Interview with Jean-Claude Guyard on the Theme of "Sects"

Jean-Claude Guyard is the head of the ECMA, a French school that trains practitioners of kinesiology, a personal-development discipline drawing on osteopathy, chiropractic and Chinese energetics. In this 2006 interview with CICNS he gives a first-person account of how the French anti-cult climate reached his field: the Brittany trial in which kinesiology was incriminated after the death of a baby, the single sentence on the practice in the 2002 MILS report, the circular letters and the tax audit that threatened his school, and the media treatment of the affair. He closes with a call for a confederation of personal-development disciplines — shiatsu, reiki, yoga, qigong, sophrology — to face such attacks together. He should not be confused with any other public figure of the same surname; he speaks here solely as a kinesiology educator.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 11 November 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: What is kinesiology? Jean-Claude Guyard gives us his view on how this affair was handled and on the reception given to alternative methods of personal fulfilment in France.

[Guyard]: Our school, the ECMA, trains people who will go on to practise kinesiology. They are kinesiologists (“kinésiologues”), whom one may also call “kinésiologistes”. They are not therapists, insofar as a therapist is supposed to treat people who are ill, whether psychologically or physically. So we are in, quote-unquote, personal development. That is to say, if we draw an imaginary line with a zero point in the middle, the zero point is a state that we call health, because it is the silence of the organs, following Alexis Carrel’s definition. That silence of the organs is not enough for us. There are possibilities of personal fulfilment, of a feeling of success, a feeling of accomplishment in what one does — in short, of evolution. And we are, in a way, on the paths of evolution — and with no mystical or religious pretension, I want to make that clear.

We work a great deal with continuing education, with training organisations, and many — not to say almost all — of the documents, all the files, were returned to us, refused, quite simply because all those organisations had received circular letters telling them that we were, quote-unquote, a sectarian activity.

From the very beginning, I had contacted certain police administrations, saying: listen, come and see, you will see that we really do nothing abnormal, we have no sectarian activity, really nothing at all. And they told us: well, you know how it is, it’s not worth it, we don’t need to come out.

Apart from that, we currently have — we have had from the start — a tax audit, with a very curious matter of non-recognition of our activity as a training provider. Which means that if we lose this fight, well, obviously, our company will be threatened with pure and simple disappearance. That is to say — no anomalies were found in our accounts, I hasten to tell you; they simply want to make us liable for VAT even though we are completely behind. We pay. But there is one tiny line, quite astonishing, whereby we are recognised as a continuing-education organisation. There is no “ism”, there is no problem. It says: barring a contrary ruling by the administration, barring a contrary decision by the administration. Well, we are defending ourselves, we have a lawyer for that. But obviously, it is a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

It came in the wake of that affair: the Brittany trial, the [inaudible ?]. And I would like to make clear on this subject that it was completely a set-up. I really do want to say that it is an affair that is completely… If you saw it at the cinema, you would say it really is cinema. Because, after all, a baby died. That was 5 years ago, almost 6 years now. And the trial has only just taken place. And kinesiology was incriminated. Why? What you have to know is that… the baby, then, died of hunger. And since these are, shall we say, perhaps people who belong to a social stratum in which there are no children who can have congenital illnesses… That is the first thing. Then, there were doctors who were charged, and they were the family doctors. And there was no question of convicting doctors over this affair. So they received very small sentences. And then, on the other hand, there was UNADFI, which joined the proceedings as a civil party — not against the [inaudible ?], but against kinesiology. So the opportunity was too good: that is to say, it suited everyone to claim that kinesiology had something to do with it.

I want to assure you — I am tempted to say: I give you my word — that in kinesiology, at least the kinesiology we teach here, though I think it is the same everywhere, it is out of the question — completely — to impose a strict diet, to deprive oneself of food. That is complete madness.

What astonished me is this kind of hatred from UNADFI towards kinesiology, when letters had been sent saying: listen, come and see us, we will try to explain ourselves. We never had a reply; I telephoned, it was never passed on, I never got a call back.

I found it quite strange, in particular, that for a health programme, broadcast on Arte every day, they came to interview me here. They showed the film; they substituted themselves for me, I should point out, while I was speaking, to make the comments that suited them, you see? And then afterwards, they interviewed the president of UNADFI. She was asked the question: what made her say that kinesiology was a sectarian activity? “Certain movements that promote kinesiology worry us because they develop criteria that come close to sectarian criteria — that is, the self-proclamation of a person as a therapist.” Well, first of all, we do not call ourselves therapists; we have never called ourselves therapists. Then, the fact of steering patients away from conventional medical care, and also the fact of wanting to be recognised as a training organisation. Well then, what company that provides training does not want to be recognised as a training organisation? “In order to penetrate the sphere of the hospital and of the world of education, which are already sectors where people are trained, where there are vulnerable people.” So there — the world of education, where there are vulnerable people: would teachers, then, be mental defectives?

They transformed the trial — which ought to have been the trial of the doctors who had not done their job, and the trial of the parents who had perhaps not properly fulfilled their role — and we saw headlines: “the trial of kinesiology”. That is to say, instead of holding the parents responsible, people said: “these poor people, they were victims of kinesiology”. There you are. I think there is a sleight of hand there that we find rather hard to accept, all the same. When I say “we”, I mean the few heads of the schools in France. There are a good ten or so schools in France; we do not even all know one another. We had not foreseen these attacks at all, absolutely not. We were a thousand miles from thinking this could happen to us.

Because I believe that if there is one sector in which you will find no trace of a sect, it is ours. There is no sectarian tendency, there is no ideology behind it. There is a basic technique, which is not always well understood, of course, but it is only a basic technique — one which, moreover, comes from osteopathy, from exacto-American chiropathy and from acupuncture, that is, from Chinese energetics — since we do not insert needles, of course. So we are hardly going to say that Chinese energetics or osteopathy can generate sectarian activities. There are sectarian activities where people see sects everywhere.

What are the interests at stake? Those are the questions I ask myself. Might there not, by any chance, be something to be found in the progression, in the chronology of events? The MILS, which was, I believe, dissolved around June 2002, produced its report in February 2002 on the year 2001, on sects, and did not even cite kinesiology as a sect. There is simply one sentence which says that a health professional practising kinesiology and a follower of the sect [inaudible ?] — I believe that is the sentence anyone can read in that report — used Bach flower remedies. That is the only sentence relating to kinesiology. There is absolutely nothing else. And that sentence, then, published by the MILS in 2002, in the month of February, passed somewhat unnoticed.

What is astonishing is that in March, April, May, many articles appeared on pharmaceutical lobbying, on the pharmaceutical lobby’s worries about the generic medicines that were going to hurt them. And then you find, in Les Échos in particular, articles about patents filed that would allow the pharmaceutical laboratories to protect their interests. And then, at the same time, certain molecules are discovered that promise happiness to humankind. So much so that one could — it is only a supposition — make the connection with, you know, all those little ailments that disturb our lives without threatening them, all our little irritations, all our stresses, for example. You are stuck in a traffic jam? Then take such-and-such a pill. Your child is a little nervous? He is noisy, he wants to run around all the time? We will give him things that are not dangerous, not serious — no, no, sold over the counter. That is what was foreshadowed in certain articles, again in early 2002.

I think there may have been studies showing that if techniques like sophrology or yoga — which are also sometimes incriminated in certain statements claiming to be anti-sect — are allowed to develop, then it is possible that all these methods, if they develop too far, represent a loss of earnings. And it is possible that there were some connections with the pharmaceutical lobby, which also represents considerable pressure groups acting on the administrations at the highest level — hence, perhaps, see the connection with a well-timed (“tempestif”) and very detailed and thorough tax audit, you see? It remains to be seen.

Before this affair, I had already gone to court. And my entirely personal feeling is that what faces you is a wall, you see? That is to say, there is a prejudice. It is judged beforehand, in the head. And the substantive issues can never be addressed. I found myself before judges who were indisputably — let us say that I felt them to be — very far from objective, and who nevertheless devoted a whole afternoon to this case, which I believe deserved much less, and who tried to turn the situation around by trying to prove that I was facilitating the illegal practice of medicine. As that is not at all the case, they proved nothing at all. I think there is a system with a sectarian cast of mind, but built on politico-financial networks that one senses, though they are more cultural, more a matter of lobbying than anything else.

Now, I take all the efforts of UNADFI and the rest as small reactions, as a kind of conservatism, as a kind, too, of fundamentalism, shall we say, perhaps, of certain religions that sense that the faithful are beginning to slip away from them. So they try to clutch at the branches and find people to attack.

As for the people who describe themselves as being “for the defence of the family and the individual”, there is something very amusing and very easily verifiable: it is that any number of newspaper articles — notably in the MGEN’s magazine, but also in television programmes — end with a call for denunciation. They are looking for the victims of kinesiology, and of other things besides. But how many millions of people saw those programmes, read those articles? Always very well done. And it always ends with: “come forward — if you are a victim, come forward”. For them to be hunting for victims to that extent, they must be short of victims. They are defending their stock-in-trade, their subsidies, and also, perhaps, a certain vainglory.

The public, I have to say, couldn’t care less. There is no other word for it. The public is infinitely more pragmatic than the people who seek to direct it. And the public has a very simple line of reasoning: it works, so I do it. There are people who kept telephoning us, asking for our documentation, and we answered. And several times I said to the people who called: “but really, do you know what is being said about kinesiology at the moment?” And the answers, sometimes, were extremely direct: “they take us for idiots, to put it politely”.

I have trained quite a few kinesiologists in Switzerland: they practise in complete freedom, without any problem. We have trained people in Belgium: they practise without any problem; in England, without any problem; or in Spain, without any problem. I know of no country where there has been such a campaign. It seems there was — not in kinesiology, but in other sectors in this style of activity — a small, very small alert in Germany, which was immediately smothered, because the Germans are very wary of all forms of fascism, intellectual or otherwise.

I also think it would be desirable for there to be greater solidarity among the people who belong, I am tempted to say, to a certain movement, which I would situate much more broadly than kinesiology. Personal development risks making people perhaps too personal. And what I would wish — and I think it would be extremely effective — is if, from one group to another, we could create a sort of confederation, perhaps, something like that: that the people who practise shiatsu, reiki, yoga, tai chi chuan, qigong, sophrology, relaxation — whether Caycedo’s or others’ — come together; that the presidents of federations organise themselves, come together and create a confederation in order to be able to face this kind of attack. Because I think that what happened against kinesiology could well happen to other branches, with the same attempt at manipulating the crowds. And it is true that on that point, I am a little afraid for the coming generations.