The Sullivanians
Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune
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- ¥1,500
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FINALIST FOR THE 2024 GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE
The devolution of the Sullivan Institute, from psychoanalytic organization to insular, radical cult.
In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from the expectations of society, and the revolution, they felt, needed to begin at home. Dismantling the nuclear family—and monogamous marriage—would free people from the repressive forces of their parents. In its first two decades, the movement attracted many brilliant, creative people as patients: the painter Jackson Pollock and a swarm of other abstract expressionist artists, the famed art critic Clement Greenberg, the singer Judy Collins, and the dancer Lucinda Childs. In the 1960s, the group evolved into an urban commune of three or four hundred people, with patients living with other patients, leading creative, polyamorous lives.
But by the mid-1970s, under the leadership of Saul Newton, the Institute had devolved from a radical communal experiment into an insular cult, with therapists controlling virtually every aspect of their patients’ lives, from where they lived and the work they did to how often they saw their sexual partners and their children. Although the group was highly secretive during its lifetime and even after its dissolution in 1991, the noted journalist Alexander Stille has succeeded in reconstructing the inner life of a parallel world hidden in plain sight in the middle of Manhattan. Through countless interviews and personal papers, The Sullivanians reveals the nearly unbelievable story of a fallen utopia.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Stille (Excellent Cadavers) takes an intimate and engrossing look at the Sullivan Institute, a radical polygamous therapy group that emerged in 1950s New York City and Amagansett, Long Island. Named for Harry Stack Sullivan, a mental health pioneer who challenged traditional family values, and founded in 1957 by married therapists—and avowed communists—Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, the institute aimed to "champion repressed desires" by encouraging patients to "experiment sexually, trust their impulses, and break free of family dependency relationships." Celebrity followers included novelists Richard Elman and Richard Price, singer Judy Collins, and art critic Clement Greenberg, who recruited painters Jackson Pollock and James Olitski. In 1975, some members launched a political theater group, The Fourth Wall Repertory Company, that was eventually taken over by Newton and his fifth wife, actor Joan Harvey, and became a vehicle for reinforcing Newton's "personality cult" and asserting his "autocratic" control over the community. Drawing on candid interviews with ex-members and their children, Stille documents how Newton and his wives seduced patients, promoted alcohol and promiscuity, and raised children communally. Eventually, a series of custody battles between defectors and members—coupled with Newton's advancing dementia and violent behavior—led to the institute's dissolution in 1991. Doggedly researched and thoroughly compassionate, this is a page-turning exposé.
