When I first met Frank Farrelly almost two decades ago, I was amazed at the level of skill he demonstrated and even more amazed that Frank’s work was not more available.
Yes, there were some trainings in Germany and other parts of Europe, but many of these had limitations in numbers and aside from the original book “Provocative Therapy”, there was almost no information on Frank’s work. Decades later, I now have Frank’s entire archive of material and as Frank’s assistant used to say “Frank never threw away anything!”
Those who hosted Frank never banded together to provide a more global platform for Provocative Therapy and the approach became like a secret club. Certainly this was not Frank’s wish as in the years that I knew him, he was really interested in reaching a wider audience. He left me his life’s work as he used to call me “The Can Do Kid” knowing I could get stuff done! In 2004 Frank’s original website was hopelessly out of date and all the training dates (there were not many of them) were a year out of date. Aside from the original book, I could only find one very poorly recorded cassette of the co creators of NLP talking about Frank which was (I’m being polite here) a really dumbed down set of observations which clearly demonstrated that they had no idea what he was doing. That said, they did rate Frank’s skills and of course were caught regularly trying to pass off Frank’s actual case studies as their own including “Hairy Mary” Frank wonderfully commented “Don’t you have any actual clients of your own to talk about?”
Developing an online presence and getting the word out
The original Provocative Therapy website had minimal information and Frank had no idea how to update it. When he passed away for a brief period we couldn’t even renew the domain name. Fortunately this was sorted and I started to record our conversations and all his workshops. The challenge with the approach is that there are so many layers that the average personal change enthusiast will have no idea what is going on. NLP folk in particular seemed mostly (not always) totally unable to grasp the core elements and to appreciate that with Provocative Therapy we are not simply rolling out a series of techniques.
Now in 2021 I am making a lot of the Farrelly archive available to those wanting to study his work and the rolling one year programme gives access to some classic unreleased material. All of this requires investment of time and money and I was amazed how little of this had been done during Frank’s lifetime. Yes, there were enthusiasts of his work but in the UK the usual chant (excuse) was “We’re not really very good at organization” Worse still, some of what was presented as “provocative work” was dreadful in the extreme, either being totally cerebral and/or being so dumbed down that it was unrecognisable.
Enter “Provocative Change Works”
Frank encouraged me to expand his original approach and over the last fifteen years I have developed “Provocative Change Works” which includes everything found in classic Provocative Therapy, but adds a host of new dimensions. This means “the art of provocation” is now available globally to a much wider audience in Europe, USA and Asia. I have great hosts globally to organise live events and I am also running 1 – 1 and live group sessions on a weekly and monthly basis.
I’m forever grateful for Frank’s help in creating PCW and I’m mindful of his enthusiasm in helping others. In a small way I’m doing my best to ensure that Provocative Therapy and his approach reaches as many people as possible across the globe.
