Before Frank Farrelly passed in 2013, he was very clear about his wishes for the future of his work and instructed his son Tim Farrelly to send me his life’s archive for safe keeping.
Firstly, he was quite clear that he didn’t want any certifications for his classic Provocative Therapy work and lamented those trying to take his work down this route, especially those in Europe wanting exams for Provocative Therapy. Fortunately we filmed his comments during one of the many training events over the years, which you can see here
He was also keen that his work continued to be promoted outside a small group of European countries and we spoke many times about the need to reach a wider audience. Prior to meeting Frank in 2004, his hosts although well intentioned, had spectacularly failed to bring Provocative Therapy to the audience it truly deserved.
To my total amazement, there was a major lack of good information in terms of video and audio and none of those hosting him had assisted in ensuring that his main site was even up to date. In short, it was a total mess. When he passed for a short while the original Provocativetherapy.com domain had expired and we possibly had a nightmare scenario of not being able to renew it.
Digitizing the archive
The Frank Farrelly archive is quite extensive and includes a huge number of recordings on audio and video, sometimes dating back to 1970s. Some of this is on reel to reel. Digitizing this material takes a great deal of time and financial investment, but we have made a start. I’ve been surprised that outside students I work with, nobody to date in eight years has asked about any of this material. The co creators of NLP both greatly admired Frank’s work, but commented on the lamentable marketing to date.
Protecting “the spirit” of Frank’s work
Inevitably some people have tried to tag the term “provocative” to other work to attract attention, having never trained with Frank or studied his work. This is of course very fashionable in NLP circles where there is a tendency to try and own everything and such attempts usually fail as they are mostly daft. Frank was unimpressed with those he met in the world of NLP and especially John Grinder and Richard Bandler who even tried to pass off some of Frank’s client cases as their own. Its very clear to me that neither had the vaguest idea about Frank’s work and their student’s are in my opinion equally clueless.
Frank was never interested in status, titles and formalized institutes and his primary focus was on helping people who needed assistance. He was fierce in defending the spirit of his work and didn’t suffer fools. I’m honored to be maintaining that tradition, even though inevitably it results in all manner of tantrums who some folks!
Provocative trainings in India, Japan, USA, Europe
Frank was keen to promote provocative trainings globally and to date I have done regular trainings across the globe. The first Indian training was in 2011 in southern India with Andy Austin and then I did numerous trainings in Bangalore.
I also co trained with Andy in Goa and then when covid hit did a 9 month online training for India.
Japan also remains a great place for provocative trainings and this year will see the 19th training there