Sullivanians

An in-depth, rigorous volume of investigative reporting, The Sullivanians reveals the shocking true story of the Sullivan Institute, a psychoanalytic organization of artists and intellectuals that devolved into a dangerous cult on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

In the spring of 1975, Saul Newton and Joan Harvey acquired an enormous townhouse on Manhattan's Upper West Side, to serve as the headquarters of the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis. Over the next fifteen years, groups of therapists and patients, children and adults, lived in the house, and hundreds of other members occupied apartments and houses nearby. The Institute devolved from a radical communal living experiment into an insular, malevolent cult.

The Institute's purported aim was to counteract the negative impact of parenting on children; the founders believed that dismantling the nuclear family system would free kids from the repressive forces of their parents. The founders wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from the expectations of society, and the revolution needed to begin at home. Under Newton's leadership, children were separated from their parents, patients were forced into sexual partnerships, and members were abused by those at the top.

In The Sullivanians, noted journalist and award-winning author Alexander Stille brilliantly investigates how a changing culture of adventure and iconoclasm that began with the artists of abstract expressionism developed into a machine of alienation and oppression. Through countless interviews with former group members and research through personal papers, Stille reveals the nearly unbelievable story of a fallen utopia in the heart of New York City.

Includes black-and-white images