All Kinds of WrongPiff's post brings up so many issues regarding Psychology of Vision and "Steps to Leadership": Their lack of respect for women, their use of blame and sick-shaming, the fact nothing is original in their concepts, and their willingness to always be a few years behind whatever New Age fad is a proven moneymaker as they follow that parade with their shovel in order to collect the material for their curriculum. As Piff says, this is "All Kinds of Wrong."
These people are not leaders, they are followers. It is not a spiritual movement, it is a for-profit corporation run as a personality cult. The leaders are not professionals in any field, except for perhaps the field of humbug-- they hide behind titles like "coach" or "facilitator" and attempt to jazz up their events by billing them as "congresses." In Europe Chuck Spezzano allows himself to be fraudulently marketed as a "psychologist" with a Ph.D. in "Clinical Psychology." They are not healers, they are parasites-- they appropriate sacred practices and beliefs from other cultures and microwave them into New Age junk food, they appropriate terms from science and attempt to pose as professionals, but mostly they appropriate large sums of money from vulnerable people.
Personal remarks will be made here, but we are talking about a cult of personality. Chuck and Lency Spezzano have made themselves their own brand and claim to be internationally renowned, apparently inseparable from their organization as outlined in the POV
Trainers Manual. So all talk of "character assassination" is now nullified as we provide honest criticism of their operation as a whole. They have set themselves up as major public figures and world leaders who exemplify their product. They are fair game as far as their choice to serve as examples of their own marketing goes. They are self-professed big fish but in a very tiny and shrinking pond.
The Spezzano/Ticehurst "Healing Metaphors" do appear to be particularly cruel to women. Here are some other examples to provide confirmation of the thesis posed by Piff:
Abortion, Still Birth or Miscarriage
Abortion and miscarriage refer to the termination of pregnancy before the fetus is viable. Stillbirth is the birth of a dead fetus. Any death of a fetus reflects our lost ‘selves’ that died in childhood. We are acting out or replaying the original situation, and most of the feelings of guilt, failure and pain stem from the original childhood trauma. As people had issues of abortion, stillbirth or miscarriage, they report many times at an intuitive level that the lost fetus is an old soul friend, angel or soul seeking learning or advancement by going through this experience. They do this for the purpose of helping us heal the old guilt surrounding loss of self, overwhelming pain, or finally, to recover the original selves that died. These dead selves that were created through trauma, remain with us but are deeply buried. This repression orients us in a self-destructive direction. As the trauma shows itself through present circumstances, we have an opportunity to heal the very root of the pain from the past.
Amenorrhoea
Amenorrhea is the absence of menstrual flow. There are times when this is normal, as in pregnancy and menopause. It can also occur in athletes when they are performing continuous, demanding physical exertion. However, when there is no natural explanation for it, amenorrhea typically means that we are using an exaggerated, compensating aspect of our masculine and rejecting our feminine as inadequate to deal with the situation. These judgments on our femininity may create problems with men. We may become angry or competitive and project the issues we have with our own femininity on our father, partner, brothers, co-workers and men in general. In our rebellion against the feminine we become manlike. The root of the issue revolves around our belief that we didn’t have our father’s love and acceptance. We feel as if we have to step into our exaggerated masculine self, or else face being too weak to protect ourselves, our children, or our creative projects. By accepting our mother and father equally, we bring our own masculine and feminine into balance and end the conflict, thereby releasing ourselves from the fear and overdrive that it has been resorting to in its attempt to reach a new level in our life. This symptom reflects a holding on to the past and being back in the dissociated masculine resisting the next phase of our life because of a lack of confidence.
Breasts
The breasts are the mammary glands and their function is to nourish the young. Breasts reflect issues of nurturing. Problems with our left breast, or mother-breast, indicate that weare called to nurture someone in relationship. They can also reflect feelings of not being nurtured by our mother, but our grievances are hiding the fact that we actually came to
nurture her. Underneath our needs and grievances we have hidden guilt that we didn’t save our mother or provide her with the nurturing that she needed. Yet, deeper still, awaits a soul level gift of nurturing that we have come to bring the world, for all women and especially for our mother.
Problems with our right breast, or father-breast, indicate we are called to nurture men around us. Problems with the right breast denote issues regarding lack of nurture from our father, yet it was us who has come to nurture him. This may also manifest itself as an issue with a husband, brother or men in general.
Fibrocystic Breast Disease
Fibrocystic breast disease is characterized by single or multiple benign tumors of the breast, showing that we have cut off an element of nurturing. While we push to move forward, we are holding on to something unresolved from the past. Part of our life’s purpose is nurturing those around us, but because we didn’t feel nurtured ourselves, we carry a grievance. This grievance-judgment hides our own guilt, which in turn hides our soul level gift of nurturing. Instead of embracing the act of true giving, we have either adopted a role, or we have withdrawn from the gift of nurturing altogether. This gift was meant to nurture the very parent we have a grievance with for not nurturing us. All of this is a conspiracy that has to do with giving nurturance. We see it as too big a challenge for us, because we perceive the need around us as too great. But, like any purpose, heaven does it through us; we don’t accomplish it alone. So we could receive heaven’s nurturing for those around us.
Mastitis
Mastitis is an inflammation of the mammary glands. It is a painful condition that is most common during lactation. Mastitis in our left breast indicates that we feel angry about having to nurture someone, because we felt we were not nurtured ourselves, especially by our mother. Mastitis in our right breast indicates we are angry about having to nurture men around us, or someone to do with our career; it can also reflect feelings of not being nurtured by our father.
Menstrual Cramps
Menstrual cramps result from the cramping of the uterus during menstruation. They point to a need for specialness, attention and love and are a form of self-attack for being a woman. Typically, we are caught in the vicious cycle of the specialness-sacrifice of being a woman. Specialness is counterfeit love and sacrifice is counterfeit giving, where we give out of roles without truly giving ourselves. Both specialness and sacrifice ‘contract us’ and stop us from being our full self as a woman.
Morning Sickness (chronic)
The characteristics of morning sickness are nausea and vomiting occurring during pregnancy. Chronic morning sickness means that we have a resistance to the changes we are going though physically and emotionally. We are making a call for love and help. There may be elements of neediness, specialness, emotional blackmail and attack. It may also show a lack of bonding with the baby because of separation and lost bonding with our own parents.
There is much more, but you get the idea. I strongly suspect that Ticehurst supplied the medical descriptions and Spezzano wrote the actual metaphor. These samples reveal a lot more about Chuck's sick attitude toward women than it does about the victims of these maladies.
Although Psychology of Vision (and Steps to Leadership) is chiefly populated by women, it is the men who are in charge. Chuck is the CEO of Spezzano and Associates Ltd., the corporation of which POV is a subsidiary. For years the POV executive "Steering Committee" comprised of the "Master Trainers" consisted of three men and three women (now, apparently, just two men and two women), representing a group that is usually about 80-90% female. I do not include POV golden child Francine Girard in this equation since her trainer status is unknown.
Chuck's lack of sensitivity toward women is reflected in the lewd and obscene jokes he uses in his presentations. He calls this sense of humor "bawdy" but there are other more direct words for it. I notice the only participants who speak favorably about the use of this technique are Asian males. The employment of dirty jokes is basically a form of aggression, juvenile as it is, designed to intimidate women. "What's the matter with you, can't you take a joke? Loosen up!" is basically the bullying game here along with a condemnation of his critics for being too "politically correct"-- a favorite rallying cry along with categorizing all critics as "haters." These are words cowardly bullies like to hide behind (e.g. Donald Trump, who said his grab 'em by the pussy quote was simply locker room talk). This form of communication is an assault, especially to women. Either Spezzano knows that, which makes him a bully, or he doesn't, which makes him an ignoramus. Either way he is toxic.
As we have seen in his 2007 DVD
Chuck Spezzano, Psychology of Vision (container title:
Inspiring Heart, Mind and Soul), he is not above blaming FN rape victims for their situation:
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=4179.msg37561#msg37561Around 2008 POV UK head honcho Jeff Allen gave a "make the 1950s great again" sort of statement to the
Daily Mail, basically extending Spezzano's attitude toward women:
http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2015/10/fast-track-to-femininity.htmlWe note that after Lency semi-retired at the end of 2014 POV experienced a severe decline in the number of trainers, particularly in the UK where she had cultivated a special annual event just for women. This leads me to believe POV consisted of two personality subcults-- one for Lency, one for Chuck. I suspect many of Lency's followers were not comfortable staying aboard once Chuck was the only one on the stage. And who can blame them? If you are a New Age feminist would you really want to be creeped out by an aging obese sweaty guy whining around and telling obscene jokes as a way to lure you into his cult? He's like a bad pickup artist in a 70's meat market. The cosmetics, the jewelry, the apparel, the fake everything. More on that later.
It is also worthy of note that Chuck's videos were the result of big bucks being spent, as they had professionally produced introductions, where Lency's videos were basically badly made home movies. Also, Lency has been the one with the unpleasant job of responding in public to their critics while Chuck is mostly above such things. It is good to be the King where the dirty tasks are assigned to the secondary people. As Kellyanne Conway has been to Trump, so has Lency been for Chuck, with the same result in credibility.
Chuck's early desire to become a Catholic priest gives us a clue about his initial reluctance as an adult to join the world of normal male/female relationships. By his own account he went to the other end of the spectrum and became a very active womanizer after he ditched the pursuit of the priesthood and was lured into large group awareness counseling. This guy has no clue concerning the experience of the average guy and his subsequent dictates are very destructive concerning the role of men. This is due to the fact Chuck never really experienced what it means to be a real man in a healthy setting. He's just a stupid jerk who no one should ever listen to for love advice. A real man never treats women as badly as Chuck has.
http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2015/12/love-yourself-and-it-doesnt-matter-who.htmlIn both Spezzano priest/womanizer extremes women were basically second class humans, an attitude still reflected in POV today no matter how high the "Goddess" or "Divine Feminine" or "Tiger Woman" pedestal may stand. Spezzano, now nearly 70, is trapped in the amber of the Rat Pack era. He never caught up to the concept that women are real humans. To see POV currently attempting to celebrate the power of the feminine is somewhat comical, and very pathetic.
The Spezzano/Ticehurst book
Healing the Body Through Mind and Metaphor is clearly based upon the work of Louise Hay. In some cases the metaphors themselves mirror Hay to the point of near-plagiarism. Hay's description of each malady is much more brief, but the concepts are the same, it almost as if Hay wrote the draft and Spezzano merely embellished her work. Yet, Hay's name never appears in the Spezzano/Ticehurst work, not even in the acknowledgements. Spezzano/Ticehurst attempt to pass this off as their own idea. What a snow job!
Just as how POV has swiped material from
A Course in Miracles, Lifespring, Oneness University, Jose Arguelles, Bob Trask, etc., they "borrowed" from Louise Hay as well. Nothing is ever original with Psychology of Vision. Everything about it has been lifted from another source with varying degrees of credit or non-credit. They are all about following whatever New Age fad will turn a profit, usually several years behind the initial introduction. Hardly what one would call "cutting edge." The Spezzano's so-called "research" has been in market analysis of the New Age niche commercial trends-- it certainly hasn't been in the field of healing or professional psychology. POV has been all about how to relieve vulnerable people of their money.
Before moving on, it will be useful to read what Lency stated in her
The Truth about Chuck And Lency Spezzano And The Psychology of Vision about the "Healing Metaphors":
http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2016/05/nafps-selections-truth-about-chuck-and_31.htmlIn the Psychology of Vision, health issues can give us clues about what is going on in our subconscious minds. It is sort of like a psychiatrist doing dream analysis – physical symptoms can also be read as symbols for the conflicts in our minds. Healing the emotional conflict certainly doesn’t hurt a person’s chances of healing physically, and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that it is helpful, but we have not done any research studies on the subject, and we do not make any claims.
The bloggers claim that us looking at the metaphors of illness with people (similar to Louise Hay’s work) is actually us blaming them for having their symptoms. This, of course, would have no value for the client – blaming a person for their illness is completely counterproductive to their healing and wellbeing. Taking accountability, on the other hand, gives the client power in their life.
At least Lency is willing to give Hay some credit, incredibly downplayed as it is. The statement "we have not done any research studies on the subject" pretty much destroys any validity the Spezzano/Ticehurst work pretends to have.
As for the "counterproductive" part, let us take a look at some real people reacting to the "Healing Metaphors" and see what they have to say. First, here is the "Healing Metaphor" for rheumatoid arthritis:
Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most common forms of arthritis; it is the inflammation of the lining of the joints. The cause of Rheumatoid Arthritis is unknown but it is believed to be an autoimmune disease. If we have this condition, it means that we are caught in roles and are emotionally and psychologically fused with others, which makes us unable to move. We have been immobilized by a fear of change.
Here is a link to what real people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis have to say about the Spezzano/Ticehurst coverage of their disease. It isn't pretty:
http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2015/10/healing-metaphors-z-and-rheumatoid.htmlSick-shaming is an integral part of POV, which falls right into the New Age "Law of Attraction" belief system. This has some rather sinister implications. In an interview with the
New York Times in 2008 Hay basically admitted that entire cultures who were victims of genocide pretty much deserved what they got due to negative energy:
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=4179.msg37289#msg37289But while Hay may have hedged about whether positive thinking could cure AIDS, in her writings she was adamant that thoughts — not just sexual behavior — could help cause it. “Venereal dis-ease,” Hay writes in “You Can Heal Your Life,” using her eccentric spelling, “is almost always sexual guilt. It comes from a feeling, often subconscious, that it is not right to express ourselves sexually. A carrier with a venereal dis-ease can have many partners, but only those whose mental and physical immune systems are weak will be susceptible to it.” And that mental weakness can be self-loathing, hating one’s looks or just a fear of aging.
In person and in print, Hay mentions these causes only to play them down: “In no way am I trying to create guilt for anyone”; “this is a time for healing, for making whole, not for condemnation.” But she cannot escape her own logic: if our thoughts create our circumstances, then we are always, in the end, to blame. When I asked her if, since people’s thoughts are responsible for their conditions, victims of genocide might be to blame for their own deaths, she said: “I probably wouldn’t say it to them. I don’t go around making people feel bad. That’s not what I’m after.” I pressed harder: Did she believe they are to blame? “Yes, I think there’s a lot of karmic stuff that goes on, past lives.” So, I asked, with a situation like the Holocaust, the victims might have been an unfortunate group of souls who deserved what they got because of their behavior in past lives? “Yes, it can work that way,” Hay said. “But that’s just my opinion.”
In Psychology of Vision and Steps to Leadership the blame game is alive and well. The leadership here is all about passing the buck and never accepting any responsibility for mistakes or when they are caught in ethically-challenged choices. The POV response to critics is something one would expect from a sociopath. All critics are "haters" or as one POV trainer says, "evil." Yet they proclaim there is no right or wrong. I think they suffer from a "split mind," eh?
When POV foibles are highlighted online, the usual response from the corporation is to simply erase it. The POV English language
Trainers Manual, the majority of Lency's "Downloading/Joining" Youtubes, the online "Healing Metaphors," and all POV praise for Oneness University-- just wiped out. Poof! Gone. Is that what they teach in "Steps to Leadership"? To run away from conflict and allow your critics to define you in the void you have left? Is there is no passion for life or fight in POV or Steps to Leadership? They are content to being compliant zombies?
The Spezzanos have been very clever in operating under the radar of the regulators. As non-professionals they are not subject to laws or government oversight regarding problems with professional psychologists. They are also careful not to perpetuate their scam in the mainland USA, where consumer protection laws are stronger than that of the rest of the world. Hawaii has a notoriously lax and badly run bureaucracy, creating a haven for characters like the Spezzanos. It is a miracle Chuck was even fined for being a fraud psychologist by Hawaii in 2004. In any other USA state he would probably be serving time by now. But in Hawaii this couple does not have to worry about being responsible or accountable.
Chuck Spezzano has consistently been marketed in Europe under false credentials. He does not possess a Ph.D. in "clinical psychology," instead he has something exotic in "professional psychology" which was not accredited by the APA-- meaning he earned this unaccredited degree and bypassed any sort of national standard so even by European definitions just possessing the degree does not give him the right to be called a "psychologist." But they do call him a "psychologist," sometimes even by his own trainers on POV websites-- but according to Lency the Spezzanos are helpless to stop this, it is
always someone else's fault:
http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2016/05/nafps-selections-truth-about-chuck-and_9.htmlIf you read Chuck’s resume section on this website, you will know that he holds a Ph.D. in psychology. I have never heard him refer to himself as a psychologist, and we have never advertised him as one, because that would require a psychologist’s license. We don’t edit the promotional material that PoV promoters and Trainers around the world create, as it is primarily in foreign languages. If some have been calling Chuck a psychologist instead of saying that he holds a Ph.D. in psychology, I’m sure it has been brought to their attention now.
Oddly, Lency also says:
http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2015/12/marquis-whos-who-breaththrough-seminars.htmlChuck was employed as a psychologist by the Naval Drug Rehabilitation Center at the Naval Air Station Miramar, in San Diego, from 1973-79.
Since he didn't earn his degree until 1977, he was probably working under some broader definition of the term "psychologist" at that time, either that or someone is stretching the truth a bit. From what I can ascertain, Chuck Spezzano has
never been a licensed psychologist.
The list of evasions, "dodging bullets" (as Chuck likes to say), and ducking out of responsibility over and over again is much too long to belabor here, but I would like to point out one last example. The Vision Taiwan Association published an anniversary book in 2012 with contributions from POV bigwigs, including Chuck. In it he says:
Ever since we began training Trainers, Lency and I recognized that process has accelerated for the Trainers. This meant that pain and problems came to the surface quickly and if they weren’t teaching and healing at a fairly continuous pace then they were suffering from the amount and the depth of issues that occurred. Sometimes, even if they were teaching, more smelly doodah hit the fan than usual. Some trainers could not stand this in spite of the fair warning they received and had to leave the program. Trainers left the program for different reasons but this was one of the biggest.
http://psychologyofvision.blogspot.com/2017/02/more-smelly-doodah-hit-fan-than-usual.htmlSee? It was the trainers' own fault. The Spezzanos were blameless.
Spezzano's metaphors qualify as a form of emotional abuse, where the victim is to blame and must be shamed. This gives you an indication of what is in store for you if you sign up for Psychology of Vision or "Steps to Leadership." Be prepared to be manipulated and being made to feel guilty, bled dry, and then thrown under the bus. POV is not about helping, or giving. They are all about taking. From your bank account.
Psychology of Vision and Steps to Leadership is a huge scam run by a couple of con artists. If you are a gullible fool wanting to flush your money down the toilet go ahead and sign up. Otherwise, do your homework and find a better and more trustworthy alternative for your emotional and spiritual growth.