 6 months after I finished my first process.

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy
#GayMeToo
The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman
This Victim Refuses Silence
A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?
Forgive and Forget? Impossible. An inquiry into Victimization.
"Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple."
New Age Miracle or Fraud
Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?
Science vs. Spooks
Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

© Kenneth Ireland, 2020

"Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple"

When Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have extended the statute of limitations for clerical sexual abuse, he said, “There comes a time when an individual or organization should be secure in the reasonable expectation that past acts are indeed in the past and not subject to further lawsuits.”* (SacBee)

Bob Hoffman has been dead for more than 20 years, and he raped me 44 years ago, but I’m just uncovering the severe emotional consequences of his abuse. Now, at 76 and in the last part of my life, I know that the effects of abuse can extend beyond any "reasonable expectation" that they are past. I also acknowledge that most reasonable people would think that such old grievances might not be subject to any lawsuits, and, as much as possible, I do try to function as a reasonable person. However, as the Hoffman Process “teaches,” the effects of negative actions persist over generations, and to paint over the dark side of Hoffman’s legacy with the portrait of a grandfatherly spiritual seer who just wanted everyone to lead lives of freedom and happiness is total nonsense.

When a respected Zen teacher read my #gaymetoo post, she told me that she has encouraged many students of Buddhist teachers who abused their positions to satisfy their sexual urges to pursue lawsuits. Then she said, “Hoffman was a criminal. Simple.” She is right. California law stipulates, “Therapy Never Includes Sexual Behavior. . . . Sexual contact of any kind between a therapist and a client is unethical and illegal in the State of California. Additionally, with regard to former clients, sexual contact within two years after termination of therapy is also illegal and unethical.”*

Most people who were close associates of Hoffman will admit that he was an extremely difficult man, and that his interactions with clients were, at best, unconventional, and at worst, unethical and abusive. Stan Stefancic labeled him a “malignant narcissist.” But these same people will also argue that Hoffman's basic insight allows them to overlook what they characterize as eccentricities. For years, I tried to excuse his behavior—perhaps he was the gay kid who was bullied and overcompensated when he was in a position of power.

But Hoffman became the bully as well as a predator, and if I let bullies get away with it, I am complicit. This I cannot and will not allow.

Whether or not his basic insight into human behavior as “negative love” can stand the test of time, whether or not the effects of his revolutionary “psychic therapy” are worth the expense, I cannot say. But I will say that Bob Hoffman was a criminal.


* It should be noted that Brown is a former Jesuit, and the Society of Jesus continues to be subject to numerous accusations of abuse by its members dating back many years.

*Hoffman operated as a clergy person. He was a recognized psychic in a spiritualist church. He called the people he trained as “psychic therapists.” Now the Hoffman Institute calls them “teachers.” But whether therapist, or clergy person, or teacher, the title does not excuse him from the moral or ethical standards that apply to professionals interacting with the people who come to them for help and pay them money for that help.

____________________________

Although I have tried to be objective, it is impossible to take a disinterested position with regard to the Process, given that Hoffman sexually abused me within 6 months after I finished my first process. 

Other Posts regarding Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

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

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

The Truth about Bob Hoffman

The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult. 

It’s a cult, damn it. Nothing more

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman 

Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple 

© Kenneth Ireland, 2020

Bob Hoffman—#GayMeToo

October 1st, 2019

I have been struggling with my relationship with Bob Hoffman for more than 40 years. Ever since I finished the original Hoffman Process, then called “Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy,” the incidents I’m going to reveal have been painful and problematic. Still now, more than 20 years after his death, they continue to trouble me.

Last April, when Ashish and I returned from India, we realized that after nearly 10 years of being inseparable, something had changed in our relationship. I had become restless and irritable, and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I tried to pretend that everything would eventually return to normal, but some line had been crossed. After several blowups, he told me it was over, and he left me. I was crushed.

Ash and I had come to the end of a deep, loving relationship, but certainly the breakup had nothing to do with his actions. So why did I feel betrayed? Not 10 minutes into the first session with a therapist, I found myself talking about Hoffman, our therapist/client relationship, being stalked by Hoffman, not 4 months after I finished the Process, and before the therapist could even ask the question, I blurted out that he raped me. It was not a consensual sexual encounter between adults, but an uninvited, unwelcome, and painful sexual violation by a man in whom I’d placed my trust. Of course, I felt betrayed.

I had met Hoffman at a point when I was in the midst of an enormous disruption in my life’s trajectory. I left the Jesuit order; I abandoned my professional aspirations to be an architect, and struggled to create a fulfilling livelihood; I came out as a gay man; I embraced a very active role in the world of gay liberation; I began my quest to find a nurturing relationship with another man. I would love to acknowledge Hoffman as the impetus for this change of direction, and celebrate him, or at least be grateful towards him. Instead, the only feelings that I have towards him vary between indifference and outright hostility, depending on the circumstances in which I find myself thinking about him.

And now the project of writing #gaymetoo.

A victim should not have to apologize. And yet part of the reason I’ve been silent all these years is that I’ve somehow felt that anything I might say that would damage Hoffman’s reputation is somehow inappropriate. Why? Because he is an admired figure, even if some of his past is murky, hidden, or idealized.

But many other abuse victims have felt the same misplaced feelings of complicity, so it’s probably most liberating to start with all the reasons why I shouldn’t even start. In 1973, I was 29. I was not an adolescent choir boy and certainly capable of consent. I am also gay. In the gay community, attitudes and norms for sexual encounters have always been relatively permissive, and I am certainly not a prude.

At the time Hoffman was 48 or 49, and, although that’s a significant age gap, I just ended a 10-year relationship with a man 25 years younger than myself. It’s also true that the 70s were a time of sexual revolution. The norms of our conservative parents’ generation were being toppled. The War in Vietnam had forced my generation to question the moral authority of all our institutions. Although the authority of the Church had not yet been pummelled by the pedophile scandal, in the wake of Vatican II, we certainly questioned the role of celibacy for priests and religious. Everything was in flux.

It’s also true that I had just come out. That journey for many gay men, and I assume lesbians too, of my generation during that period of revolution was tumultuous. It certainly was for me. Everything that happened in my personal life then felt like upheaval. That will become clear if you read through to the end of this piece.

And among the most persuasive reasons I’ve hesitated to write is that the Process Hoffman developed, despite its problems, seems to have helped an enormous number of people. Of course, the enterprise has changed and evolved since Hoffman first started his psychic readings with people in the “reading room” of his tailor shop on 15th Street in Oakland in the late 60s. The current practitioners have shed the barbaric practices that violated professional standards of the client-therapist relationship, and it took more than just calling people who stood in the powerful role of therapist “teachers.” Teachers can still be the objects of serious and debilitating transference.

And if this appears to be just another “hit piece” against a man whom many take to be somewhat of a luminary in the transpersonal psychological world, or if it devolves into “I said, he said,” I’ll miss the mark.

And so why write at all?

Because something deep inside me tells me that I have to. After years of personal work, thousands of dollars in therapy, countless hours in the rooms of 12-step recovery, experimenting with every personal growth program that I could find, talking to spiritual counselors all over the world, I cannot forget that Bob Hoffman took advantage of me in an entirely unethical and selfish way. In a way, writing about it may perhaps allow me to forgive Hoffman, or at least understand why it remains so painful and debilitating.

The current #metoo movement has focused on high, powerful men taking advantage of young girls. Of course, the ongoing scandal of priests abusing their position to satisfy their sexual drives with adolescent boys is a kind of #Catholicmetoo story. But not as sensational as Roman Catholic Cardinals being held to account for their past sins, there is more than enough evidence of older gay men taking advantage of younger men in the process of coming out, so I have to tell my story.

And most importantly, I have to heal myself. I cannot harbor any illusions of rehabilitating my relationship with Ashish, but I want to hold it as a cherished part of my life. And perhaps we both can share this and be friends.

So let me begin at the beginning, or at least as close as memory allows me to approach a relationship that began in 1972-3 and lasted until Hoffman died in 1997. Although time has thankfully erased many of the details, I am confident that my reporting is factual regarding the actions, times, and places. And of course, the emotional interpretation is mine alone.

In 1972, I was a Jesuit scholastic, bright, enthusiastic, inquisitive, and, to most observers, engaged in my life. I loved the Jesuits and had done well in the rigorous course of study. I was certainly accepted and encouraged by fellow Jesuits and superiors. I didn’t hide what I characterized as struggles with my homoerotic feelings from my superiors, and they tried to help in whatever way they could. Still, the prospect of a lifetime of celibacy seemed more and more like a chain rather than a path to fulfillment.

I was unhappy and frustrated, and although I tried to hide from it, I knew that I was at a turning point in my life.

Then early that summer, over the course of a long conversation with another young Jesuit in New York, where I was a student at Woodstock College, the famous Jesuit Theologiate that had relocated close to Columbia University, I heard about a Jesuit priest, Bob Ochs, who was working with Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley, California. Bob P. told me about his experiences with the Enneagram, the liberation of psychological work that was also, at its base, spiritual. Something inside me felt a connection, or perhaps I was just grabbing at straws in my pain, but I decided right then that I was going to California.

The very next morning, I called my religious superiors in Boston and asked for permission to transfer to the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley to work with Ochs. After a few questions, they agreed—actually, they were enthusiastic—and asked me to call Berkeley and see if I could be admitted. Things fell into place so quickly and smoothly that I felt the Universe, or the Holy Spirit, was guiding me.

Within 10 days, I was sharing a ride cross-country with a young kid from Brooklyn who was headed towards the Northwest for forestry school. Once in Berkeley, I called Ochs to introduce myself, and then in a completely flat tone (I have no idea why I remember that), he asked, “Why don’t you join the group?” It had never occurred to me, but I’d just driven across the country in a headlong, desperate search to discover something about myself, and I called the number he gave me. Rosalyn Shaffer answered the phone and told me—again, her tone was rather flat—to be at an old fraternity house at 7 PM sharp on Tuesday night.

When I got there, I joined the odd collection of young therapists, grad students, carpenters, journalists, film makers, bearded barefoot hippies, waiting at the door. Some were even smoking marijuana before the session. The doors opened, and we entered a large, threadbare living room. Claudio just said, “Let’s begin with zazen.” And we sat for close to an hour.

I am including as many details as I can remember to flesh out how different this world was for me. Even though Woodstock College was as experimental as the Jesuits could muster post-Vatican II, and even though I had been a student at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, which was not immune to the countercultural forces of the anti-Vietnam War, San Francisco Summer of Love ethos, this was remarkably different. I sensed that if I stuck with whatever program was proposed, my life would change in ways I could not predict. And that, certainly, I would be confronted with and uncomfortable. I chose to stay.

My experience that evening was not just that California presented a cafeteria of spiritual disciplines, but a veritable smorgasbord! By 10:15, we’d sat zazen, been introduced to dantian breathing by Mr. Chu, a Taoist master from Taiwan, and engaged in Gestalt therapy, first Claudio working with one student and then in “dyads.” We were instructed to meditate for at least 30 minutes in the morning, keep a dream journal, meet with a support cohort of three other group members, and return on Thursday night. Tuesdays and Thursdays were shock points in the Sufi tradition and provided the most opportunity for deep change.

The professional, if unconventional, rhythm of the evening sessions was set. It became comfortable and something that I looked forward to. Long periods of meditation became easier, and I actually did them. I made friends in my small group. The group began to seem less unconventional and more like a group of dedicated young people who were intent on discovering something about themselves. And Rosalyn promised that within a week, we’d be introduced to Bob Hoffman, who would lead us in a first-ever group process of the “Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy.”

The first encounter with Hoffman was certainly bizarre. I remember very clearly that he wore what I knew was an expensive sports coat and tie while we were in jeans and T-shirts. Standing behind Rosalyn, he appeared extremely uncomfortable. When he began to speak, it was soon obvious that he was not educated in any psychological discipline, but he dominated the room, alternatively talking and then yelling in a kind of dumbed-down jargon filled with what became known as ”Hoffmanisms.” The paradoxical definition of “negative love was illogical logic and nonsensical sense,” and if we didn’t understand that, we were just playing dumb out of negative love; if we thought he was too well dressed, it was negative transference and an indication that we didn’t love ourselves. My feelings about his inappropriate dress—worthy only of a racetrack—betrayed far more than “negative love’—the transference had already begun.

I felt trapped, but I had just moved all the way from New York and had nowhere else to turn, so I sat and took notes.

How and why did I get hooked? During the group work with Claudio’s group, in the “prosecution of mother,” I had my first major breakthrough. Claudio had us working in the manner of Perls’s Gestalt Therapy, particularly when we were doing the “mother bitch session.”

We were instructed to touch the core of any latent anger we harbored towards our mothers. Claudio said that even just a second of authentic experience would change our world. So I was in the hot seat, and I tried to express my anger. No one in the group believed me. So I tried again. Again, just surface complaints about a trivial matter. But then something inside me opened. I could use the word snapped. And my anguish and anger exploded. The pitch of my voice broke a glass beside a woman in my support cohort.

I could no longer pretend that I was somehow spared the anguish of a domineering parent. And with that realization, the intricate spiritual world of this young Jesuit seeker that I’d constructed as a defense began to look like a sham, and 10 years of rigorous disciplined religious life began to crumble.

At about the same time, it became clear that Hoffman was frustrated with the pace of the process and the depth of Claudio’s exploration. He felt that a person just had to “open up” to the emotions he or she had denied or repressed. Claudio’s work with Perls and his own psychological training, I think, opened the emotional world for exploration, but Hoffman was not interested in anything more than the psychic and emotional motivation for adopting the negative behaviors of a parent or parent surrogate. He’d worked with people in his one-on-one process in a matter of 4 or 5 weeks. The SAT Process had been going on for 3 months, and we hadn’t even finished the prosecution of the mother. He announced that he would end the SAT Process after the "defense of mother." He would do his own group process and set a rapid, regimented pace for the work.

Hoffman approached me as he was finishing up the FHPT with the SAT Group and told me he felt I should join his pilot Process at Tolman Hall. He said that he sensed that I would go on to lead groups and that I should definitely train under Dr. Ernie Pecci, whose PSI Institute would be taking over the Process.

About 50 people gathered in late January of ‘73 for Hoffman’s first Process. We met on Monday nights, and had until Wednesday to complete the work assignment. We got our written work to Hoffman, and he gave us taped feedback the following Monday.

Late one Wednesday afternoon I hand delivered my emotional autobiography with father to Hoffman on 15th Street. It was past 5, and the receptionist had left. Hoffman was sitting at his desk in a cramped office, with his feet on the desk. I stood at the open door.

He told me to hand him my work, and he began to read it right on the spot. He would read a paragraph, comment on the emotional tone, and then try to make some connection between the specific circumstances I’d described and what he called the negative emotional patterns and character traits that I’d adopted from my father in an attempt to bargain for his love.

He read through to an incident I wrote about my father resetting the stone wall on the back of our lot. As he was moving the stones into a wheelbarrow, he uncovered the nest of a woodchuck who’d built her nest in a cranny between the rocks. As she was ferociously defending her cubs, my father killed her and her cubs with his shovel. As I remembered it, he began to beat her viciously. Her screams were chilling.

Hoffman began by complimenting the emotional tone of my writing. But then he began to raise his voice. First, he said that obviously my Dad was a homosexual, and then, “You’re also gay too, aren’t you?” I countered with a question about how he could deduce that my dad was gay based on his bludgeoning a woodchuck? His voice became louder and louder. He was now almost screaming—obviously, my father was a sadist. What? Then he repeated his question: “You’re gay? Don’t play games with me. I know these things.” I admitted that, of course, I had gay feelings, but I was unsure if I was gay. By now, he was shouting loudly: “Don’t play games with me.” I had heard that Hoffman often attacked clients—he claimed that he was breaking us down in order to build us up—but I could barely believe it.

=Of course, he was right that I was in nearly complete denial about my homosexuality, but I am certain that he didn’t deduce this from any incident I related in the negative father autobiography. Many of the other things that he said or implied about my father were entirely off base and not even worthy of the weirdest pop psychology.

When I described this incident to my therapist, his response was: When you stayed, he knew he had you.

By the first or second week of May, we’d finished the Process. My parents had planned to come to California in late May, and we would drive back east together. There was a kind of ritual for completing your emotional divorce from your parents—after you’d gotten your parents' full attention, you just said “I love you,” and kissed them. My parents thought it very strange, but I always followed instructions as closely as possible.

However, the trip soon turned into a total nightmare. When I was staying at the Jesuit residence at Brophy Prep in Phoenix, my mother found the diary that I’d kept during the past year in Berkeley, and read it from beginning to end. She always felt that she had complete authority in my life, so of course, she was entitled to access my private life. And this was just confirmation that no matter how complete or thorough my personal work, I could not change my parents.

When I got in the car with them the next morning, my mother was cold and angry. She announced that we would be driving non-stop back to Connecticut, where I would be put under the care of a competent therapist who’d straighten me out. My dad was completely silent. I was in shock.

The drive across country was almost unbearable, the interaction with my parents varying from loud anger with my mother to complete disgust with my father’s silence. We arrived at their home, and I left to see my superiors in Boston. They supported me—after all, I was a 30-year-old man, and had not hidden anything from them. But the situation was very uncomfortable. My already strained relationship with my parents entered what would become the new normal for the next 20 years—alternating icy communication interspersed with attempts to restore some civility. It would not change much until each of them approached death.

I have to be careful about the timeline here. I returned to California and the JSTB in early August, and with my superiors' permission, I took a leave of absence to pray about leaving the Society. I moved to a cottage on Alcatraz Avenue with fellow SAT member Hal Slate, who was also gay. It was just two blocks away from the White Horse, the only gay bar in Berkeley, and I began the process of coming out.

We had completed the 13-week Process in mid-May. In early September, Hoffman began showing up at the White Horse. He’d show up around 9 o’clock, leaning awkwardly against the elbow bar and trying to look off into some distant corner of the universe.

He said that he just normally stopped by on his way home. But in reality, he was just there to track my movements, and to make himself known—he later told me that he never went to gay bars because being recognized there might negatively affect his work. His behavior can only be described as stalking. It had been less than 4 months after I’d finished the FHPT when he nervously gave me his “private” phone number and asked if he could call me.

All this occurred at the beginning of the Fall semester at JSTB. I recall one conversation with Hoffman at the White Horse in particular, which helps me date his pursuit of me. He mentioned almost in passing, and as I look back, perhaps as a way of excusing or justifying his behavior, that although the usual period for a therapist seeing a patient was 6 months after the professional relationship had ended, he thought that I had so completely and lovingly divorced myself from my parents, and that perhaps the usual 6 months could be compressed.

I also told him about my mother reading my diary and learning about the raw emotional side of the Process. He assured me half-heartedly that if I just kept loving them unconditionally, all would work out eventually. I believed him. I didn’t realize the depth of my transference—I had to believe him.

Finally, I agreed to go out to dinner with him. He thought it was a date. I thought it was dinner with a friend. I can’t in any way recreate the events or the conversation that ended with him returning to my apartment, and me finding myself naked in bed with a man I did not find at all attractive. But as with many sexual predators, Hoffman’s ability to read his victims, what he would describe as his “psychic powers,” lent itself to skillful manipulation. And of course, after working with me on an intimate level for almost a year, he had a real window into my psychology that was far more accurate than his psychic reading.

I will not go into any detail about the extremely awkward interaction, except to say that after a lot of “why don’t we try this?” and “do you like that?” he rolled me over and satisfied himself. Every time I think about this, I ask myself why I didn’t say, “This isn’t working. Why don’t you put on your clothes and leave?” But I just kept my mouth shut and endured him trying to apologize for physically hurting me.

I made it very clear that there was never going to be another date, but of course, we would remain friends. And so I was introduced to his circle of gay friends and his rather secretive network of successful gay men who worked in the predominantly straight world, lived a middle-class lifestyle, and tried to pass as straight. There were dinner parties and seats at the opera, and lots of campy talk. Looking back, I was pretty uncomfortable with the whole scene, though I did like some of his friends, and some not at all. Still, as a member of a minority, the unstated rule is that you accept everyone.

I did not like some of the sexual banter, or, as happened several times, being passed around as the new kid in town, and expected to sleep with his friends. Of course, you did it if you were not some kind of prude, and as Hoffman loved to point out, my mother was a puritanical prude, so just stop imitating her.

Hoffman and I continued to see one another very occasionally for the rest of his life. I’d have to call it a strained “on again, off again” friendship. When he came back from Brazil just after he completed the sale of his “intellectual property” to the new US owners, and was diagnosed with liver cancer, I stepped up and offered to be his live-in caregiver. So I both saw him in his last few months of life and did some small service in helping him repair several friendships that were important to him. But I didn’t stay until the end.

Finally last May I was just tired of telling myself that it was all OK, just a sexual relationship in early gay life that didn’t work, and I should just get over it. Hoffman was a man with whom I’d entrusted my emotional well-being during an extremely difficult period, and he betrayed that trust. The scars of that betrayal have been deep and long-lasting. I can only imagine what it might have been like to deal with coming out in the hands of an ethical therapist, but I can count the real cost of dealing with an unethical and selfish one: thousands of dollars in therapy, numberless hours in 12-Step recovery meetings, the inability to feel any real emotional connection without drugs or alcohol, the pain of feeling that I could never measure up to a satisfying real relationship with another man.

And I’m calling this #gaymetoo because there are still numerous incidents of older gay men taking advantage of younger, vulnerable men. Is this a result of the repression and unhappiness that many gay men, and I presume lesbians and bisexuals too, of my generation experienced, or will this exploitation always be with us? Looking at the #metoo movement, there seems to be evidence that power, money, position, and religion are fertile breeding grounds for sexual exploitation and manipulation.

____________________

Here are the pieces that I've written about Hoffman. Although I have tried to be objective, it is impossible to take a disinterested position with regard to the Process. Hoffman sexually abused me about 6 months after I finished my first process.

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy
#GayMeToo
The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman
This Victim Refuses Silence
A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?
Forgive and Forget? Impossible. An inquiry into Victimization.
"Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple."
New Age Miracle or Fraud
Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?
Science vs. Spooks
Jonestown and our Deliverance from Cults


© Kenneth Ireland, 2019