The Founder: Ken Hamilton, MD
Ken grew up in a healing environment of physicians, social healers, and Christian Scientists! Health, as somehow related to love and the Source of all things, fascinated him from his earliest years. At age 11 he began a painful, depressive struggle to understand this. It became his life’s goal. At 15, he started to shape an intention to become a physician. Six years later he pulled himself out of his depression and the intention became a commitment.

Ken is a 1960 graduate of McGill University's College of Medicine. He completed a general surgical residency in 1966, out of which he earned Fellowship in the American College of Surgeons. He served in the US Army from 1966 to 1970, and moved to South Paris, Maine with his wife and their two children in 1971. In 1988, he sheathed his surgeon's scalpel in order to devote his life to develop and share his experiences with the psychology of human development that he had begun to implement in his practice in 1975 . To think that time-honored practices of human development should have any effect on medical and surgical practices and therapies may not be surprising, but the truth of the matter is: no psychologies of any kind were taught in medical schools when he got his degree.

Ken's primary teacher was the successful entrepreneur, Earl Nightingale, whose lifetime of study of the elements of success had led to the creation of the successful Nightingale-Conant Corporation in 1960. To Nightingale, the key to the vast reserves of the mind lay in a single word, attitude--and attitude was always a matter of choice. To Earl's associate, Brian Tracy, the key to stress management was the discovery and pursuit of one's core passion--and one is always born with a core passion. These two ideas alone made a great difference to Ken and his patients, and through an ongoing study of the offerings of Nightingale and his friends, Ken discovered many effective ways to help his patients through their operations and through serious health conditions like cancer and disabling trauma.

In 1985, Ken decided to explore psychology more deeply, and was led to the company of Barry Woods, M. Div., MD, with whom he spent the next two years in further study, through which he came to experience the power of the Twelve Step recovery program, and which culminated in meeting Bernie Siegel, MD, and Jerry Jampolsky, MD in 1986. After hearing their experiences with support groups, he saw that there was room for such a group in his practice that would utilize the experience and skills he had been developing since 1975. Five of his patients, all of whom had cancer, were interested in working together, and they gathered in the  board room of Stephens Memorial Hospital on Thursday, February 12, 1987.

At the first meeting, they talked about finding meaning and hope in their lives and decided to call themselves a HOPE group, choosing Healing of Persons Exceptional for the acronym. The effectiveness of the work caught on quite rapidly and widely, and the demands on his schedule led him to examine his life and make the choice to devote his career to HOPE Shortly after sheathing his surgeon's scalpel in 1988 he reached a peak of guiding seven HOPE groups a week. In this way he acquired the experience of working with over four thousand HOPE group meetings. As he learned more about this process, he began to train others in it, and was delighted to see that these groups were as effective as the ones he guided in helping people facing serious health conditions. Circling the Soul workshops came into being in 1996 out of the efforts of five professionals who were interested in developing and promoting the spiritual nature of H.O.P.E.'s services. The group broke up after a year, and Hamilton further developed the process in active HOPE Groups and called it "SoulCircling." The book about it is the culmination of five years of SoulCircling experiences.

Ken was a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Holistic Medical Association for eight years starting in 1988. He joined the Board of Directors of the Network for Attitudinal Healing International in 1995. He became a founding member of the Fetzer Institute's Relationship Centered Care Network in 1996. He is an accomplished public speaker about matters of the soul, attitudinal healing, stress management, and psychospiritual matters, including health and healing.

Ken is always ready to answer your questions about HOPE and its products and services. Send him your questions and ideas by e-mail:
 

Kevin Wallace of Cape Elizabeth, Maine

The Staff:

Rhonda Whittemore, Administrative Assistant