By the time singer Judy Collins quit therapy with the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, she was calling it a cult. Hard-drinking patient Jackson Pollock certainly wasn't helped by the institute's attitude that alcohol consumption fueled creativity. In The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune, Alexander Stille investigates how this misbegotten alternative community racked up hundreds of patients, many of considerable accomplishment. The book is a stealthy and spellbinding cautionary tale with notes of melodrama, tragedy, and horror story.
Manhattan's Sullivan Institute, which existed from 1957 to 1991, was cofounded by Jane Pearce, who was a trained psychoanalyst, and her then-husband, Saul Newton, who was not. Patients were expected to sever ties with their families because, according to Sullivanian thinking, the family was toxic. Sullivanians lived polygamously, its women discouraged from having kids; the kids they did have were usually raised by in-house babysitters or sent to boarding school. Therapists freely slept with their patients, and predatory director Newton operated as the institute's Harvey Weinstein.
Stille (The Force of Things) laces his portrait with insights pulled from his conversations with former Sullivanians, most (not all) of whom look back bitterly. The Sullivanians will leave readers with an unsettling appreciation for how easy it is to embrace ideologies that justify irresponsible and cruel behavior (excessive drinking, extramarital cheating, avoiding the kids). As the adult daughter of former Sullivanian parents puts it, "the Sullivanian dogma fit in quite nicely with what they already wanted to hear." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer