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 clearly 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 my 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 own self image, position and power. He was not at all 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 really be open and honest? Many of course are simply charlatans who obscure the truth for their own enrichment, but some have had genuine enriching, enlightening experiences.  

Forgiveness seems to be the clearest path to putting the past in the past. But one thing is certain: the abuse of any responsibility as a teacher, a therapist and 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 to 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 kind of 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 that he was 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 actually thought that if I made the effort to repair my relationship with him, it might bring some order to my life. I finally came to the realization that I needed to make amends to 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 over and over enter into relationships with younger men, try to dominate them, and then sabotage the relationship. I personally met two other young men whom he singled out for his attention which was not reciprocated. Of course 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-70’s, 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 have taken me.

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

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 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 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 which 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 70’s he read about the Tasaday tribe on a remote Philippines 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 actually was 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 trainings. 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 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 have not answered your question, but I hope that 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

My Path to Islam

My Path to Islam

by John Lounibos, Ph.D.

"Before I drag the reader, screaming and wailing, to Baghdad and the 11th century world of Ghazali and medieval Persia, let me explain a few things about medieval and classical readings, which create a context for the encounter with Ghazali. Let me also share something about the way in which I read ancient, classical literature.

"I am no therapist, but I read and ask my students to read every text as therapy. Why read the classics for therapy? Because most of them were written with some intent to heal the soul. So I read the Bible for therapy. I read Julian of Norwich (1342-1420?), Augustine (354-430), Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), Maimonides (1135-1204), Dante (1265-1321), and Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) as therapy; then I read them for history, for social, political values, for critical thinking, for poetry, for creative thinking. Then I read them for windows on the catastrophes of their time and apply lessons for our own contemporary times. I also read them for meditation."

Please go to the post on the Intimate Meanderings page and read away.

"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