SUNRISE
As a book creation coach I got drawn into some strange scenes, especially when the client had invented a process. A small businessman, Bob Hoffman had created a workshop dealing with “family of origin.” It was then given a couple of evenings per week, soon thereafter in a residential format lasting seven days. Participants were asked to do elaborate “homework” before coming, papers that were read by the teachers of their small groups.
My job for the founder was to help revise a book that described the process. When I asked the client how I could get direct experience, he suggested that I buy a tough pillow and a plastic bat and come with him to a session that evening. The meeting was held in a hall behind a big suburban house. On one wall was a mural of angels, one of whom depicted the owner’s mother.
At the time there was a fad for workshops for “getting out” anger. I wondered whether I’d wandered into one.
Turned out that the anger was carefully directed against harmful patterns manifested by each parent. The goal of the “bashing” was not general catharsis, but focus on particular ways of living that participants either unconsciously adopted or tried to rebel against. This was the first step in a complex process later described in the book, Journey into Love. (Disclosure: one of the authors is my sister, Kani Comstock.)
After a dubious first impression, I came to understand the depth and ingenuity of the process and decided to do it myself. The venue was a ranch on the northern side of the San Francisco Bay Area. A favorite phrase of the founder was, “it’s not their fault.” During the week as part of the proceedings students visited the local cemetery, which was paved between the gravesites. (Afterwards, one of us reported that “it’s not their asphalt.” After the groans we got back to work.)
After I went home, about twenty of my friends signed up (including all three of my siblings), not because of any “salesmanship,” but because of changes they thought they saw, making me wonder just how bad I’d been before. One of my sisters was director of the institute for a while, and both have taught there for years. In a structured format they do the work of counselors but are calked “teachers.”
Having discovered in detail what we each thought our parents did wrong, Kani is now writing a book about what our parents did right. Almost everyone complains about their parents (often projecting onto them), or praises them vaguely, but few have an opportunity to do the hard work of investigating the intricacies of childhood (up to, say, the age of 11).
The Hoffman Process has been done by many celebrities and other leading people in many fields, as well as folks you never hear of, unless they are friends or neighbors or co-workers. I’m happy when a friend decides to do the process or the Mankind Project “training adventure” or something similar. At best, most of the graduates are at least a little more mature, more adventurous, kinder.
Fortunately, we do not have to rely only on anecdotal evidence. The Hoffman Process was studied, for example, by Levenson and his colleagues. At the end of a long research paper in 2006, they declare the results “most encouraging.”