hypnoben wrote:

Whatever gets proven in the court case, the media scare is going to feed right into the fears a lot of folks have about hypnosis being manipulative.

One of the only positives to come out of this story.

Interesting idea of positivity.

tomvizzini wrote:

I saw him hurt a lot of people. 10 years ago I tried to warn people. Now a 13 year old girl is raped because no one believed me at the time.

I am not enjoying it. I am sick over it. Maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe I should not have given up. Maybe I should have done something differently. If I had maybe a 13 year old child would not have been raped.

I knew this guy on a personal level. I saw what he was like and what he did to people.

Yeah I have a history... and it disgusts me.

So how did this guy 'hurt' people then, just out of interest? Are we talking manipulative hypnotic stuff or random bludgeonings with a mace?

joseph_kao wrote:

Wow.

I don't want to get sucked into the "Shock! Horror! NLP Scandal!" bullshit - these are absolutely unproved charges as yet. Perhaps they're true, perhaps not, but Carmine Baffa's an enigmatic individual, and I'm afraid to say these charges make me even more curious.

Joseph.

Curious? Not quite my perspective. I find this, if true, a complete and utter disgrace. NLP has nothing to do with this man's choices and it's unfortunate from what I've read that their correlating the two.

tomvizzini wrote:

I saw him hurt a lot of people. 10 years ago I tried to warn people. Now a 13 year old girl is raped because no one believed me at the time.

I am not enjoying it. I am sick over it. Maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe I should not have given up. Maybe I should have done something differently. If I had maybe a 13 year old child would not have been raped.

I knew this guy on a personal level. I saw what he was like and what he did to people.

Yeah I have a history... and it disgusts me.

*assuming accusations are true*

A 13 year old girl was not raped because people didn't believe you. She was raped because this man decided to. Maybe this, maybe that, what's important is that you did something.

If anybody has the court documents please post.

nuneztt wrote:

Curious? Not quite my perspective. I find this, if true, a complete and utter disgrace. NLP has nothing to do with this man's choices and it's unfortunate from what I've read that their correlating the two.

Hi Anthony,

If the charges are true, it’s an appalling breach of trust. It’s also a breach of trust that could occur in many other healing professions, so in that sense it’s not unique to NLP.

What I’m curious about is Baffa himself. Whether he is talented, a fraud, or somewhere in between. Especially after reading his articles and the reviews of his seminars. I’m also curious about whether he really has used NLP to free himself from all negative emotions including guilt (as he claims on one of the video clips). I’m curious about the ecology of that, and the impact of having utter and absolute control over your state. And I was curious about all of that before these charges.

The charges just made me wonder even more – who the hell is this man really? I get that with several NLP trainers, in a way that I don’t with the majority of people I meet in everyday life.

I also think NLP works fantastically by the way. There are people whose difficulties I’ve been able to resolve in the space of one session, that without knowledge of, say, submodalities, I wouldn’t have been able to help so elegantly and rapidly. I owe a lot to Richard Bandler and John Grinder for that. But there are some rather weird people involved in it/ drawn to it. And whether the charges are true or not, Baffa has struck me as one of those odd enigmas, from what little I know of him.

My intent in posting was to invite anyone who knew more to enrich our knowledge of him. To what extent does he seem to be talented/untalented? What experiences do people have of him as a person?

Yes, the charges are awful. No, such abuses of power are not unique to NLP. But if you read Baffa’s articles, the reviews, watch the video clips, look on usenet, I personally find there is a bit of a mystery identifying what kind of a person he really is. And for me, the charges just add to that sense of bizarreness.

Regards,

Joseph.

Joseph,

I can tell you from my own personal experience that really creative people tend to have very similarly 'unusual' personality profiles. Meet enough theoretical physicists or computer scientists and I hallucinate you'll see what I mean.

And of course, you get similar charges leveled against people doing all sorts of therapeutic work and this case, should it prove to be true, is the first such case that comes to mind in the context of NLP.

Another category of professional life where these sorts of behaviours pop up on a pretty regular basis is amongst dentists and doctors, particularly dentists taking advantage of unconscious female clients.

I don't know if medicine or dentistry can be said to have a black eye because of a very few people abusing their positions, but I can say that these professions have suggested guidelines for how professionals and their clients should interact to avoid situations like these.

Personally, when dealing with changework clients that might have problems with boundaries, I will either refuse the work or have the sessions monitored by someone else or recorded. If I find a potential changework client to be very attractive, I might also refuse the work. Those are useful guidelines for me, at least.

As for Carmine, I've got no personal experience of him, although I d know that he (and his work) drew very different responses from people who knew and studied with him, so I'd have to say I might be as puzled as you are, Joseph.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Another category of professional life where these sorts of behaviours pop up on a pretty regular basis is amongst dentists and doctors, particularly dentists taking advantage of unconscious female clients. Michael

I certainly found my rather large-busted dentist a little too close for comfort when examining my teeth pushing her large and very attractive figure into my upper body as she leaned over my chest to drill into my teeth...

Jon wrote:

I certainly found my rather large-busted dentist a little too close for comfort when examining my teeth pushing her large and very attractive figure into my upper body as she leaned over my chest to drill into my teeth...

How terrible for you...!

Well it was, can you imagine the stress? You don't expect these kinds of things to 'pop up' in a dentistry setting...

Nigel Adams wrote:

How terrible for you...!

Does anyone know with whom Carmine did his NLP training? I had heard he trained in Hypnosis with Jerry Kein (who has nothing nice to say about him) but I had heard he was not entirely honest about being an NLP Trainer. Is this true?
Maybe Tom knows more about this?

Since the news of his arrest, it has come to my attention that there are a LOT of folks needing to "recover" from Carmine. I have started a Google Group for people to discuss their experiences with Carmine: Google Groups

This is a closed group, only those who've been involved with Carmine directly are eligible to join. It's not for cops or investigators, not for folks just following the soap opera, but for people who knew him who need to talk about it.

I know a lot of the victims myself. If I don't know you, you'll have to email me and explain who you are, how you knew Carmine, and why you want to join. Anyone who wants to join should send email to jpatti@ccil.org

Please spread the word that this group exists to any victims of Carmine that you know.

Terry asked who Carmine trained with. I would also like to know. Also, was Carmine affiliated with any NLP organization?

Hi Jorge,

microzyma wrote:

Terry asked who Carmine trained with. I would also like to know.

Out of curiosity, what do you think knowing who he trained with tell you?

Just curious!

Be Well,

Michael Perez

map002 wrote:

Hi Jorge,

Out of curiosity, what do you think knowing who he trained with tell you?

Just curious!

Be Well,

Michael Perez

I'm curious too.

Hi Jorge,

So you really have no other reason for asking who trained him other than a desire to simply to know who trained him and with no conscious intention to derive any further meaning or relevance from that? Fascinating! That's a new one on me!

I guess that's the joy of human beings, they do things for all sorts of reasons and not all of them are like something I've ever encountered before!

Thanks for the answer and for the learning experience!

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Knowing who he trained with may not come hand in hand with any blame or anything negative, I think that is what being assumed here. Any news voyeurs will in time get to know where this guy spent his summer holidays, what websites he looked at etc but this also is to satisfy a curiosity and help individuals piece together a profile in their heads about the story. Personally I couldnt care and the bloke is probably loving the fact he is getting so much media attention and time in conversations like this.

Can I point out another observation from this thread. There is an implication of innapropriate sexual undertones in some professions such doctors, dentists etc etc among certain professionals. Well, the customers and clients can be equally guilty of such behaviour. I wonder if the dentist mentioned above gets frustrated that due to her physique she is not taken as seriously or professionally as she hoped. It can be an awful situation for many public service workers, bar workers, gym workers and many other professions whese the public 'get off' on the contact the worker is forced in to in their quest to be good at their job.

Matt

Hi Matt,

She was a very good dentist... Although I know you didn't imply *I* was 'getting off' on the close contact, but I was genuinely uncomfortable at the time, though joking on thread about the 'poping up'...

Regards,
Jon

Hi Matt,

Since I'm the one who brought up at least one of the subjects you mentioned, I thought I might comment on the context in which I see them as having been brought up in this thread.

To be clear, I brought up similar charges in the context of medicine and dentistry to point out that what a very, very few practitioners of those two disciplines have done does not necessarily say anything about the practice of medicine or dentistry in general nor does it necessarily say anything about the hundreds of thousands of people who have performed those vital services over hundreds and thousands of years.

And with regard to the assumptions implicit in asking who trained who, the first question was asked in the context of the possibility of Carmine never having taken an NLP training. Given that it only costs a few thousand quid and as little as three weeks time to do a Prac, Master Prac and Trainer's training, I'd be astonished if he'd not bothered to jump those exceedingly low hurdles. But who knows?

And of course, as far as I've been able to ascertain, Jorge's question was asked from what seems to be a sort of existential 'knowledge for knowledge's sake' position with no intention with regard to application towards further constructive thought.

So I'm not sure that anyone in the thread this far has posed the idea that someone's NLP trainer predisposed them to committing rape, statutory or otherwise, when using NLP in a therapeutic context.

If someone wants to make that claim they certainly can, but I imagine they'd have a hard time substantiating it.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Thanks Michael and Jon,

Matt