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 ww.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. 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.
By Oliver James.
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Ruthie Henshall -
http://www.hoffmaninstitute.co.uk/articles/womansownjan08.pdf
