Eight days to confront your childhood: The Hoffman Method, extreme therapy with a cult following among the rich and famous

Oprah Winfrey described it as “10 years of therapy in one week.” Katy Perry claimed it saved her life after a severe depression. And Vogue Paris has hailed it as “one of the best wellness retreats for healing body and mind worldwide.” They’re referring to the Hoffman Method, an intensive personal development program that, according to its official website in the U.S., aims to “identify negative behaviors, moods, and ways of thinking that developed unconsciously and were conditioned in childhood.” Its detractors, however, see it as far from a gentle path to self-realization. For some, the eight-day retreat is more of a forced immersion in suffering than a fast track to transformation.

That wasn’t Rafael de Cárdenas’s perception. A year after completing the process, the New York-based creative director and designer shared his experience on social media after spending a week isolated with about 20 strangers in Petaluma, California. “I’m not always grateful or joyful now. But I can see the dark patterns that shaped me,” he wrote on Instagram, in a post where he describes feeling “raw, vulnerable, exposed.” In a video call with EL PAÍS, De Cárdenas explained that he didn’t come to the method because of a crisis or a major life break. “I wanted to live with more gratitude; I felt like I was always competing. What I didn’t know was that I was going to have to face myself, because in the end, the work that needs polishing is you.”

The Hoffman Institute defines its process as a transformation on four levels: emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical. The institute’s co-director in Spain, Luis Fernando Cámara, states that “there is no magic formula for healing” and insists that he cannot promise that a week-long retreat will change your life. “I don’t know what effect it will have on you, but 95% of our patients experience a change in their personal, romantic, or family relationships.” He explains that, through various techniques, such as Gestalt therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and psychoanalysis, participants revisit episodes from their childhood to identify patterns and try to modify them.

Eleanor Moran, a journalist for The Guardian, signed up for the Hoffman Method after a break-up, as she recounted in an article published in the British newspaper. Without knowing why, she kept falling into the same pattern of men and relationships. Moran discovered that her failed relationships had more to do with her childhood bond with her father than with heartbreak. “Over the course of that week I came to understand why I’d put my father on such a pedestal as a little girl, even though he’d been at best unreliable, and at worst downright dangerous.” After that week of “profound change,” she now describes herself as a more empathetic person, aware that “most of us have secret hurts that we’re trying to conceal.”

The tailor who wanted to make you happy

The Hoffman Method was founded in 1967 by Bob Hoffman, a former tailor with no formal training in psychology who, according to his own account, listened to his clients’ problems and tried to guide them. Over the nearly 60 years that the method has been in operation, it has gained thousands of followers, but also detractors. In 2006, the German magazine Stern warned that “there is a risk of retraumatization: the negative feelings become so intense that the affected person can no longer process them.” An article cited cases in Germany in the 1990s of some patients who “had to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals during or after the retreat due to delusions, severe depression, or other serious reactions.” In Spain, the psychology experts consulted, such as the Official College of Psychologists of Madrid, declined to comment on the process because they “have never been involved in the experience.”

From day one, patients must share their most intimate details and experiences with strangers and explicitly commit to not divulging what happens during that week. However, among the accounts shared by former participants, there are repeated mentions of unorthodox practices: hitting pillows with a baseball bat or tearing up phone books on days that begin at 7 a.m. For some, this intensity is part of the program; for others, it demonstrates that it is not a suitable process for everyone.

Despite being a kind of cult retreat, the Hoffman Method isn’t exactly a secret: it’s present in 15 countries, with more than 150,000 participants, according to figures from the institute. Its popularity has resurfaced with some regularity when celebrities — Orlando Bloom, Sienna Miller, and Gwyneth Paltrow, among others — have publicly stated that they’ve practiced it. In Spain, however, its reach is modest. The institute has been operating since 1996 and has around 2,000 participants. The reason, Luis Fernando Cámara argues, is its low visibility compared to other centers: “We haven’t been able to expand it or give it the publicity it deserves, unlike in the United States, where the population is more familiar with psychology and has more economic means.”

The high price is also a factor. In the United States, costs rise to as much as $8,000 depending on the dates and location. Back in 2005, American journalist Horacio Silva satirized the process in The New York Times Magazine, describing it as a whim of the fashion industry and the privileged. “The Hoffman Process is an eight-day self-analysis retreat at which devotees are encouraged to wear labels — not Prada or Gucci, but tags like ‘victim’ and ‘undeserving,’ based on how they perceived themselves as children.” For Silva, who didn’t undergo the therapy, it was something “diabolical”: “I would rather sit through Iceland Fashion Week than share intimacies with a bunch of strangers,” Silva said, in a display of anti-snobbish snobbery. Oprah Winfrey defined the Hoffman Method as “an exclusive therapeutic retreat for the rich and famous.” Those who can afford it try to resolve in a week what most people face their entire lives. For some, the pleasure lies as much in the possibility of healing as in paying for it.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition