Through a Blue Window(

CULT!
Through a Blue Window: is a podcast that chronicles the rise and fall of the Sullivanian Institute and its members. This psycho-sexual therapy institute existed on Manhattan's Upper West Side from the 1970s through the 1990s, and in later years was characterized as a cult.  I was a member of the Sullivanians for five years during which time I was directed to abandon family and friends.  After learning of my mother's death in May 1975, while deeply entrenched in the Sullivanians, I was ordered not to go to the funeral,  and I didn’t,  thus inextricably altering my life and a decision I regret to this day.

The first hour-and-a-half podcast and ensuing chapters tell of these events, beginning with my earliest memory - a 'history,' if you will, to borrow from the Sullivanian lexicon and bedrock of their control. Once in the group members were instructed to break ties with their families, and in particular mothers, who were seen as toxic and the root of all neurosis.  This philosophy was the engine that drove the Sullivanian ideology.

In 2013, still haunted by the events of my involvement, I began to write a memoir.  By trade, I am a visual artist and teacher, and also a poet and short story writer.  I had no idea the deep dive and the many many iterations and years it would take  to complete the book. I tried to get an agent or publisher, however, the book languished on my computer. Years passed, then with the advent of iMovie and using my memoir as the scaffolding I created a documentary.  It was an official selection of New FilmMakers NY  2020 and a Spotlight Documentary Bronze award winner for artistic merit.

Unlike other practicing therapists who worked under a strict code of ethics, there were no such boundaries for the Sullivanians or "the group," as the members of the Institute and their therapists were self-referentially known. Sex between patients and therapists, the wide use of Valium, and drinking were encouraged

The  Village Voice and NewYorkMagazine, documented these events in 1989, blowing the lid off the pathological and secretive lives of the group from its seemingly benign beginnings to the children and to the bravery of three former members and the custody battles that ensued.  One, a  very brave mother who was forced into hiding with her newborn baby, and two fathers who fought for custody after escaping.

The  Sullivanians were eventually brought down by their collective paranoia, and hubris. Through Blue Window recounts all these events in a podcast for anyone who would find it hard to wrap their head around the want or need to belong to a group like this and wants to understand why.
 
This is my personal accounting tracing early childhood trauma that made me vulnerable to the lure of a group that painted itself as the vanguard party, where the patients were controlled by the information they revealed in sessions as well as by sex, sleep deprivation, and valium, This is what you will hear in Through a Blue Window: the podcast now available for download through many platforms: Apple, Amazon, iheartradio
 
The documentary can be seen on my YouTube  channel shellfein1. 

Thank you so much for your time. I would love to hear your thoughts
https://youtu.be/ADhx7KHb_p8  (trailer)
https://youtu.be/4WUpfh3HFlg ( full )
www.shelleyfeinerman.com
shellfein2@aol.com


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The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The story of your life eventually becomes the story of the choices you make. Once I was living in a Sullivanian apartment and seeing a Sullivanian group therapist, my power to make choices was subverted. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Sullivanians, a psychosexual therapy group on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the men, the women, children, and their therapists lived in same-sex group apartments where their every move was monitored and dictated. I've held on to these documents for over 40 years. This first document, Came from Utopia, published in The Village Voice in 1986, tells about a former member, a former therapist, who had a child, and that child was taken away from her. She was denied any access. She needed to go into hiding with her child. The next article, published a few months later, also in The Village Boys, what's that called Face the Second Custody fight, tells us two fathers taking custody for their children who were still with the mothers who were in Sylvania. And then in 1989, in New York magazine, psychodrama, the chilling story of how the Sylvanian cult turned a utopian dream into a nightmare, tells a 10-page story of the seemingly benign beginnings of the group till its eventual demise. And the custody battles as well. My life was irreparably changed, and this is my story. Born Saul B. Cohen in Canada, he claimed to have fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, and may have, but records show he was a payroll clerk. He was a specter to most of the patients, rarely seen. Photographs are almost impossible to find. He and his wife, psychiatrist Jane Pierce, co-authored The Conditions of Human Growth, based on the bastardized theories of Harry Stack Sullivan. The book was required reading by all. Pierce was born in 1914 in Austin, Texas. She attended Radcliffe College and received a degree in medicine and philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1941 and also attended Washington School of Psychiatry. In 1949, she graduated from the William Allison White Institute in New York City, where she was a training analyst. Censored over some questionable practices like advocating sex with patients, they left taking their patients with them, forming the Sullivan Institute and training program for lay therapists. Most with no psychoanalytical or college experience. At first, Newton and Pierce saw it well-known and creative individuals because they believed artists would have the best chance of changing their lives and also the best chance of influencing others. We were jammed in so tight that I couldn't turn around. There were so many of us, you see, and the stench was terrible. When we got to Ellis Island, the gangplank went down and the men and women were separated. They lived at 3464 Knox Place, one long block in a corner of the Northwest Bronx. My aunt was born in 1917 and my mother in 1919. This is my grandmother at the beach in the Rockaways. And my grandfather at Moore Stein's Bar Mitzver. My father Eugene and my mother grew up near one another in the same Bronx neighborhood. They were both nineteen when they married. This was 1939. Before their wedding, my mother became pregnant, and at my father's insistence, she had an abortion. He didn't want to start the marriage with a child, he said. When World War II broke out, my father was certified IVF. Something he found easy to fake. My sister Carol was born in 1943. A few years later, my parents separated, then reconciled, and I was born in 1947. My mother caught my father with another woman at a party, and they were divorced in 1949, an event that shook the family. I was two years old. My sister, four years older, remembered all the fighting and was terrified of her father. But to me they were just stories. So in all things concerning my father, speaking on the phone, riding in the car, I was Carol's protector. Perhaps it was the shots my sister had to endure, or the stand straight with your back against the wall so you don't get curved spine like me exercises, my mother forced her, but not me to do. Or perhaps it was the four years difference in our ages. But whatever the reason kept our love for each other at a distance that was only bridged on Sunday when my father visited and that remained between us over the years. Unfortunately, I never got to say goodbye to my friends. For a long while, Charlie was the father I needed. Carol was a teenager and preoccupied with her friends, so Charlie seemed to belong to just me. On his first visit to our new apartment, my father arrived in a Cadillac convertible the color of a just minted copper penny. I had daydreams of driving to Jones Beach in his new car with its soft white leather interior and white top that could be folded away like an accordion with the push of a button. But that dream never came true. After a month, my father's visit stopped altogether with only random explanations. He was busy, he needed to spend time with his new wife and stepdaughter. I eventually stopped asking questions. But every night I'd lie awake in the dark, staring out the window at the ever-changing red and green traffic lights twinkling across Willow Lake. I'd stare at those faraway lights until my eyes grew heavy, and then in the twilight before sleep, I'd fly out the window to follow the ribbon of cars along Grand Central Parkway to Long Island to ask him why. After eight years, my mother and Charlie became engaged to be engaged. But then the arguments began. This went on for a month when a box arrived at our apartment wrapped in the familiar brown and white plaid of Saxfifth Avenue. Inside was a black dress, shoes, stockings, even lipstick and powder. All wrapped in pink tissue paper he'd picked out for her to wear on their special date. But in the end, I learned that Charlie wanted me to go to boarding school. To my mother, it was still a man's world. But she refused to compromise on her children. Her decision was unimpeachable. She refused to send me away. Charlie disappeared from our lives, failing to recognize that he could no longer control my mother. Without his financial support, our life changed. My mother began to drink heavily, sometimes in the morning, but always at lunch and after work. She had to find a new job. Carol was unable to go away to college, and we had to move to a smaller apartment where my mother once again took up residency on the living room couch. My involvement began in the fall of 1973. I was enrolled in a BA program in fine art at Queen's College. The group was at its zenith with over three hundred people. It was a time of great excess alcohol, valium, and no hose barred sexual experimentation. One usually seeks out a therapist during moments of vulnerability or crisis. This state of mind was used against the patients. The nucleus of Sullivanian power lay within the dynamic formed between the therapist and patient. Everyday life decisions were given over to the dogma of the therapists, who, in turn, were controlled by Newton. Most of the patients were young people in their twenties and early thirties, who were directed by their therapists to live together in same-sex apartments, renting large pre-war apartments on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The self-referencing term the group was born. Expanding on the revolutionary ideas of the sixties, Saul's vision was of a vanguard party, banding together like-minded patients who developed a distorted sense of their own importance. We were told that the family, and particularly the mother, who they equated with the duplicitous Lady Macbeth, was toxic and crushed individual growth and creativity. Repeated over and over and over again in twice-weekly therapy sessions with your roommates, all in Sullivanian therapy, with the people you were dating, all in Sullivanian therapy, patients were directed to completely sever ties with their families and friends unless there was money to be had. As the patients' moral instincts were rewired, the group became our only source of affection and support. The greatest terror was being forced out for some perceived indiscretion. People were excised from their apartments and thrown out of therapy. You were abandoned, shunned by everyone you knew. My father and Charlie's abandonments were pieces of a larger puzzle. But the truth was, from early on, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I had my creativity. This was my true defining moment, and continues to sustain me to this day. After I met Anina Morelli in Mrs. Delaney's third grade class, Forrest Hills didn't seem so bad. That is, until a stupid party game of spin the bottle gone awry was added to the mix of unfortunate events. After a few turns, the popular girls decided that the next boy who tried to tongue kissed should get his face slapped. And that turned out to be Clifford and I. When I felt his tongue tickling my mouth, my hand flew up, leaving a dark red stain on his cheek. To this day, I don't know why I did it. Except that I desperately wanted all those things I said I didn't care about. To be liked, to be popular, to be accepted. The following Monday, the slap was the number one topic on the school's gossip hit parade. And I was a pariah. I didn't make it into the accelerated class, I didn't go to the sixth grade prom, and in July, Anita's family moved to Ridgefield, New Jersey. When junior high began, I had no friends, and I was given a sealed envelope for my mother. I ripped it open and the words spilled out. They wanted me to join a group for underachieving students with high IQs. I tore the letter into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet. Anita and I decided to cut our shoulder length hair before we knew she was moving. We wanted a more grown-up look for junior high school. But Anita's thick, smooth hair was decidedly better suited to the short laid bubble cut than mine. I spent my days and nights throughout junior high school and high school doggedly trying to remove every kink and curl from my hair. Every six months I suffered through burning chemicals, and every night I slept with my hair wound around scratchy wire rollers. Trying to hide the dandelion fuzz under a scarf was useless. There was always some pimple-faced boy who would taunt me, it's raining, it's pouring. I soon found out that no matter what I did, my hair would forever be a barometer, frizzing out of control when the humidity ran above 50%. I just stopped going to school on rainy or human days, until the truant officer showed up at our door. I graduated six months late and again missed the prom and the graduation ceremony. My grandparents' Bronx neighborhood had the look and smell of another era. Pushcarts on the sidewalk and Schmuel the Pickle Man. My grandfather died in 1960 a week after Passover. I was thirteen years old. According to Orthodox tradition, the burial took place without delay. He looked asleep in the simple pine box, but for the coins pressed against his eyes to keep his soul from flying away. We sat Shiva in my grandparents' apartment, life drained from its walls at week's end. My mother began to drink even more, sometimes in the morning before work, at lunch, and then at home, where she drank to oblivion. My sister married and moved out, and my mother moved from the couch into the bedroom, a night's table's width away from me. This arrangement continued for the next five years. Close proximity caused an indelible stain on our relationship. The stale smell of alcohol and her snoring in the next bed kept me glued to a spot before the television until four in the morning. I needed to be drunk with fatigue before attempting sleep. Still living with my mother, home was becoming more and more intrusive and claustrophobic. The two of us living in a pocket, our only privacy, our secrets. My mother was dating again, and sometimes I'd come home late at night to the smell of booze and sex. I wanted to find a roommate and move out, but my mother took this as rejection. Why would I leave when I had a perfectly nice rent-free place? Leaving wasn't going to be easy, but I needed to go. Greg Hoffman and I met at the School of Visual Arts. We were in many of the same classes. He lived with his parents in a two-family attached house on the service road of the Long Island Expressway. Rumor had it, a woman's body had been found in the underbrush of the expressway's shoulder across the way. His father believed all artists were faggots. His words, not mine, Grant explained. And he wanted Greg to follow in his footstep as a butcher. You think you're a real man, but you'll never be the man I am. I'm fed up with wasting all this money on art supplies. Get a job. When the arguments with his father intensified, Greg spent weekends on our living room couch. After meeting Greg's parents, I should have run and never turned back. But of course I didn't. And then Greg surprised me with an engagement rate, a purchase made with his parmitzva money. It was true, Greg was young and unformed, as my mother said. But he responded to me with a purpose and a passion that no one had even come close to expressing. And I'd fallen in love with him loving me and the idea that we could leave home together. Marriage could be the tool to cut the tether, hold me to my mother. We married in a small ceremony at my grandmother's shula, and though we didn't understand a word the rabbi said, it all seemed oddly appropriate. The Vietnam War was escalating, and in the first draft lottery on December the first, nineteen sixty-nine, Greg's number was twenty four. Not good. He stayed in school hoping to forestall the inevitable. She called every night. Not answering wasn't an option. I couldn't do it. The guilt was overwhelming. Bobbing to the surface every night, like a dead guppy in a fishbowl. And the conversation was always the same. Why did you drop out of school? And the answer was the same. I took a leave so Greg wouldn't get drafted. Might do him some good, straighten him out. Move in with me, and I'll give you the bedroom. And I'll sleep on the couch, and then you can both go to school. I found a good job at an advertising agency. That meant up at seven, home at six in the evening, with just enough energy to cook a Julia Child recipe dinner for Greg. After cooking and cleanup, Greg wanted to make love. I was exhausted. Painting was impossible. Then in 1970, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. The operation lasted longer than expected. A section of her small intestines was removed because the tumor was larger than suspected. Even so, the doctor saw no reason for radiation or chemo. A lot of women in her situation can't handle the knowing the truth and get quite distraught. In those days, cancer was still spoken about in hushed tones, as if saying the word out loud was a curse of death. There were no pink ribbons or walk-a-thons, just some stupid ass doctor telling you that your mother might have a nervous breakdown if she ever found out. But without chemotherapy, my mother was doomed. And then Greg got a letter for a physical. I wanted to move to Canada, but Greg wanted to have a baby, and we argued. I don't want a baby. You're a woman. What do you mean you don't want a baby? Not now. I want to finish school. It's too soon. And I'm not painting, and I'm very unhappy. The conversation went around in circles. And then the unexpected happened. Greg and his father reconciled. He quit school to work in his father's butcher shop. The marriage disintegrated. And then I found out I was pregnant. My mother thought a baby would give me something of my own, but I always had something of my own. My art, my painting. I was living an alternative version of the life I had planned for myself since I was a girl. The life of an artist. Ambivalence danced in my head for weeks. But in the end, I realized it wasn't just the pregnancy. I didn't want to be married. And so, after four years of marriage, I left Greg and had an abortion. In the years following my separation from Greg, I found a therapist, found an apartment I could afford, cut off years of chemically straightened hair, and enrolled at the Art Students League where I took classes with Gabriel Latterman, who became my mentor. As chair of the Queen's College Art Department, he said that that was where I belonged. When I was accepted at Queen's College, I had no intention of joining anything, but then Clotho, Latistas, and Anthropo conjured up artist Jackson Morey and put him in my path. I knew nothing of the group or of its radical therapy or social or political views. I followed Jackson because I fell in love. Our travels into Manhattan eventually evolved into what Jackson called work dates, always at his apartment, usually surrounded by one or more of his four roommates and sometimes their dates. It was in this way that I was slowly indoctrinated into the world of Sullivanian therapy and the group. Jackson and his roommates were always rushing off to keep a date or to a therapy session. Two sessions a week was mandatory. Every Sullivanian kept a date book to keep track of their appointments. No one seemed to want to spend time alone, and like his roommates, Jackson had no contact with his family. Sullivanians really dated outside the group, but when they did, they were directed to indoctrinate that person and bring them into therapy. I tried to redefine my relationship with my mother, and there was a lot of tension between us. She didn't support my return to school. She hated the natural look of my hair and let me know it on every occasion. And then, with my therapist's urging, I contacted my father. It had been nine years since our last visit. My mother was furious and lashed out. It had been her idea that my father stopped visiting. She said for weeks and months at a time he'd miss our Sunday visits. Carol, my sister, was scared of him. So my mother gave him an ultimatum. Keep to the schedule or just don't come. Of course he could have refused, but he didn't. I felt shattered. Was that why she drank so much? Keeping this secret must have been a tremendous burden. My life was based on a false sense of reality. Doubt and mistrust seeped in. I felt betrayed. Jackson was a graduate assistant in my color class. Our work dates soon became sleepover dates. He brought me a date book, and the only name in it was his. The weeks turned into months. Jackson said he loved me, and I loved him too. Ignorant of the Sullivanians' unique approach to holidays, that all the apartments spend the day with their roommates, I had assumed we would spend Thanksgiving together. Jackson had a suggestion. I could spend the day with his friend Donna and her apartment and three other women's apartments, as one more woman wouldn't make a difference. I was still shaken from my mother's disclosure about my father, and I didn't want to go home for Thanksgiving, even if I spent the day alone. Jackson suggested I use his room to call my mother, and that's when he explained another group practice. The person calling home chooses someone to listen on the extension for moral support. This way the conversation could be heard by an impartial third party. Even though the whole thing sounded so odd, my indoctrination into the Sullivanians had begun without me being aware. Jackson watched me with keen expectation, and I said yes. My mother began to shout the moment I told her I was going to miss Thanksgiving because of schoolwork. What's gotten into you? What was I going to do instead? Is it this new boy you're seeing? I couldn't believe Jackson was hearing all this, and I began to feel nauseous. Her responses were making me angrier. He's not even Jewish, and you're talking nonsense. And then she turned to an even uglier place. I was like my father. He was cold, and she never realized just how cold I was. Jackson's room shifted like a Rubik's cube. You hate him, and you're saying I'm like him? I begged her to stop. I was a good daughter, and you know it. And just because I don't want to come home for one fucking Thanksgiving, I'm a shitty daughter. I'm nothing like my father, and I wasn't coming home for Thanksgiving. I need a break, and I'll call you when I'm not feeling so angry. And I'm gonna hang up now. Don't you dare hang up on me! This is not allowed, she screamed. I'd better see you on Thanksgiving, she yelled louder. Don't you dare hang up! We're not through with this yet. Don't you dare! I hung up to the sound of my mother shouting my name one last time. After the telephone conversation with my mother, I gave Jackson the go-ahead to call Donna right then and there, and when he hung up, my invitation was secured. Believing this to be a one-off adventure and a strike for independence, the day actually marked a point of no return. All the women knew about my situation from Jackson and thought how brave of me to spend the day with a bunch of strangers. After two hours preparing the turkey and fixings, I was told everyone was heading uptown to a pre-dinner party at another Sullivanian apartment. One of the rooms had been emptied of furniture, and at its center were two undulating circles of dancers. In the group, no one danced alone. Men and women holding hands and moving any which way bobbed up in town to the deafening music emanating from gigantic speakers. Whoops and screams punctuated the air, and I felt in danger of being consumed by this giant human amoeba. Then Donna broke the circle and dragged me in beside her. Two hours later, in downtown once again, a bit drunk and woozy, and without ceremony or prayer, the Thanksgiving Bacchanal began. There was a multitude of women, brown haired, blonde, redheaded, chubby and thin, tall and short, with glasses and without, all carrying colorful platters and bowls of food. Many of the women I met that day formed the nucleus of the people I would date throughout my time in the group. There were double and triple amounts of everything, followed by crescendo of desserts, chocolate cake, brownies, gingerbread, and pies all dripping with whipped cream. I was offered a place to sleep, but overwhelmed and running on fumes, I'd never met so many people in one day. I needed to be safe inside my apartment where I could forestall the waves of people and the days advance. I had a month to find a place to live. I still wasn't speaking to my mother, and then out of nowhere, Jackson told me about a new group apartment needing a roommate, and that I didn't need to be in therapy. After one hectic week of cross-examination, what's your relationship with Jackson? What do you study in school? I was told I could move in. Frank, my therapist of two years, continually counseled understanding with my mother. You're giving your mother power over you that in reality she doesn't have. But he didn't know that I'd moved into a group apartment or that I was thinking of getting a Sullivanian consultation. Jackson and I had a date for New Year's, that is, until he called to say he wanted to stop dating with a rehearsed precision, and that his therapist said he didn't have to explain, and so he didn't. This was something I would encounter many more times in the group. My roommates explained that once the exclivity is gone, the pressure to break up is intense. I went to the party with my roommates, and as I was leaving near 4 a.m., an overweight man who I had never met asked for a date. You'll have a good time, you'll see. His words offered me no comfort. I felt like a woman about to be assaulted and told she'd enjoy it. One week later, I saw Herb Trachtenberg, one of the five psychologists of the Sullivan Institute for a consultation. He concluded that my mother was a vindictive bitch and I needed to have two sessions a week. I was referred to Freddie Small, a trainee. At my first session, I was told to call around to the group apartments to see if they needed a cleaner as my expenses were going to increase. My rent and food costs had doubled, and there were going to be dues for the summer house and a summer car. As a cleaner, I got to meet and date a remarkable amount of Sullivanians in a very short time. As for Jackson, he left the group shortly thereafter. Before the group, I had had sex with five men. By the time I left five years later, the count was well over 70. Saul Newton's approach to sexuality in the group, unlimited sex for all with a variety of partners, forced alienation. With no choice and much of your life controlled by others, this was easy to accomplish. There was sex with men and women I dated, that was expected. But there were also telephone calls looking for anyone who wanted to fuck, and sex during parties or on the Long Island Railroad, and there were three ways and group sex and same-sex fucking. I was told it didn't matter who I slept with. The only rule was that on a sleepover, you expected to have sex. I definitely didn't feel like I had a choice. Some of the therapists went to the dark side, betraying the trust given them by engaging in sex with their patients. One therapist told her patient to have sex with Saul, her husband at the time. Newton was more than 70 years old, and the patient complied for fear of being kicked out of therapy. While another roommate was led to believe her sexual relationship with her therapist was the only way he could cure whatever was wrong with her. The proclaimed lesbians in the group were ordered to have sex with men, as were the homosexual men ordered to have sex with women. When the trainee program began in the late 60s, the trainees followed Saul to Amigansett, and then the patients followed the trainees. And so in early April, group apartments joined together to allay costs. The straightish looking people, people with real jobs like teachers and social workers, those with checkable references did the renting. The bonnikers, the year rounders, resented us. We were too loud, and they found our public displays of affection offensive. We were told no women holding hands in public. The bedrooms were commandeered for date rooms, and a complex schedule was devised. Those without a date room slept packed together like sardines on foam mattresses in one common room. Saturday morning was designated for finance committee reports, food and shopping, car, party planning, and date room schedules. Monica Cipro had been the one unfamiliar face at the first summer house meeting in early April. A tall, lanky woman, her short sandy hair sticking out as though it had been cut in a hurry. After the meeting, Monica introduced herself and we made dates. After all, we were going to be in the same summer house. And though I had never been with a woman, to my surprise, I couldn't dismiss my feelings for Monica or hers for me. Monica taught graphic design at Fairley Dickinson and traveled to the city once a week for a double session with Debbie. I was still deep into the Sullivanian belief system, and I wanted her to break from her family, take a full share, and come out to Amaganset more often. Monica's face locked down like a prison door. I wasn't her therapist, and I was much more involved than she cared to be. I love you, she said, but I can't stay here. She left on the next train to the city and asked the summer house for a refund. Her therapist had agreed. She wouldn't be coming out to Amaganset after all, and I never saw her again. Though I had previously eschewed joining anything from the brownies to Gamma Gamma in high school, I seemed to adapt, one would argue that I blossomed and missed the Sullivanians with more friends, so I thought, than in any other time in my life. My date book was filled. Never mind that it meant severing all ties with my mother. I followed Freddy's advice and had my new telephone number unlisted. And I allowed my friendship with Rachel, my only friend from high school, to crumble away. I'd been cleaning apartments breathing in cat scurf for weeks when the rattles started in my chest. I was allergic, but in my desperation to find a place to live, I had forgotten about the cats, and all my roommates had cats. And the committive effect felt like someone was playing kick the can in my lungs. By evening, Doris found me in my room doubled over, gasping, and called her therapist because Freddie was away. Her therapist instructed Doris to take me to the emergency room at Mount Sinai, where I was immediately shot up with adrenaline. Over the course of the next five hours, I was given eight booster shots. To my surprise, when I awoke, Freddie was in my apartment. The cats had to go. It was touch and go for a week whether my roommates were going to choose to live with me or their cats, but in the end, they were directed by their therapists to choose me. Growing up, pets were problematic for my mother. After taking Angel to the ASPCA, we got a puppy, but it ate one of her shoes. We had a rabbit and a canary and a parakeet, but they were all too messy. No wonder you have asthma. Freddy exploded at my next session. Your mother wouldn't let you be close to another living creature. She wanted you to stay at home and not succeed. She didn't support your art because she was jealous, afraid that it would take you away from her. Your mother never cared about you. She's a psychopath. Look at how she kept your father away, just so she could be in complete control. It wasn't surprising that after the summer my apartment broke up. With the flip of a coin, Doris and Kathy were gone, and Liz, who was new to the group, and Aggie, who I'd met on Thanksgiving, moved in. This was Liz's first group apartment, and Aggie, who had a reputation as a bully, had no sympathy for Liz's nostalgic musings, especially when she'd pass around her white brocade wedding album at house meetings and speak of her life before Sullivanian therapy. I'm tired of hearing you talk about how great your family is. From what you said, your family treated you like shit. Forget them already, Aggie Hamadron. My therapist agrees, and you spend way too much time obsessing about your family. I've discussed this whole situation in my session, and I don't think you should be calling home. In fact, I'm telling you to stop. And if you don't, I'm going to ask you to move out. After the meeting, Liz left without a word for a job interview and never made it back for a six o'clock dinner date. With no word by nine o'clock, I called Freddie, who was also Liz's therapist, and that's when Aggie realized her valium was gone. After calling her friends with no luck and a restless night, Freddie called to say she'd heard from Liz and she was okay, or rather that she would be okay. Liz went to Camden to beg her husband to take her back, but he slammed the door in her face, and that's when Liz took the Valium. The police found her wandering the streets incoherently. She was placed on a 24-hour cycle, and when she was coherent enough, she called her family. Liz wasn't coming back to therapy, and Freddie told me I needed to move. Aggie was the wrong person for me to be living with. She was writing her dissertation on the people and customs native to Sierra Leone. In a year, she would travel there to do her field work. But it would be Annie Steinberg who would have the most effect on me. She was ten years younger and smart, working towards her BA in sociology at Hunter College. But she was a hardline Sullivanian who fervently believed in the group and was singularly responsible for my expulsion from the apartment three years later. Perhaps it was her history which was bizarre even by group standards. Her mother had been Saul's patient since the early 1960s before the group existed. He directed Annie's mother to bring her young daughter to psychotherapist Ron Elman, a founding member of the institute. Annie recounted her years of therapy while sitting on Uncle Ron's lap until the day she turned 16 and was summarily shipped off to boarding school. Her grooming had begun. Years later, when Annie returned to New York City, the trainee program was in full swing. Her mother was living elsewhere, and Annie became convinced the training program was a radical departure from the therapy she had known, the vanguard of the future. Annie began seeing a trainee and moved into the apartment with Laney, and then her mother returned. Moving into a group apartment herself, often showing up at parties, Annie donned an impenetrable armor. Rounding off the apartment was Serena Balamente, a beautiful woman who was an anomaly in the group. She was a go-go dancer when she joined, but stopped shortly afterward at her therapist's urging. For the most part, she only dated men from outside the group, pretty boys with smooth, hairless bodies, men she'd see on the street or in a store, and approach, bringing them to the apartment, immediately disappearing into her room. With his own bathroom, sometimes for days, reappearing only for food, her own food, which she kept labeled and stored separately on a refrigerator shelf. Annie was intractable, and as per group weighs, she quoted her therapist as the final word. My therapist thinks your marginal behavior is endangering this apartment and the group, and I agree. You keep your food on a separate shelf, and I don't know any of these guys you bring home. In the end, the situation wasn't resolved. No one backed Annie, and so Serena continued to live as she wished, and Annie continued to be upset. Freddie quit the trainee program, and I was referred to Peggin McDermott, who had a reputation around the group as a scatterbrain. And just around the same time, Laney announced she was moving to another apartment. I was very hurt, and though Laney explained that she couldn't tell anybody because if she wasn't accepted, she would have nowhere to go, like what had happened to me. And of course, her therapist agreed, the ultimate stamp of approval. I moved into Laney's much larger room. But I never got over feeling betrayed, and we stopped dating. Two months later, Serena moved to a group apartment where her life choices wouldn't be challenged. And just as I was getting used to Pegin, she left the training program too. The institute had received an official warning by the licensing board. It seemed that anyone without a college degree had to return to school. Freddie and Pegin both left, and I never saw them again. Ironically, I was referred to Debbie Wilson, Laney's therapist. And a month later, I got a letter from my Aunt Hannah at my old apartment. My darling, it began, your mother is very sick and wants to see you. We all love and miss you. Faithfully yours. I showed it to Debbie, who told me to ignore it, and I did. On May 9th, 1975, my sister called to tell me the cancer had come back and our mother had died. My sister and I hadn't spoken in three years, but she was calling to tell me that the service was the next day as per Orthodox tradition. I told her I wasn't sure I could make it, and she hung up. I immediately called Debbie, who told me not to go. There's nothing you can do for her now. Listen, let me tell you a story about Saul. When his mother died he didn't go to the funeral, and you know what he said? The words I just said to you. There's nothing you can do for her now, so keep your date tomorrow, and I will see you at a regular time. I had a date with Don Sisto, a film editor I had been dating for a while, with tickets to see Bet Midler's clams on a half shell. Have a few drinks and go. Maybe you'll have a good time. But I really don't care what you do as long as you're not alone, Debbie said. Are we clear? By the time Don and I arrived at the theater, I knew it was a mistake to be there. Despite the warm evening and the liquor I consumed, I was cold enough to snap and I began to shake. My head was in that fuzzy funhouse mirror place of being drunk but feeling absolutely sober. And as Bette is being lowered to the stage on a crescent moon, Don and I leave. By the time we reach his apartment, I feel nauseous and my eyes are burning. Still shaking, I suddenly began to convulse in a series of dry heaves. Moments later the nausea subsides, and I undressed, stepping into the bathtub. After a while I'm finally warm, but I feel sluggish as though moving through brackish water. After a while, Don lifts me from the water, bringing a glass of scotch to my lips. Drink this, he says. Then he takes my hand and leads me to his room where I crawl into the bed between the sheets and into an impenetrable sleep. 1975 also marked the emergence of small Marxist classes in the group. These classes were taught by Daniel Weismann, an author and college professor who had served as Che's economic advisor. An old friend of Newton's, they supposedly had fought together in the Abraham Lincoln Prigade. Weisman was a highly sought after lecturer. We were all very excited about the prospect of being taught by someone who had lived the struggle. But when the therapists, the trainees, and the people they dated were given first priority, the group elite, we were told we would have to wait. Annie was so angry about being shut out that she and Maria Elena formed a Marxist group of their own. Maria brought in Stephen Berman, a colleague from Pace with a very good reputation to teach Introduction to Marxism. After two classes, we were all very pleased with Berman's teaching technique. He made it all very accessible. But then Annie called an emergency meeting of the class without Berman, not a good sign. It seemed her therapist, Beverly, wanted us to fire Berman. We could do better. Annie was insistent that we follow Beverly's directive. This was Annie in her most intractable. I'd seen it before, and I knew it was futile to argue with her, but I felt bullied. What about his contract? I asked, hoping to forestall her arguments. I'm sure that we can get out of it. We'll offer him some severance pay. I trust my therapist, and she's assured me that she can get us someone connected to the group. And that should be good enough for everyone here. We're the vanguard party. We need to be watchful of who we invite into the apartment. So once again, I'm asking the group to terminate our relationship with Stephen Berman. With the therapist gets involved, the inevitable happened, and Berman was intercepted on the street the night of the next class and paid for his time. Eventually, Daniel Weissman was available to teach our class, but the episode gave me pause. I lost interest in the Marxist class and dropped out. Debbie left the institute, and it was rumored she had a psychotic break. Teams of men from the group were sent out to find her, and they did, on the street, soliciting, and she was placed in psychiatric care. I was referred once again. Therapist number four, Stan Arnold, an older, pasty faced former history teacher who was now part of the new risen from the ashes trainee program. My referral to a man I didn't respect was another push toward the downward slope of the bell curve. I was embarrassed to tell anyone he was my therapist. It was like wearing a sign that said, This is what Saul thinks of me and I don't rate. Maria Elena left for Sierra Leone. We got a new roommate, another push down the bell curve, and I was accepted into the MFA program at Brooklyn College, an evening program. I needed a day job, and I found one at Reliable Lists Incorporated, the best in direct mail, as an account assistant, one of 15 glorified clerks that did the grunt work from inside glass enclosed offices. There were four strictly enforced reasons for an account assistant to leave their desk during the day checking list accessibility, the two schedule breaks, going to the bathroom, and getting coffee. Reliable Lists supplied its employees with limited amount of free coffee, and I also continued to clean on the weekends. Though tedious in the extreme, my job at Reliable Lists took on a rather prescient dimension. The associates had joined together and were asking for union representation. I didn't know the first thing about unions, but Stan proved to be an invaluable source. With his knowledge of labor history, he was in his element and encouraged me to become involved. Not only did I sign the union card, but I also became immersed in planning and strategizing, missing many house meetings in the process and putting Annie on the offensive. Your absence is counterproductive to the apartment, which should come first, she said over and over after I'd missed one too many house meetings. There were a lot of talented people in the group, musicians, writers, and artists, and a small comedy club that performed on holidays that would eventually morph into the fourth wall and then the fourth wall political theater that changed the focus of the group, creating a totalitarian, ever more paranoid and coercive environment. Some connected this to the marriage of Saul and former soap opera actress Joan Harvey, who took over control of the comedy club and renamed it the Fourth Wall, which subsumed the group in later years. Joining the Fourth Wall meant members not only had to pay their therapists for sessions, but now had to pay monthly dues. Demands on group members to contribute more money and participate in fourth wall activities increased to the point where members barely had four hours a night for sleep. I had no time or interest in the fourth wall, but Annie embraced the changes with the fervor of a zealot, and increasingly so did all the members in the group. So, despite Annie's protestations, I continued to work for the union, and with enough signed union cards from the majority of workers, we asked for union representation. The owners refused, and the union called for a strike. I was immediately infatuated. He was dressed like another era, a time when young men rode the rails in a denim shirt, well-worn jeans, baggy at the knees, and a navy blue cap, the brim pulled low over his eyes. Ollie continued to come to the picket line, and over lunch he carried forward my accelerated lessons on American labor history. When a thunderous storm drowned out the picket line, we went to his apartment to dry off. Once there, he rolled a joint, and though it was forbidden, I didn't hesitate, nor did I hesitate when he kissed me. And in that moment I realized I'd been slowly starving myself of real affection. I broke all the Sullivanian rules that night, I told Ollie about the group. You talk about getting in and getting out of therapy like you're in prison, he said in response. And it was true. But with this one rebellious act, I was set to reclaim myself. I stayed the night, but I had to break my date with Annie, who was unforgiving. Eventually she used it as evidence of my disenfranchisement from the group. I was a threat to everything Annie believed. I was sabotaging my therapy, endangering the group, and I was being compliant with my mother by exclusively dating Ollie, and she wanted me out of the apartment. Annie called an emergency house meeting and asked the apartment to ask me to leave. Beverly, her therapist, the same therapist who insisted we fire Steve Berman, and the same therapist who deemed Serena a threat, said she didn't have to have any reasons. That she could just ask the apartment to ask me to leave. Vote yes or no based on that request. That's it, she said. I have nothing else to say except I want to vote yes or no. Beverly said I could do it this way, and I am. With no further explanation coming, I went to Ollie's apartment. I had asked to be heard for more of an explanation, but Annie refused. With Beverly's backing, there could only be one outcome, and it came three hours later. It was official. Sarah, the new roommate, called. It was unanimous. I was voted out of the apartment for the safety of the fourth wall and the group, and that I needed to work out my problems somewhere else. I had one week. A new group apartment had formed on the twelfth floor of our building. It was a mismatched assortment of discards. Another disillusioned true believer, like myself, two fringe members and one poor soul new to therapy who didn't seem to know what the hell was going on, and for me, it was the only option. In another bizarre twist, a week after I'd moved, Stan told me I should call my old apartment and ask for a house meeting. It seemed the powers that be now believed that Annie had bullied them all. To this day, I don't know what held me to the chair. Shock, disbelief, betrayal. Because at the time, every impulse was urging me to grab Stan by his bony shoulders and shake him until he fell apart. I was furious, but it was perfect. Because I realized Annie did me a favor and that Ollie had been right all along. I didn't belong there anymore. I didn't want to live with her either. It was really the idea of the apartment when Maria was there, when Lainey and Annie and I were friends that I wanted. When we had autonomy, before the group had morphed into a dangerous hybrid and totalitarian community. I don't know how Newton gets away with using Sullivan's name for the Institute, he said. Everything is a distortion of real Sullivan theories. You're all worn out and you're all sleep deprived, popping Valium, trying to avoid anxiety at any cost, never realizing what made you anxious in the first place. I was terrified of leaving. What if Annie was right, and I was doomed to live a life of unenlightenment, of mediocrity, and never to be psychologically whole. My cheeks were wet before I realized I was crying, and I pushed the tears away angrily. I've had relationships in the group that I cared about, relationships that moved me. Jackson, Monica, Maria Elena, Laney, and Annie, among others. But as passionate as those relationships were, they were always destined to end. It was built into the Sullivanian structure. I knew Ollie was right. I had no future in the group. It was adapt or leave. After almost five years, leaving behind no strong friendships, with no allies to bind me, seeing only closed doors in my future if I stayed. I left the group without fancare or goodbyes. Stan had wanted me to come in for one more session, but what could he possibly say that I hadn't heard before. Sometime in 1978, the Fourth Wall signed a lease at the Truck and Warehouse Theater in the East Village. When the previous company refused to leave the theater, hundreds of Sullivaniens were told to come down and do what was necessary. The group took over the stage, destroying sets, and eventually occupied the theater. Saul wanted to teach members how to stand up to the police and be confrontational and ordered the doors to be barricaded, leading to three arrests, as reported by the Daily News. On November 18, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan of California and several of his party were shot on the airfield in Guiana in what became known as the Jonestown Massacre. Jonestown brought cult culture into the common language of the day, into the mainstream. The Cult Awareness Network, a group aimed at deprogramming members of cults, was formed soon after the Jonestown's deaths. Realizing the Sullivanians were a cult was, to use a word from the Sullivanian lexicon, validating. March 28, 1979, a partial meltdown of reactor number two of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania, and the subsequent radiation leaked caused an irreversible panic among the group elite, dangerously altering the trajectory of the group until its demise years later. Though the first reports downplayed the seriousness of the accident, as the afternoon wore on and the truth was revealed, a macabre hush blanketed the streets of Manhattan. The governor of Pennsylvania ordered the evacuation of all pregnant women and school-age children within a five-mile radius of TMI. I tried to reach the two group apartments I cleaned for to say I wasn't coming without success. I tried repeatedly for ten days with no answer and without contact from anyone. On day 11, I decided to use the key I had been given and see for myself what was going on and hopefully get some answers. The moment I opened the apartment door, the combined odor of sour milk and urine hit me in the gut like a fist. The kitchen was the sauce. It was a mess. Plates encrusted with rancid food sat on the table, and the sink was piled high with dirty dishes. It looked as though everyone had been obliterated, right in the middle of eating. You could almost hear the forks dropping to the floor where they lay on the soiled newspapers. Several glassy-eyed dogs appeared from hiding, starved for human contact and food. I held my breath and hurriedly poured out some dry food and refilled several pots with water. There was no note and no money, and I left, spooked by the scene. Two days later, I was finally contacted. My services were no longer needed. I was told to drop off the keys with the doorman and there would be an envelope waiting. However, the second apartment, a brownstone on West 89th Street, asked me to drop off the keys. As I climbed the stairs, surprised I hadn't been blindfolded, I couldn't help but notice the strange goings-on taking place. Television monitors had been installed in the pantry. The screens were flashing barometer, wind, precipitation readings repeatedly. LA, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, and New York. More than 250 members flew down to Orlando, Florida, and set up a stronghold at Howard Johnson's. It was crazy down there. While the leadership was strategy planning around the pool, the collective members of the group, not knowing when or if they would be returning to New York, were doing anything to calm their anxiety. Drinking, Valium, and group sex. When the all clear was given, members were instructed to call their jobs and lie to their employers, saying they had to help a sick relative who just happened to live in Florida. How else could they have accounted for the tan? Most members were able to adapt, but there was one notable exception. It seemed TMI and its aftermath were too much for Alex Bergman, who joined the group as I was getting out. His roommate found Alex overdosed on Valium and liquor, and unable to rouse him, carried him to the street and into a taxi. Alex's stomach was pumped in the Mount Sinai emergency room where he was questioned by a psychiatrist. He did the unthinkable. He broke group security, beginning with the secret phone calls and the whispered voices and all future plans. Alex related the events of the past eleven days. He told them about the group exodus, about house meetings and sessions around the pool. He named names, he gave details. The doctors wanted to commit him for observation until his roommate corroborated his story and assumed responsibility. It was after two in the morning when they got home from the hospital. Ten minutes later the phone rang. It was Saul. And he said, Because they had endangered the continued existence of the group and the Institute, they had one hour to pack and leave the premises. In an instant, they lost their living situation, their therapist, and their friends, and all contact with the group. In the aftermath, a secret steel-lined bunker with quarter-inch plates was built at the camp so that Joan Harvey could edit her film without interference from the CIA. A fleet of school buses and motorcycles were acquired in case of a similar dire emergency. And an escape route that included the leadership's children transported in off-road motorcycles and an emergency communication system were created. Every member had to comply. Providing personal contact information for every hour of the day. This became the new norm. Escape from Utopia laid bare the cloistered world of the Sullivanians. It recounted the escape from the group by a former Sullivanian clinical psychologist, Kay, and her 10-month-old daughter. Marriage was allowed for insurance purposes, but monogamy was strictly forbidden. Soon after the birth of her child, Kay, was told she was too possessive and behaving too much like she was part of a family. The father, M, a medical doctor she had married, she thought, for love, and who was Saul's patient, agreed with him. Kay was allowed visits mainly for breastfeeding, but when the infant was taken away and breastfeeding was stopped, cold turkey at Saul's whim. Infants were taken away from their natural mothers and placed in group nurseries looked after by babysitters. Kay's movements were continually monitored by her therapist and roommates, and she was threatened with expulsion and told to commit suicide rather than be mother to her child. Kay silently resisted, hired bodyguards, and a lawyer who helped orchestrate her escape, and she went into hiding. On the day of the custody hearing, the judge was informed cars were circling the courthouse with Sullivanian group members communicating to one another on walkie-talkies. Four months later, the same village voice reporters, in a new article, outlined two more custody battles in the courts, this time from two fathers. As a result, the Attorney General and the New York State Educations Department Office of Professional Discipline opened investigation into the Sullivanians' fourth wall activities. These custody cases blew apart the spurious and incestuous world of Saul Newton and the Sullivanians. Joan Harvey continued to write plays charged with thinly veiled Sullivanian tenants that were aimed at luring in new members with the promise of a utopian communal lifestyle. Seats were filled by distributing free tickets, and all the performers were unpaid members of the Sullivan Institute. Reviewers cited the plays as impossible to sit through with little complexity or aesthetic originality. According to a 1989 New York magazine article, on the evening of July 29th, 1985, members of the Sullivanians broke into the apartment at 100th Street and Broadway over a property dispute. Dressed in dark colors and stocking caps, some beat the tenants with sticks while others slid open mattresses and cracked apart the sink, toilet, and television set. The complaining tenant was beaten by more than a dozen cult members. He already had a history of physical violence, and this escalated after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He was gradually removed from the leadership of the community, and membership rapidly declined. By the time of his death on December 23rd, 1991, Newton was alleged to have attempted to seduce several children. It took me years to unravel the effects of the group and find the confidence I had before surrendering my autonomy to the Sullivanian hive. It took me years before I reconnected with my family. Lingering fear kept me away and the shame I felt for abandoning my mother when she needed me most, and the fear that I would not be welcomed back. My Aunt Sylvia was the conduit. She accepted me back unconditionally, and I was invited to my nephew's barmitzva. Afterwards, I reconnected with my family. On the way home, I purchased a Yersid candle and placed it near the window and struck a match for my mother. The Sulovanians are largely forgotten now, except for the members. Who survived the sexual, emotional, psychological, and financial control of the Institute and its therapies?