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.

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

New Age Scum

I spent over a decade as a Jesuit with vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I’ve known and talked with hundreds of priests and seminarians, members of religious orders, and parish priests. They are scholars, missionaries, mystics, teachers and preachers, gay and straight, celibate and non-observant. The vast majority are dedicated men and women who follow the way of Jesus and give of themselves to help others. I knew only three men who were in any way implicated in the sex abuse scandals that rocked the foundations of the church, and only one had inappropriate contact with adolescent boys. Two spent time in prison. All paid dearly for their behavior, careers and lives in shatters. 

Of course, we are dealing with human nature, and human nature being what it is, we can be sure that the problem still exists. The best we can do is set some ethical standards, try to enforce them, and ensure some consequences are in place to act as a deterrent.

However, don’t imagine that sexual abuse is confined to Roman Catholic priests and religious. People like me who think that leaving the church of your mothers and fathers opened up vast fields of honey and bliss will find that some issues do not disappear by substituting one religious pantheon for another. 

What is it with these guys?

And they are always guys. I am going to talk about two cases of men in New Age groups who had to know that their sexual acting out was immoral but did it anyway. When it threatened to become public knowledge, they were swift to duck for cover. Words no longer had any meaning; it’s all circumlocution. This is, for me, key for discerning the pathology. Cardinal Edward Egan was caught in a nasty argument about condemning gay priests for the cost of paying retribution to abuse victims. His response was classic: "I would just say this. The most important thing is to clean up the truth. And the truth is I have never said anything." Of course, the truth is, Your Eminence, that you said many things. Just because your statements were lies and double talk does not cancel them out or make us deaf. They just require cleaning up. (Hint: the truth doesn’t need a thorough cleaning. It’s us, Eminence).

But before I discuss the cases of two men I know personally, I want to talk a bit about the public discussion of sex abuse. It seems there are two paths, and both have severe limitations. One is complete denial and silence; the other involves talking too much. 

Swami Muktananada hid behind the religious persona of a holy man and never admitted to having sex with underage girls. It came to light after he died. The religious sect he established continues to say nothing. The irony is that everyone knows about his sexual behavior. If followers believe in Sidda Yoga and his successor, Gurumayi, they are asked to participate in the public lie, and Muktananda gets away with his sins in the name of a higher good. The brother of his anointed successor was expelled from the group for sexual misconduct, and his name was expunged like a scapegoat. The income stream was protected.

The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was also a serial abuser, but he never pretended to be a celibate holy man. In Osho’s case, drugs clouded the picture. In my view, neither were models for living a spiritual life. It is stupid to rely on Muktananda, Gurumayi, or Rajneesh as role models to guide a life of integrity.

My example of talking too much is a man I knew who wrote a book hoping to become the poster boy of registered sex offenders. Jake Goldenflame was convicted for molesting his daughter, served a jail sentence, and then worked hard to get on Opray to talk about it. He wrote Overcoming Sexual Terrorism: 40 ways to protect your children from sexual predators (2004). I spoke with him weekly when he began his project. He eventually hired a ghostwriter with a track record and produced his book. His goal was to become the expert on protecting children against the likes of himself. In the end, to quote one of his critics, Kathleen Parker (April 2, 2005, The Spokesman-Review): “His self-outing is a form of therapeutic confession that purges his own demons while imposing them on the rest of us. He feels better, and we need a bath. Our passive complicity constitutes, if not tacit approval, at least a level of involuntary involvement that is both voyeuristic and prurient.” I should not have tried to help him. He defended his pathology by refusing to deal with it. He set a trap, and I fell for it, I suspect, out of some impulse to be fair-minded and even-handed. I didn’t recognize the pathology, and the pathology remained unchallenged.

_____________

I write with a heavy heart. On June 28th, my great friend Stan Stefancic died; We communicated briefly after he was diagnosed with cancer, and I tried to express how much I appreciated our friendship over the years. I remembered our conversations. We could talk to each other in a no-holds-barred way, even when we disagreed. Our worldviews overlapped, and we generally held similar opinions and assessments. The bone of contention was what actions were appropriate. Stan was far more conservative, supporting the status quo. Me, I am no company man.

There was one situation where the obligation of friendship prevented me from talking openly about a case of sexual exploitation by a man we both knew. Now I can talk about it. Before, the consideration that he and this man were also friends held me back. Stan used his considerable skills to try to craft a settlement to address the young girl’s needs. He failed. I remained hesitant to write, endlessly weighing the pros and cons. However, I am no longer obligated to be silent, or perhaps it has become the obligation of friendship to speak up, and I have been freed to speak. What I wish to discuss goes far beyond friendship.

The other case is a man who abused his daughter. I’ve known him for many years. We were in Claudio Naranjo’s SAT Group. I heard about his abuse from his wife whom I’ve known for decades. The mothers of both girls are dear friends, and I trust them to talk with their daughters and speak the truth. These mothers also tell me they do not talk a lot about the incidents because it restimulates the abuse. 

I cannot name names. Both the men I’ve talked about are still alive. In neither case was there a formal accusation or trial. The man from the SAT Group disappeared into obscurity in a small town on the East Coast, and the other still has a position in the Hoffman Institute. I do not have the resources to undertake an investigation, nor would it be appropriate. I am not a party to the injury. Their mothers have not taken legal action. They need to create a safe space so that their daughters have a chance to heal—another reason why abuse remains in the dark. 

However, in a broader sense, we were all injured by both men’s abuse. This is what I want to talk about. It is a difficult conversation for all of us in the spiritual community because it reflects poorly on the work of personal self-observation I value. Like the priests of my youth or Swami Muktananda, who provided comfort and reconciliation and then destroyed it, these men's actions have obstructed the path of introspection for other people. 

But we must find ways to talk about sex abuse. One of the mothers wrote, “It’s difficult to even think about. And when this happened in your own family, it’s really hard to believe it. Yet they can’t remain hidden since they’re incredibly toxic if they do.” The first step seems to be to admit that there is abuse. 

However, just holding abusers accountable does not seem to be enough. Looking at the history of a few very high-profile cases in the Zen community leaves me with the impression that permission to blame tends to restrict the conversation to blame. Communities write up what they consider to be clear ethical statements for their members and teachers or others in positions of trust and then imagine that they have fulfilled their responsibility. But the cycle of blame does not end. Sometimes, removal and discipline of the offender bring back some semblance of normalcy, but in almost all the cases I am familiar with, there is a stubborn layer of rehashing the argument that persists. Why?

Is it because the insult to our sexuality is so intimate that it touches a deep level of personal trauma--a trauma that remains unresolved and ever ready to raise its nasty interior argument? Was it that the trauma was never really addressed? Denial has thousands of dark paths. That was my situation when Bob Hoffman’s sexual abuse surfaced many years later. 

Is it because, in our attempts to be OK with co-workers of sangha members, we gloss over the subtle, covert, and offensive sexual messages that come from a staff member who had been deeply involved in a sex cult before he or she sought therapy? We’ve simply failed to identify the depth of the pathology. This was the situation with Jake Goldenflame.

Is it because after the sexual revolution of the Summer of Love, the new normal has become so muddied the water that personal boundaries are weak and ineffective? There is a thin line between setting boundaries and not judging individual choices. In cases of pedophilia, the harm is so clear that it should not be hard to keep boundaries, but in many cases, the boundaries vanish. That was undoubtedly the case of many Roman Catholic bishops and religious superiors who chose saving face over weeding out and exposing the relatively few priests and religious who abused young men and women and nearly destroyed an institution that has guided and comforted men and women for thousands of years,

Was it that in these cases, the sexual nature of the abuse forces it underground, and when it surfaces, the sudden reaction is uncontrollable? Or is it instead that we, despite our practice, have not been able to move past “the blame game?” 

It is our obligation. The practice points to the only way we can heal: deal with our reactions, settle what was hiding, and examine ourselves before and after we lay blame. Of course, it will be different for each of us. Because I cannot recommend a general fix-all, it does not free us from the obligation of dealing with ourselves.

None of the above discussion, however, removes any consequences for an abuser’s actions. I will tell anyone connected to the Hoffman Institute, directly and without hesitation--you are complicit. You can ask some hard questions if you are considering one of their programs. The organizers allowed this man to escape with no consequences, personal or financial. He is still in good standing within the organization and in the financial stream. And they have failed in their first duty as a therapist, “to do no harm.” They’ve poisoned the well. 

Thank you, Stan

Stanley Robert Stefancic, age 86, passed away on Friday, June 28, 2024.

My deepest condolences to Marianne, Benjamin and Sandy, their children, and all Stan's family and admirers.

On June 15th, Stan wrote to me on Facebook: “Hi Ken, I’m sorry I can’t answer in more detail! But I want you to know that our relationship means a lot to me, Love Stan.” I knew about his grave diagnosis and suspected that this might be a short goodbye from a very dear friend. I wrote back as quickly as I could.

Dear Stan,

Circumstances have planted me on the other side of the world, which is a disadvantage when it comes to sitting with you, old friend, being quiet when appropriate, or chatty when the cat smiles. It’s what I would love most right now, but here I am in Bangkok, so this is the chatty part. This might be a long note, probably longer than necessary, but I hope it's not burdensome. My mind is racing over the years that we have known one another, flashing on the high points, our connection, the shared stuff, and the just plain weird. For some reason, we’ve had quite a bit of that.

I read your last short note and wanted to respond, but not in a way that demanded a response. There is nothing between us that needs to be said. I have nothing but love and admiration for you. We’ve shared more laughter and wonder than most humans can imagine. Thank you for that. 

I remember sharing lunch with you in San Anselmo almost daily over several years. It was not a lifetime of lunches like cranky old men, but enough to verge on that subset. I remember one or two of our haunts. I remember what you ordered, or imagine I do. We had our Thai place; I particularly liked the small cafe above the creek where you could hear water rushing down after the rain and the ice had melted. Now I sit in Bangkok. The monsoon is just beginning. I listen to the sound of rain; I want to sit with you, hang out, and feel your presence. I wish I could share it with you. It does all come down to wonder. Just wonder. 

It was a hair-brained idiot who brought us together. I have to thank him for something; you were always more hopeful than I was that something good might come from his work. For me, those days at the Institute were like being in a Light and Love prison where everybody knew the boss was a lunatic, but bills needed to be paid. Do you remember when he put that bust of himself in the entrance hall of his tacky house in the Oakland Hills and then complained that it didn’t make him look cute enough? That should have blown the lid off all the pretentious hogwash, but I was captive and, I guess, suffering a bit of Stockholm Syndrome. Many of our lunch conversations were about dealing with that insanity and its side effects. I passed through the car wash and emerged a living, breathing human. You did well. Again, thank you. What a gift. 

There you were on one side of the table, having finished a degree at Harvard Divinity, had churches and responsibilities, but as you told me, maybe preached about Jesus once or twice. There I was on the other side, having dropped out of two divinity schools with no degree, less belief, and no responsibility but wrestling with the shadow of Jesus. Jesuit egghead and Unitarian bricklayer, what a perfect pair. 

I might even have to admit to believing in karma when I learned that I used to go the race track with the father of your son’s wife, Sandy and that I’d met her when she was maybe six in Bennie and Betty’s house on 12th Avenue. That still blows me away. I even won the trifecta once following Bennie's advice, but I was never good with money. Maybe karma plays a role, or I’m just thick but sometimes lucky.

Stan, my friend, you are the Rock of Gibraltar. I mean solid, really solid. I can’t count the number of times I started to go off on some half-assed Quixotic tangent, and you'd caution me. “Remember, there’s a lot of Claudio in that” or another cogent reason to move more carefully. 

Our worlds are less bright and exciting without you. I will try to keep your memory alive. I am so grateful to count you among my friends. I do love you.

Go Ahead, Shame me!

I remember a heated discussion with a guy whom I admired for his wit and creativity. He made his money being a DJ in a gay club, but he'd honed his skills and made an extremely respectable living. I am unsure of what he’d done to get educated, but he was obviously bright and could put a sentence together. In a public discussion he bemoaned his slight understanding of Numerology which would have obviously pointed to the correct decision. I probably--no assuredly--said something derogatory about relying on Assyrian soothsaying to arrive at a rational conclusion, and he angrily accused me of “Number shaming.” These were the heady days of politically correct lingo when you couldn’t call a fat drag queen fat, even if she called herself Fat Fanny, but what I remember most was his indignant anger that I called into question magical numbers as a way to truth.

One of the early proponents of the Hoffman Quadrinity Process was the Psychic Lady Sonia Choquette. She would apparently go into a trance state, connect with her guides on the supernatural plane, and give you advice. I checked her website and she is still selling--for $1200 she will give you an hour session over the phone. (I didn't make the mistake of adding a zero. That is more than the price of an Air France round trip ticket from San Francisco to Paris). No one is going to believe me if I warn them that they’re being scalped, but I was more interested in something that I saw in one of Choquette’s early online bio’s. What does someone say about his or her credentials for the Mystic Arts? Choquette claimed that she studied at the Sorbonne. I couldn’t stop laughing. I went and checked to see if there was even a course or two on comparative mysticism in the curriculum. Nothing. Maybe she'd been taking basic French and was tripping out in the back row rather than paying attention to the proper use of the ellipsis. Either that or she concocted the verification of her abilities from one of the most respected Universities in Europe,

Bob Hoffman originally called his Process, The Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic therapy. There it is right in the name.  A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, such as psychokinesis or teleportation. 

If you knew Hoffman, trusting him for information that is normally hidden is a stretch of the imagination. Probably the only way to accept it is to say “apparently inexplicable by natural laws.” Or you can trust professional psychotherapy. 

Apparently the Hoffman Institute agrees with me. They have completely removed any mention of Hoffman's psychic abilities. I think that the narrative is to portray Hoffman as a kindly Jewish grandfather. “Gifted Intuitive” is substituted for psychic, 

Ms. Choquette now calls herself a “six-sensory consultant” whatever that means. Go ahead accuse me of “psychic shaming.” Is Fat Fanny going to punch me out? At least she was being honest.

My Hoffman Process Writings

I received a complaint disguised as a question from a senior Hoffman Teacher—why was I writing now about Hoffman’s unethical behavior? A.M., who choses to be anonymous, responded to my Facebook post about Hoffman’s sexual abuse by trying to shame me. He deleted his remarks after many people objected to what he said. I didn’t get a screenshot so I can’t quote him directly. However, this was the essence: “It’s been 50 years since Hoffman raped you, and he’s been dead 20 years. It’s too bad you still are playing the victim.” And in a second response he said: “I’m sorry that you can’t let go of it.”

It demands a response. Here is what I said:

“So the complaint continues. Is this a plea to “let it go” as if I am a bad person for calling attention to harm caused by Bob Hoffman, who presented himself as a healer, a spiritual counselor, and a trustworthy public figure? Let me be entirely clear. He got me drunk and raped me 5 months after finishing his Process of Psychic Therapy. It was not consensual. It was illegal, unethical, and under normal circumstances there would be consequences. His ineptitude destroyed my relationship with my father for 30 years. The damage was real. I should keep my mouth shut? Be a man and deal with it? This is just another form of bullying and if it’s the mind set that comes from doing the Process, we have a problem. My response is clear: a victim never has to apologize. Period.”

I have been writing about Hoffman for almost 20 years. It has been part of my therapy to deal with Hoffman’s sexual abuse. Here’s a list of all my published posts about Hoffman with their timestamps. I think that after revision and rewriting (I do repeat myself), there might be enough for an eBook.

Hoffman Process, Bob Hoffman Bibliography

31/07/04, The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy. A lengthy examination of the people who contributed to the creation of The Hoffman Process. Revised September 16, 2006

09/04/07, Jonestown and our Deliverance from Cults. Remembering one FHPT client who did not die in the murder/suicide at the Peoples’ Temple.

02/08/07, Science vs. Spooks, skepticism, scientific research and the Nostradamus effect. Is a peer-reviewed study of spirituality even possible? Revised August 11, 2011.

05/06/08, New Age Miracle or Fraud. An introduction to my thoughts and experience with Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy, now known as the Hoffman Process.

21/11/19, #GayMeToo—Bob Hoffman. The traumatic sexual episode in my relationship with Hoffman.

23/12/19, "Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple." A respected Zen teacher reacted to #GayMeToo.

19/08/20, Forgive and Forget? Impossible. An inquiry into Victimization.

07/09/20, A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman? In short, if I can forgive myself.

21/11/20, This Victim Refuses Silence It was difficult to write about Hoffman’s sexual abuse, and it might be difficult to read—but I had to be honest with myself.

22/01/21, Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History? The institutional narrative about the creation of the Hoffman Process is awash in lies, distortions and fabrications.

13/02/21, The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman. My experience with Hoffman at the end of his life.

18/02/21, Called to Jury Duty. The real story of waking up to my sexual abuse.

13/04/21, Sex in the Bushes: the real story. Hoffman ends it with his boyfriend. Yes the name says it all!

22/04/21, Bob Hoffman, the First Encounter. Why do intelligent people believe nonsense? My personal experience of the first Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy group with Claudio Naranjo’s SAT in Berkeley.

12/05/21, The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult. The inter-relationship of Hoffman, Claudio Naranjo and the SAT group process.

16/05/21, The Hoffman Process was birthed by TV sitcom “Bewitched,” Some wicked, nasty fun about the psychic origins of the Hoffman Process.

09/06/21, Bamboozled. “Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan.

17/06/21, Why can I find nothing online about Bob Hoffman? An examination of the praise for Bob Hoffman and the Hoffman Process.

21/06/21, Tolman Hall, the first Hoffman Process, Hoffman and Naranjo end their collaboration. The predator begins to groom me for sex.

19/10/21. The Truth about Bob Hoffman

Called for Jury Duty

We walk through life pretending that our path is fairly normal and predictable until we’re caught up short, or perhaps we stumble into a situation that unexpectedly catches us off guard and something opens up that changes our perspective. Some might even call this a blessing.

I was called for jury duty, and early one Spring morning, I dutifully reported to San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. It is a nondescript building, really just a plain block of grey-white marble, filled with an odd assortment of people, police, people on their way to work paying traffic fines, lawyers in suits, municipal workers in jeans and shirts with badges, men and women, mostly people of color, in orange prison uniforms filing in for arraignment. I made my way to the second floor and joined the line of ordinary people waiting for the 8 AM call.

The doors to the courtroom opened, and we filed into a windowless grey hall with harsh lighting and simple wooden benches. Most everyone sat apart, leaving wide spaces between themselves. A few did sit together and chatted which I found odd. We were strangers to each other, and I was determined to keep it so. I knew that I would be very unhappy sitting in a courtroom for an indeterminate number of days listening to someone else’s sad story, and I certainly was not alone. After the officers of the court thanked us for doing our civic duty and introduced the lawyers, they made it very clear that the selection process would only excuse people for cause, real reasons, not just that we would be bored and might have preferred to watch daytime soap operas. We were sworn in, taking an oath to answer their questions honestly. To soften my mood, I tried to listen and make myself curious about what had occurred and why this was a complaint that had to be settled with lawyers and judges and a few of my fellow prospective jurors sitting in judgement. Others read books or newspapers.

There were perhaps 35 prospective jurors in the pool, and it was after lunch before I was interviewed. We were questioned by the lawyers to see if we could be impartial, but it was also clear they were also looking for people who could be swayed by their version of the facts. Gradually some particulars of the case came to light. A middle aged woman had accused a Latino house painter of sexual molestation. I began to piece together the thread of the prosecution's argument: the painter had mistaken the flirtations of the woman as an invitation for sex. I couldn’t determine if they’d actually had sex, but apparently the woman was also, what are the words, at ease with her sexuality. The denouement was being held in suspense as if to entice us to follow salacious emotional details in the conflicting versions of the story that would be the heart of the case.

He was younger, and although no movie star, I imagined that he would have played the lover’s role convincingly. But there was some disconnect between his attitude and the alleged aggression that was beginning to emerge as a central point of the woman’s complaint. His smile was genuine. I could see that. Of course there were language and cultural barriers. I had worked on construction sites for years. I knew many immigrants who worked with their hands, and I respected them. I also knew the sexual banter that passed the time. I recognized his clean but rumpled denim shirt. He could never pay a fine. He couldn’t even afford a lawyer, and I actually had to wonder if he even understood the gravity of the accusation.

Their inequality, the arrogance of the woman--at least that was my first impression--she’d made no attempt to dress like a nun for the proceedings, my curiosity about trying to delve into her motivation for bringing the charge--I toyed with the idea of actually sitting. Suddenly a wave of conflicting emotions swept over me, doubt and fear, sympathy and revulsion, attraction, even sexual fantasy. My first impression was that he might have misread the situation. He certainly didn’t rape her, or did he? I couldn’t be sure. But more to the point: I couldn’t rely on my own judgement. In all honesty, I knew that I couldn’t serve on the jury. Even if I could have been impartial, even if there was the possibility that I could have saved a man from an unjust accusation, I knew I couldn’t sit through days of intense psychological reckoning while lawyers tore apart a poor man’s last shred of dignity.

Possibly I could have negotiated a path through the prosecution and the defense’s arguments. Possibly I could have sorted out my own feelings and really listened to what actually occurred. Or could I? I had been trying to do that in many situations in my own life with mixed results. My sexual encounter with Bob Hoffman was rape. I had been the person who misread the circumstance. Although I fully understood that my naivete didn’t relieve Hoffman’s guilt, I couldn’t trust myself to render judgement in a situation where so much was at stake. I couldn’t trust myself to render judgment in my own life.

My name came up. I was asked if there was any reason I couldn’t serve. “I was raped,” I responded. “Thank you. You’re excused,” the judge said quickly. I wish it were that easy.

Here is a link to the page that lists other pieces I've written about my relationship with Hoffman.

© Kenneth Ireland, 2021

"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 is dead now 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, 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 over compensated 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.

____________________________

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, given that Hoffman sexually abused me within 6 months after I finished my first process.

 

© Kenneth Ireland, 2020