It's a quick-fix residential course that's proven to beat anxiety
and depression
Oliver James finds the Hoffman Process is as good as its word
Sunday May 29, 2005 | The Observer
Therapy should enable you to gain a true understanding of the
ways in which the care your parents provided in early childhood
are corrupting your relationships and capacity to fulfil yourself.
But it all too rarely does this.
Cognitive Behavioural varieties (CBT) actively discourage dwelling
on the past. While psychoanalysis, or therapies deriving from it,
ought to do that job, too many analysts over-concentrate on the
patient's relationship to them.
In making referrals, I often suggest something called the Hoffman
Process rather than these. It is the most systematic method I know
for properly exploring the role of childhood as well as offering
a motorway back from the past.
While many of the techniques it employs are not in themselves
original, the combination of them is, and so is the fact that it
is done as an eight-day residential course. Four studies have demonstrated
that it definitely works for ailments such as anxiety and depression
(see www.hoffmaninstitute.co.uk).
Because it entails cutting yourself off from the outside world
and being at the mercy of strangers for over a week, it rightly
provokes suspicion and scepticism. But this is not some dodgy cult;
there's no having to give 10 per cent of your wealth to a Rolls-Royce-driving
Maharishi involved.
During the first half of the course, the layers of pathology that
past experiences have created are stripped away, working both with
individual therapists and in groups of about 20. Methods include
visualisation, where you are asked to picture past experiences and
relive them, and externalising of emotions - shouting, punching
cushions, letting off steam. Written accounts of their childhoods
are produced by students.
In the second half of the course, forgiveness of parents is developed.
The spiritual dimension is also vital at this point. This is nothing
to do with conventional religion or any hocus pocus, just reconnection
with a level of existence from which modern life distances us.
The group relationships are very important. Revealing oneself
to others and hearing their stories is cathartic but also, after
the course, enduring mutual support is provided.
The Hoffman has only been going for 10 years in this country.
At £1,930, it's not cheap, but then nor is psychoanalytic
therapy or CBT, and they usually take longer.
Tim Laurence, the director of the British Hoffman and author of
You Can Change Your Life (£8.99, Hodder), is eager to make
it more widely available. He told me that 'apart from creating the
possibility for low-income people in the community to do the process,
we are also looking at ways we might be able to help specific groups,
like convicted criminals and addicts.'
The Hoffman is a powerful new therapeutic method. If the government
is as keen on important innovations as it claims, here's one it
should back to the hilt.
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