Are H.O.P.E. Groups “therapy” groups?

Are H.O.P.E. Groups therapy groups? This is a question that has come up in various ways over time, and my answer has always been, “Not in the conventional ways of looking at ‘therapy,’ which implies the treatment of a disease condition by a professional. We consider it important to know that the ancient Greco-Roman meaning of ‘therapy’ is ‘healing’ or ‘curing’. H.O.P.E. Groups are not “focus groups” either, because they are confidential and keep no records that could be used as “data” for research (unless professionals conduct them for the study of their effectiveness; in these cases we require the research group to be professional and transparent as regards its purpose, and to apply for our approval of the study.) H.O.P.E. Groups are, quite simply, “Attitudinal Healing” supportive groups.

Though I am a physician by call and a surgeon-professional by training, I was not given to reading texts on psychology during my professional career. However, I was introduced to the work of the entrepreneur, Earl Nightingale, who had been a lifelong student of what he called, “the essence of success”. (Though Earl earned quite a few honorary degrees in his lifetime, his formal education ended when he graduated from high school, by which time he had been studying success since he was 12 years old, prompted by his father abandoning the family in the depths of the Great Depression.) Out of this he developed a lifelong habit of reading books about success and/or by successful people that led him to conclude that “success is the progressive realization of a ‘worthy ideal'” which, to me, is psychology in its finest sense: the study of the soul.

Earl went on to explain that every one of us is born with a worthy ideal and that gift would commonly get threatened by people who could not bring themselves to accept it. The threat could lead to many different kinds of behaviors in an individual’s own family, school, circle of friends, or church. Loving behaviors accepted the worthy ideal and nurtured it. Attacking, hateful, intolerant behaviors would lead to avoidance or attack on the part of the individual that inevitably would result in a degree of repression of the ideal that would distort its true nature. Earl maintained that his studies showed him that the healthiest thing one could do for self and others would be to recall that worthy ideal and commit oneself to serving it. Does this not imply that such a practice could be “therapy”? But could we call it that if it came from a person who had no graduate education in his background? Of course we could, in my opinion.

As my medical school taught me that my primary responsibility to my patients was to “help them get on with their lives,” and Earl shared Teilhard de Chardin’s belief that “we are spiritual beings immersed in the human condition,” I was led to the four questions that comprise the essence of any H.O.P.E. Group meeting: Who are you? Why are you here? How are you going to get what you came for? What are you going to do with it when you have it? I do not recall exactly how those four questions came to me… and somehow they did and my patients who explored them were grateful for them. I had an ability to guide their exploration which almost always led to the individual finding the worthy ideal that they had been born with and had failed to serve.

I have been shown the healing power in those questions. I know that that power lies in its compassionate emphasis on life. I have been shown that they have therapeutic effectiveness, which pleases me greatly as a physician…. Because they came to me through my relationship with a fine human being who never got beyond high school in his education, I can state with great emphasis that though these questions are therapeutic, they are not in the exclusive domain of the therapeutic professions. Because they are to be found in the “public domain,” I offer them to the world through H.O.P.E. – Healing of Persons Exceptional.