The Long Ride Home
Bob Hoffman Grooms Me
In cults, if things don’t go according to plan, you are to blame.
In cults, if things don’t go according to plan, you are to blame.
In the sixth or seventh week of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy, I had a very uncomfortable experience. The beginning of Hoffman’s sexual abuse started in a setting that was allegedly therapy!
Late one Wednesday afternoon I hand delivered my emotional “autobiography with father” to Hoffman on 15th Street. It was past 5, and the receptionist had left. Hoffman was sitting at his desk in a cramped office, with his feet on the desk. I stood in the open door.
He told me to hand him my work, and he began to read it right on the spot. He would read a paragraph, comment on the emotional tone, and then try to make some connection between the specific circumstances I’d described and what he called the negative emotional patterns and character traits that I’d adopted from my father in an attempt to bargain for his love.
Hoffman read through to an incident I wrote about my father resetting the stone wall at the back of our lot. As Dad was lifting stones into a wheelbarrow, he uncovered the nest of a woodchuck who’d built her nest in a cranny between the rocks. As she was ferociously defending her cubs, my father killed her and her cubs with his shovel. As I remembered it, he began to beat her viciously. Her screams were chilling.
Hoffman began by complimenting the emotional tone of my writing. But then he began to raise his voice. He said that obviously my Dad was a homosexual, and then, “You’re also gay too, aren’t you?” I countered with a question about how he could deduce that my dad was gay based on his bludgeoning a woodchuck? He just repeated “You’re gay.” His voice became louder and louder. Now he was almost screaming—obviously my father was a sadist. What? Then he repeated his question: “You’re gay? Don’t play games with me. I know these things.” I admitted that of course I had gay feelings, but I was unsure if I was gay. By now he was shouting loudly: “Don’t play games with me.” I had heard that Hoffman often often attacked clients—he claimed that he was breaking us down in order to build us up—but I could barely believe it.
I was in nearly complete denial about my homosexuality, but Dad was not gay. I actually think that the idea of same sex relationship never once crossed his mind in his entire life. I am also certain that Hoffman’s deductions from what I related in my writing were entirely projections and his own pathology. Other things that he said or implied were entirely off base and not even worthy of the weirdest pop psychology. But because there was one note of truth in analysis, the whole thing became plausible, and I lost any possibility of a real relationship with my father for the next 30 years. In exchange I got the debilitating transference to Hoffman. I also remember that the 13 week process cost $300. The real cost was devastating.
This part of my therapy with Hoffman happened in March. He began stalking me in September. He raped me in late October or early November. When I described this incident to my therapist, his response was: when you stayed, he knew he had you. And he did.
By the first or second week of May we’d finished the Process. My parents had planned to come to California in late May and we would drive back east together. There was a kind of ritual for completing your emotional divorce from your parents—after you’d gotten your parents full attention, you just said “I love you,” and kissed them. My parents thought it very strange, but I always followed instructions as closely as possible.
However, the trip soon turned into a total nightmare. When I was staying at the Jesuit residence at Brophy Prep in Phoenix, my mother found the diary that I’d kept during the past year in Berkeley, and read it beginning to end. She always felt that she had complete authority in my life, so of course she was entitled to access my private life. And this was just confirmation that no matter how complete or thorough my personal work, I could not change my parents.
When I got in the car with them the next morning, my mother was cold and angry. She announced that we would be driving non-stop back to Connecticut where I would be put under the care of a competent therapist who’d straighten me out. My dad was completely silent. I was in shock.
The drive across country was almost unbearable, the interaction with both parents varying from loud anger with my mother, to complete disgust with my father’s silence. We arrived at their home, and I left to see my superiors in Boston. They supported me—after all, I was a 30 year old man, and had not hidden anything from them. But the situation was very uncomfortable. My already strained relationship with my parents entered what would become the new normal for the next 20 years—alternating icy communication interspersed with attempts to restore some civility. It would not change much until each of them approached death.
I have to be careful about the timeline here. I returned to California and the JSTB in early August, and with my religious superiors’ permission and encouragement, I took a leave of absence to pray about leaving the Society. I moved to a cottage on Alcatraz Avenue with fellow SAT member Hal Slate who was also gay. It was just two blocks away from the White Horse, the only gay bar in Berkeley, and I began the process of coming out.
We had completed the 13 week Process in mid May. In early September Hoffman began showing up at the White Horse. He’d show up around 9 o’clock, leaning awkwardly against the elbow bar and trying to look off into some distant corner of the universe.
He said that he just normally stopped by on his way home. But in reality he was just there to track my movements, and to make himself known—he later told me that he never went to gay bars because being recognized there might negatively affect his work. His behavior can only be described as stalking. It had been less than 4 months after I’d finished the FHPT when he nervously gave me his “private” phone number and asked if he could call me.
All this occurred at the beginning of the Fall semester at JSTB. I recall one conversation with Hoffman at the White Horse in particular which helps me date his pursuit of me. He mentioned almost in passing, and as I look back, perhaps as a way of excusing or justifying his behavior, that although the usual period for a therapist seeing a patient was 6 months after the professional relationship had ended, he thought that I had so completely and lovingly divorced myself from my parents, and that perhaps the usual 6 months could be compressed.
I also told him about my mother’s reading my diary and learning about the raw emotional side of the Process. He assured me half-heartedly that if I just kept loving them unconditionally, all would work out eventually. I believed him. I didn’t realize the depth of my transference—I had to believe him.
Finally, I agreed to go out to dinner with him. He thought it was a date. I thought it was dinner with a friend. I can’t in any way recreate the events or the conversation that ended with him returning to my apartment, and me finding myself naked in bed with a man I did not find at all attractive. But as with many sexual predators, Hoffman’s ability to read his victim, what he would describe as his “psychic powers,” lent themselves to skillful manipulation. And of course after working with me on an intimate level for almost a year, he had a real window into my psychology that was far more accurate than his psychic reading.
I will not go into any detail about the extremely awkward interaction, except to say that after a lot of “why don’t we try this?” and “do you like that?” he rolled me over and satisfied himself. Everytime I think about this, I ask myself why didn’t I say, “This isn’t working. Why don’t you put on your clothes and leave?” But I just kept my mouth shut and endured him trying to apologize for physically hurting me.
I made it very clear that there was never going to be another date, but of course we would remain friends. And so I was introduced to his circle of gay friends and his rather secretive network of successful gay men who worked in the predominately straight world, lived a middle-class life style, and tried to pass as straight. There were dinner parties and seats at the opera, and lots of campy talk. Looking back I was pretty uncomfortable with the whole scene, though I did like some of his friends, and some not at all. Still, as a member of a minority, the unstated rule is that you accept everyone.
I did not like some of the sexual banter, or, as happened several times, being passed around as the new kid in town, and expected to sleep with his friends. Of course you did it if you were not some kind of prude, and as Hoffman loved to point out, my mother was a puritanical prude, so just stop imitating her.
Hoffmann and I continued to see one another very occasionally for the rest of his life. I’d have to call it a strained “on again off again” friendship. When he came back from Brazil just after he completed the sale of his “intellectual property” to the new US owners, and was diagnosed with liver cancer, I stepped up and offered to be his live-in caregiver. So I both saw him in his last few months of life and did some small service in helping him repair several friendships that were important to him. But I didn’t stay until the end.
Finally last May I was just tired of telling myself that it was all OK, just a sexual relationship in early gay life that didn’t work, and I should just get over it. Hoffman was a man with whom I’d entrusted my emotional well-being during an extremely difficult period, and he betrayed that trust. The scars of that betrayal have been deep and long lasting. I can only imagine what it might have been like to deal with coming out in the hands of an ethical therapist, but I can count the real cost of dealing with an unethical and selfish one: thousands of dollars in therapy, numberless hours in 12 recovery meetings, the inability to feel any real emotional connection without drugs or alcohol, the pain of feeling that I could never measure up to a satisfying real relationship with another man.
And I’m calling this #gaymetoo because there are still numerous incidents of older gay men taking advantage of younger, vulnerable men. Is this a result of the repression and unhappiness that many gay men, and I presume lesbians and bisexuals too, of my generation experienced, or will this exploitation always be with us? Looking at the #metoo movement, there seems to be evidence that power, money, position, and religion are fertile breeding grounds for sexual exploitation and manipulation.
Late one Wednesday afternoon I hand delivered my emotional “autobiography with father” to Hoffman on 15th Street. It was past 5, and the receptionist had left. Hoffman was sitting at his desk in a cramped office, with his feet on the desk. I stood in the open door.
He told me to hand him my work, and he began to read it right on the spot. He would read a paragraph, comment on the emotional tone, and then try to make some connection between the specific circumstances I’d described and what he called the negative emotional patterns and character traits that I’d adopted from my father in an attempt to bargain for his love.
Hoffman read through to an incident I wrote about my father resetting the stone wall at the back of our lot. As Dad was lifting stones into a wheelbarrow, he uncovered the nest of a woodchuck who’d built her nest in a cranny between the rocks. As she was ferociously defending her cubs, my father killed her and her cubs with his shovel. As I remembered it, he began to beat her viciously. Her screams were chilling.
Hoffman began by complimenting the emotional tone of my writing. But then he began to raise his voice. He said that obviously my Dad was a homosexual, and then, “You’re also gay too, aren’t you?” I countered with a question about how he could deduce that my dad was gay based on his bludgeoning a woodchuck? He just repeated “You’re gay.” His voice became louder and louder. Now he was almost screaming—obviously my father was a sadist. What? Then he repeated his question: “You’re gay? Don’t play games with me. I know these things.” I admitted that of course I had gay feelings, but I was unsure if I was gay. By now he was shouting loudly: “Don’t play games with me.” I had heard that Hoffman often often attacked clients—he claimed that he was breaking us down in order to build us up—but I could barely believe it.
I was in nearly complete denial about my homosexuality, but Dad was not gay. I actually think that the idea of same sex relationship never once crossed his mind in his entire life. I am also certain that Hoffman’s deductions from what I related in my writing were entirely projections and his own pathology. Other things that he said or implied were entirely off base and not even worthy of the weirdest pop psychology. But because there was one note of truth in analysis, the whole thing became plausible, and I lost any possibility of a real relationship with my father for the next 30 years. In exchange I got the debilitating transference to Hoffman. I also remember that the 13 week process cost $300. The real cost was devastating.
This part of my therapy with Hoffman happened in March. He began stalking me in September. He raped me in late October or early November. When I described this incident to my therapist, his response was: when you stayed, he knew he had you. And he did.
By the first or second week of May we’d finished the Process. My parents had planned to come to California in late May and we would drive back east together. There was a kind of ritual for completing your emotional divorce from your parents—after you’d gotten your parents full attention, you just said “I love you,” and kissed them. My parents thought it very strange, but I always followed instructions as closely as possible.
However, the trip soon turned into a total nightmare. When I was staying at the Jesuit residence at Brophy Prep in Phoenix, my mother found the diary that I’d kept during the past year in Berkeley, and read it beginning to end. She always felt that she had complete authority in my life, so of course she was entitled to access my private life. And this was just confirmation that no matter how complete or thorough my personal work, I could not change my parents.
When I got in the car with them the next morning, my mother was cold and angry. She announced that we would be driving non-stop back to Connecticut where I would be put under the care of a competent therapist who’d straighten me out. My dad was completely silent. I was in shock.
The drive across country was almost unbearable, the interaction with both parents varying from loud anger with my mother, to complete disgust with my father’s silence. We arrived at their home, and I left to see my superiors in Boston. They supported me—after all, I was a 30 year old man, and had not hidden anything from them. But the situation was very uncomfortable. My already strained relationship with my parents entered what would become the new normal for the next 20 years—alternating icy communication interspersed with attempts to restore some civility. It would not change much until each of them approached death.
I have to be careful about the timeline here. I returned to California and the JSTB in early August, and with my religious superiors’ permission and encouragement, I took a leave of absence to pray about leaving the Society. I moved to a cottage on Alcatraz Avenue with fellow SAT member Hal Slate who was also gay. It was just two blocks away from the White Horse, the only gay bar in Berkeley, and I began the process of coming out.
We had completed the 13 week Process in mid May. In early September Hoffman began showing up at the White Horse. He’d show up around 9 o’clock, leaning awkwardly against the elbow bar and trying to look off into some distant corner of the universe.
He said that he just normally stopped by on his way home. But in reality he was just there to track my movements, and to make himself known—he later told me that he never went to gay bars because being recognized there might negatively affect his work. His behavior can only be described as stalking. It had been less than 4 months after I’d finished the FHPT when he nervously gave me his “private” phone number and asked if he could call me.
All this occurred at the beginning of the Fall semester at JSTB. I recall one conversation with Hoffman at the White Horse in particular which helps me date his pursuit of me. He mentioned almost in passing, and as I look back, perhaps as a way of excusing or justifying his behavior, that although the usual period for a therapist seeing a patient was 6 months after the professional relationship had ended, he thought that I had so completely and lovingly divorced myself from my parents, and that perhaps the usual 6 months could be compressed.
I also told him about my mother’s reading my diary and learning about the raw emotional side of the Process. He assured me half-heartedly that if I just kept loving them unconditionally, all would work out eventually. I believed him. I didn’t realize the depth of my transference—I had to believe him.
Finally, I agreed to go out to dinner with him. He thought it was a date. I thought it was dinner with a friend. I can’t in any way recreate the events or the conversation that ended with him returning to my apartment, and me finding myself naked in bed with a man I did not find at all attractive. But as with many sexual predators, Hoffman’s ability to read his victim, what he would describe as his “psychic powers,” lent themselves to skillful manipulation. And of course after working with me on an intimate level for almost a year, he had a real window into my psychology that was far more accurate than his psychic reading.
I will not go into any detail about the extremely awkward interaction, except to say that after a lot of “why don’t we try this?” and “do you like that?” he rolled me over and satisfied himself. Everytime I think about this, I ask myself why didn’t I say, “This isn’t working. Why don’t you put on your clothes and leave?” But I just kept my mouth shut and endured him trying to apologize for physically hurting me.
I made it very clear that there was never going to be another date, but of course we would remain friends. And so I was introduced to his circle of gay friends and his rather secretive network of successful gay men who worked in the predominately straight world, lived a middle-class life style, and tried to pass as straight. There were dinner parties and seats at the opera, and lots of campy talk. Looking back I was pretty uncomfortable with the whole scene, though I did like some of his friends, and some not at all. Still, as a member of a minority, the unstated rule is that you accept everyone.
I did not like some of the sexual banter, or, as happened several times, being passed around as the new kid in town, and expected to sleep with his friends. Of course you did it if you were not some kind of prude, and as Hoffman loved to point out, my mother was a puritanical prude, so just stop imitating her.
Hoffmann and I continued to see one another very occasionally for the rest of his life. I’d have to call it a strained “on again off again” friendship. When he came back from Brazil just after he completed the sale of his “intellectual property” to the new US owners, and was diagnosed with liver cancer, I stepped up and offered to be his live-in caregiver. So I both saw him in his last few months of life and did some small service in helping him repair several friendships that were important to him. But I didn’t stay until the end.
Finally last May I was just tired of telling myself that it was all OK, just a sexual relationship in early gay life that didn’t work, and I should just get over it. Hoffman was a man with whom I’d entrusted my emotional well-being during an extremely difficult period, and he betrayed that trust. The scars of that betrayal have been deep and long lasting. I can only imagine what it might have been like to deal with coming out in the hands of an ethical therapist, but I can count the real cost of dealing with an unethical and selfish one: thousands of dollars in therapy, numberless hours in 12 recovery meetings, the inability to feel any real emotional connection without drugs or alcohol, the pain of feeling that I could never measure up to a satisfying real relationship with another man.
And I’m calling this #gaymetoo because there are still numerous incidents of older gay men taking advantage of younger, vulnerable men. Is this a result of the repression and unhappiness that many gay men, and I presume lesbians and bisexuals too, of my generation experienced, or will this exploitation always be with us? Looking at the #metoo movement, there seems to be evidence that power, money, position, and religion are fertile breeding grounds for sexual exploitation and manipulation.
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