TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/112591/1125520.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.0 KB | 193 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 82

Father of The Child Within


JOHN BRADSHAW, the leading guru on the self-help circuit, claims
that we must all come to grips with our unhappy childhoods

By EMILY MITCHELL -- With reporting by Sophfronia Scott Gregory/
New York and Dick Woodbury/Houston


    Two mythic figures forever identified with the American
landscape are the itinerant evangelist and the salesman on the
road. Right now, John Bradshaw, 58, is both. It is a Sunday
afternoon, and for the second day he stands before an enthralled
crowd at Manhattan's main convention center. All of us, he tells
them, had traumatic childhoods and from them spring the
unresolved anxieties of adulthood. He plays the theme in
masterly fashion: the faithful are spellbound.

    Bradshaw is the biggest draw and most revered name on
America's insatiable pop-psychology circuit. For millions of
people who are recovering from every imaginable -- and sometimes
unimaginable -- addiction, he is the guru of the moment, the
supersalesman of self-help. His name is invoked in meetings of
12-step groups that range from Molesters Anonymous to
Overachievers Anonymous. His three books -- including the 1990
Homecoming -- have sold 2.5 million copies since 1988, and
audiotape versions consistently top best-selling advice-cassette
lists. A new book, tentatively titled Creating Love, is due in
the fall of 1992. This year he has scheduled more than 30
weekend workshops; some have drawn as many as 7,000 people
paying up to $180 apiece. Homecoming, a 10-hour 1990-91 PBS
series drawn from material in his book, brought in $4 million
during pledge drives.

    In a resonant Texas twang, Bradshaw drawls out the
conditions that cause anguish in thousands of people.
"Isolation. Aloneness. Abandonment. Skin hunger." Each, he says,
is a feeling of deprivation derived from our childhood that was
never resolved and sets us up to become addicts -- just as he
was. And though we are grownups, we are still walking around
with that wounded little kid hiding inside, wailing its needs.
But wait, he adds, there's hope. By focusing personal
consciousness on the frightened inner child -- as infant,
toddler and adolescent -- we can all begin the process of
recovery. "The goal of this work is to get you to come to peace
with the past and finish it," he tells the crowd in Manhattan's
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Dr. Freud meets the New Age.

    Bradshaw's message is plumbed from the depths of his own
troubled and lonely childhood, which was spent being shuttled
between relatives in Houston. During his lectures, he spins out
his story -- always with a smile -- recounting Southern-gothic
tales of abuse, alcoholism and incest as examples of
dysfunctional family behavior. There is Bradshaw's mother Norma,
now 77, "a really good woman," he says, who became pregnant at
17 and married an alcoholic who abandoned her and their three
children when Bradshaw, the middle child, was 10. She revered
her own workaholic father as a saint, though Bradshaw is
convinced that his grandfather violated his mother. Then there
is his maternal grandmother, who Bradshaw believes was
"seriously incested" and who stayed in bed for 50 years. Her
contempt for men was overpowering to young John. "Men think with
their penises," he heard her say when he was six -- contempt
that he now says was a form of sexual abuse.

    Act nice, Bradshaw was always told; act nice. He excelled
in school; Mama's prized boy eventually entered a Basilian
seminary in Canada and studied for degrees in theology and
philosophy from the University of Toronto. For nine celibate
years there, he says, "I married the Holy Mother." He left the
order a day before his class was to be ordained. By that time,
he was a compulsive drinker. Back in Houston, at age 30 and
ill-prepared for life -- he had $400 and did not even know how
to drive a car -- he taught high school until he was fired. He
began going to Alcoholics Anonymous and working as a
pharmaceutical salesman. Soon he was swapping drug samples with
guys from other drug companies and was "pilled to the gills, but
going to A.A. meetings." That job and others ended; the drinking
came back and got worse. Two weeks before Christmas 1965, he
landed in the Austin state hospital with the DTs. By Christmas
Day he was back in A.A. "with both feet, and it saved my life."

    It also launched his career. His talks at A.A. meetings
led to speaking engagements elsewhere; soon people were coming
to him for advice and counseling. He got two more degrees -- in
psychology and religion -- at Rice University, and he set up
shop as a counselor on stress management and leadership
training, working with individuals and corporations. Looking
back now, he thinks he was ineffective because "I was too nice.
To be good at it, you've got to be willing to confront the
living hell out of people." He began lecturing in Houston
churches and synagogues, became a local celebrity and, after he
was featured in a 1984 PBS series on the family, won a national
reputation.

    All this has given Bradshaw what he calls "a nice income
that I'd never dreamed of having." He is redoing the
Georgian-style home in an elegant Houston neighborhood that he
bought from his wife Nancy after their divorce 2 1/2 years ago,
filling it with antiques, Indian artifacts and a collection of
wizard figurines; his inner child, he says, is "fascinated by
wizards." Shopping has become something of an obsession, and his
tastes run to the opulent: his bedroom has purple wallpaper and
a sleigh bed draped with a purple sari. He now has a second
home: a Swiss-style chalet on a private 25-acre lake in Montana.

    Prosperity has its price: Bradshaw has critics as well as
devotees. Old-guard A.A. members are appalled by the way he
flouts its tradition of anonymity, using his experiences as a
recovering alcoholic as a launching pad for his views. Others
raise questions about how lasting and effective his brand of
"quick fix" self-help can be, especially for people who may be
seriously troubled by long-term emotional problems. Some
psychotherapists consider Bradshaw's approach to self-improvement
overly simplistic and wonder whether his emphasis on early-
childhood experiences gives people a convenient excuse to avoid
responsibility for their adult failures. Says Dr. Gerald Goodman,
an associate professor of psychology at UCLA: "The way it sounds,
if only we had got more hugs in our infancy, we'd be fine."

    None of this bothers the thousands who attend Bradshaw's
workshops. They are there, hankies in hand, for an orchestrated,
emotion-laden family reunion with their inner selves. The
dramatic set piece is an exercise that Bradshaw has recently
started to call a collective grief ritual. "Now if any of you
have a stuffed animal, you may want to hold it," he advises
listeners just before the lights in the auditorium dim and a
schmaltzy recording of Sibelius' Going Home begins its familiar
strains. Many of his followers -- casually dressed, of all ages
-- clutch teddy bears or plush puppies as Bradshaw's hypnotic
voice rises above the music, instructing them to close their
eyes and return to their childhood family home. "Go back there
now," he intones, "and see yourself as the little child you once
were." Take the child in your arms, he advises, and start
walking away, looking back and saying goodbye to parents or
siblings. "Tell the child, I'm going to take care of you. I'm
going to be your champion." A wall of sound -- of sobbing and
weeping -- usually rises in the auditorium.

    An admitted ham, Bradshaw has a high-octane style that is
too big for the TV screen. On stage he is commanding and works
a room like a pro. Cordless mike in hand, he is a stand-up
psychologist, slinging one-liners or deepening his voice to
repeat self-pitying monologues from his drinking days: "There's
nothing wrong with me. I'm a philosopher. I see the woundedness
of life."

    Bradshaw is a family tell-all in the public arena --
you're only as sick as your secrets is the rule -- but is
reticent in private. Sipping a diet soda in a hotel room a few
hours after the arduous Manhattan workshop, he acknowledges that
his omnipresent smile sometimes hides more desperate feelings.
His father's death at 62 haunts him ("That's just four years
from now in my own life"), and he has lingering regrets about
himself as a young father. He was married in 1969; he and
ex-wife Nancy had a son and he helped raise her two children by
another marriage. But during those years, Bradshaw says, he was
a "rage-aholic," screaming and pounding the table over trivial
matters and trying to make it up afterward. He and Nancy remain
friends -- she runs his tape-cassette business -- but their
marriage was troubled from the start. "My nonphysical incest put
a distance about sexuality in my life," he believes. "You just
lose desire." He now lives alone.

    Being a father figure for millions is a lonely business.
Last year all but six of Bradshaw's weekends were spent on the
road. He plays golf with Houston cronies when he can and tries
to schedule some seminars in Las Vegas and Reno so he can play
the slot machines: he craves the excitement, not the winnings.
For nine years he has been involved with a small men's support
group in Houston, where he can unburden himself for his own
sake, not that of others. "I need a place where I can be real,"
he says, but adds, "Not that I'm not real. I try to be."

    At the conclusion of a workshop, when Bradshaw's interior
odyssey has come to an end, he sends the crowd back out into the
world on a tide of goodwill. The audience stands and sways.
Everyone sings a repeated refrain, "We're going home -- nothing
can stop us now." The cheers and applause build, and from
somewhere in the crowd, a loud voice calls out, "We love you,
John Bradshaw!" The preacher-salesman smiles. His blue eyes
light up for a moment, his inner child stirs, and he tells them,
"Little John likes that."