When Frank Farrelly passed in 2013, we had already talked on a regular basis about his specific wishes to protect his legacy. We would speak over the phone every week, but our main discussions on a 1 – 1 basis were when he stayed at my house during European trainings. That was always at least for 2 and sometimes 3 weeks. This meant we had literally hundreds of hours to discuss his work and wishes.
He instructed his son Tim Farrelly to pass over his entire archive of work for safe keeping. This means protecting his legacy and ensuring his work is taught in an ethical manner. He used to call me “The Can do kid” noting that I could make things happen in the real world. I was amazed that when I met him in 2004, there was very little material available to the wider world, so we set out to change that.
Any “Provocative Therapy certification” is bogus
Frank was clear that he specifically did not want his work to be certified in any manner. I was lucky enough to have his wishes captured on video here. If you see any company, foundation or institute offering “Provocative Therapy certifications” then these are against Frank’s specific wishes. I’ve removed companies from this site who have attempted to ignore his express views on this matter.
Thank goodness we had the presence of mind to get this message recorded. A number of characters in recent years have attempted to put into action EXACTLY WHAT FRANK DID NOT WANT. I’ve literally had to threaten naming and shaming these characters in order to protect Frank’s wishes.
One would hope that good manners would ensue, but unfortunately, many such characters do not have the manners or professionalism to respect Frank’s wishes. One European country has been repeatedly warned about this attempt to scam the public. One European country decided to sell merch with Frank’s image without permission, and run Provocative therapy” certifications. When challenged they have now attemped to reword their business as “provocative style” as a get around from misrepresenting Frank’s work. This is one of the many reasons why I no longer accpet any invitations to be hosted in that country.
I read the book, so I’ve decide that now I’m a trainer
Amazingly, some characters seem to believe that once they have read Frank’s original book and seen a few videos online, they can be a trainer. Its a whole new level of crazy and one of the excuses is that becuase there are no certifications in Frank’s work, ANYONE can be a trainer. This is little more than scamming the public and this behaviour will always be called out.
None of these characters are interested in actually doing any form of learning, as that requires an actual investment of time and money. This is extremely insulting to Frank, and such individuals usually have a history of stealing other people’s work. When challenged, the responses are always “I didn’t know…” They also become extremely aggressive when put on the spot, and the key is to gather material to name and shame and/or engage in legal action.
STOP PRESS
The Provocative community has been alerted to two characters in Russia pirating and promoting an unauthorised poor translation of Frank’s book. The main culprit (when not posing online with machine guns) has decided he is able to teach Provocative Therapy online. This is not the only approach he is scamming the public with along with his girlfriend & co trainer who describes herself as “a psychologist”
Other international trainers are now aware this duo and their actions.
Provocative Therapy is not just a laughing matter, but so much more…
Another misconception about Frank’s work is that its all about humour. Yes, humour may result from client sessions, but that’s very different to framing Frank’s work around comedy and or humour. Frank used to roll his eyes at such suggestions and was very clear about this distinction. One training company wanted to show the movie “Patch Adams” during a training and Frank shut that down straight away. Humour arises in the approach, BUT its not the only ingredient and a common mistake is to dumb down this approach to simply being “comedic”
No, its not “reverse psychology!”
Another pet hate of Frank was those characters who kept refering to his work as “reverse psychology” This is yet another attempt to dumb down the multi layered aspect of Provocative Therapy. We had many conversations about this and this kind of simplification drove Frank crazy. Frank presented his work to many NLP groups and those attendees seemed to want to turn Frank’s multi layered approach into a simple tick box exercise.
Shameless status seekers and the need for quality control
Frank of course originally trained with Carl Rogers and commented on how there were endless power struggles and status seeking behaviours from those who followed Carl’s work. He was very unimpressed with the idea of a small group of people deciding who could or couldn’t work professionally with clients. Provocative Therapy remains a radical conversational approach that with Frank’s blessing inspired the Provocative Change Works model.
In recent years there are a few characters who have attempted to hijack Frank’s legacy in all manner of ways without any proper respect for his work. You can usually spot these shameless status seekers by the language used in copy. Everything is framed with superlatives including terms like “international” “foundation” and other such terms. A closer look shows very little substance and that its the same mutual congradulatary group in action which is mostly 90% all from one non English speaking small country. Frank was never impressed by such behaviour.
The use of the term “Provocative”
Frank explored a number of terms before deciding to use the term “Provocative” for his therapy. I created “Provocative Change Works” as a model with his blessing as a different more expanded model. Of course neither Frank or I “own” the term “provocative” but will protect its usage in our work.
The term |provocative” is used in everyday language in all manner of contexts, so nobody can claim its usage conversationally as “a provocative approach”, “style”, “medium” or, “message” as well as any other such terms. All of these are too general in meaning to be protected in any specific manner. However “Provocative Therapy” is specifically Frank Farrelly’s work and “Provocative Change Works” is my own model, taught globally.
There will always of course be some characters that simply bolt the term onto their own brand in an effort to gain status by association, without doing any actual work. These initiatives don’t usually reach a wider audience and mostly disappear over time.
Those NLP characters who can’t help themselves…
There is a history of NLP characters making endless fabrications about associations with Frank, one even suggesting “working with Frank Farrelly over an extended period”
The reality is this same character within 30 minutes of first meeting Frank pissed him off to such a degree that he wanted her banned from his training the following day! After that incident the same person had little or not contact with Frank in any capacity. This is of course another instance of trying to boost personal status for commercial gain in attempting to impress students. I’m astonished at this level of stupidity and deception and have no time for such nonsense.
One of the co creators of NLP even repeatedly tried to claim Frank’s own clinical cases as their own including the “Hairy Mary” case. Frank’s student Rusty Palmer called this NLPer out and Frank commented
“Don’t they have any of their own fucking cases to talk about?” There are more examples of inept NLP behaviour and this may make for a full article in due course. The core skills in NLP are very useful, but many of those presenting and teaching the model have very poor manners and exist often (not always) simply to sell courses and products in a franchise style manner.
Provocative Therapy of course predates NLP and Frank started creating this approach a decade before the first NLP book was published. The Farrelly archive contains a wealth of material dating back five plus decades.
Conclusion
I take the protection of Frank’s work very seriously and have put in place a number of measures to ensure that Provocative Therapy is communicated in an ethical manner and not dumbed down. The enthusiasm from some characters to position themselves as authorities for provocative therapy certifications, is at times a real pain. I had to explain to one company (set up after Frank’s passing) that selling merch with Frank’s picture without permission from his estate was very poor manners. I truly have no words…
A good clue to see authentic Provocative Therapy trainings is to check is the company or trainers are referenced on this official and original site. If there is no mention, link or reference, then you can make your own mind up about what is actually going on…
Nick Kemp
Frank Farrelly approved Provocative Therapy Trainer & Creator of PCW model
The blacklist for individuals and companies in respect to Provocative Therapy can be found here