International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 5, 2014 45
Pathological Psychoanalysis: An Insider’s View of the Sullivanian/Fourth
Wall Psychotherapy Community
Amy B. Siskind
Abstract
This account focuses on the four therapists I had
during the 21 years that I was involved with the
Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall community. I
have been out of the community for 28 years.
My experiences with each therapist were very
different and occurred at different stages of my
life within the group. I recount in this paper
both how I experienced and was influenced by
these therapists while I was in the group and my
later reflections after I had left the group. My
narrative focuses on both the therapists’ positive
and negative influences in my own life and in the
lives of others.1
Brief Description of the Sullivan Institute/
Fourth Wall Community
The Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall community
(referred to by members as “the group”) slowly
evolved around the analysts and patients of the
Sullivan Institute, a psychoanalytic institute
founded in New York City in 1957. The
founders viewed this enterprise as an attempt to
build upon the theories and clinical work of
Harry Stack Sullivan. Sullivan was a well-
known American psychiatrist and
psychoanalytic theorist who lived from 1892 to
1949 he was one of the founders of the William
Alanson White Institute in New York City and
the Washington School of Psychiatry in
Washington, DC. Jane Pearce, MD, who, along
with her husband, Saul Newton, founded the
Sullivan Institute, was a former student of
Sullivan.
Newton was not a psychotherapist by training
he had been an active member of the Communist
Party of the United States, and he claimed to
1 I use pseudonyms to refer to the therapists I mention who were
not among the leadership of the Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall
Community. I give the names in full of those in leadership roles.
The rationale for this distinction is that, while I do not feel the need
to protect the leaders of the community from exposure, I prefer not
to mention the names of those who were not completely in control
of the situation.
have fought in the Spanish Civil War with the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He held an
administrative position at the William Alanson
White Institute. Pearce and Newton attempted
to integrate Marxist and psychoanalytic theories
with regard to developmental psychology and
psychoanalytic theory. Their book, Conditions
of Human Growth, published in 1963 (Citadel
Press), was an explication of their theory.
Pearce and Newton believed that the nuclear
family was the cornerstone of an unhealthy and
selfish society. Specifically, they viewed the
relationship of mothers to their children as the
cause of almost all psychopathology, and also as
the basis of all individual limitations. They
believed the mother to be the first agent of
repression in the individual’s life. Only those
needs of the infant that she responded to would
be met and become conscious—the child would
repress all others. Therefore, in order to enable
children to become healthy adults, Pearce and
Newton deemed it necessary to make radical
changes in the structure of the family and in
child-rearing practices. The Sullivan
Institute/Fourth Wall therapeutic community
was an outgrowth of this ideology. In the
formative years of the community (1957 to
1970), the leadership undertook the creation of
“hitherto unconceived social forms”2 by
advising patients to formally break off contact
with their families of origin, by advising
childless patients not to have children, and by
requiring members who were already parents
either to send their children to boarding schools
or to hire full-time caregivers and housekeepers.
In the later years (1971 to 1992), most children
lived in communal households with one parent
and a group of same-sex roommates. Young
children spent most of their days and nights in
the company of paid caregivers and other
community children.
2 Pearce and Newton, Conditions of Human Growth, 1963 (Citadel
Press), p. 7.
Pathological Psychoanalysis: An Insider’s View of the Sullivanian/Fourth
Wall Psychotherapy Community
Amy B. Siskind
Abstract
This account focuses on the four therapists I had
during the 21 years that I was involved with the
Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall community. I
have been out of the community for 28 years.
My experiences with each therapist were very
different and occurred at different stages of my
life within the group. I recount in this paper
both how I experienced and was influenced by
these therapists while I was in the group and my
later reflections after I had left the group. My
narrative focuses on both the therapists’ positive
and negative influences in my own life and in the
lives of others.1
Brief Description of the Sullivan Institute/
Fourth Wall Community
The Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall community
(referred to by members as “the group”) slowly
evolved around the analysts and patients of the
Sullivan Institute, a psychoanalytic institute
founded in New York City in 1957. The
founders viewed this enterprise as an attempt to
build upon the theories and clinical work of
Harry Stack Sullivan. Sullivan was a well-
known American psychiatrist and
psychoanalytic theorist who lived from 1892 to
1949 he was one of the founders of the William
Alanson White Institute in New York City and
the Washington School of Psychiatry in
Washington, DC. Jane Pearce, MD, who, along
with her husband, Saul Newton, founded the
Sullivan Institute, was a former student of
Sullivan.
Newton was not a psychotherapist by training
he had been an active member of the Communist
Party of the United States, and he claimed to
1 I use pseudonyms to refer to the therapists I mention who were
not among the leadership of the Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall
Community. I give the names in full of those in leadership roles.
The rationale for this distinction is that, while I do not feel the need
to protect the leaders of the community from exposure, I prefer not
to mention the names of those who were not completely in control
of the situation.
have fought in the Spanish Civil War with the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He held an
administrative position at the William Alanson
White Institute. Pearce and Newton attempted
to integrate Marxist and psychoanalytic theories
with regard to developmental psychology and
psychoanalytic theory. Their book, Conditions
of Human Growth, published in 1963 (Citadel
Press), was an explication of their theory.
Pearce and Newton believed that the nuclear
family was the cornerstone of an unhealthy and
selfish society. Specifically, they viewed the
relationship of mothers to their children as the
cause of almost all psychopathology, and also as
the basis of all individual limitations. They
believed the mother to be the first agent of
repression in the individual’s life. Only those
needs of the infant that she responded to would
be met and become conscious—the child would
repress all others. Therefore, in order to enable
children to become healthy adults, Pearce and
Newton deemed it necessary to make radical
changes in the structure of the family and in
child-rearing practices. The Sullivan
Institute/Fourth Wall therapeutic community
was an outgrowth of this ideology. In the
formative years of the community (1957 to
1970), the leadership undertook the creation of
“hitherto unconceived social forms”2 by
advising patients to formally break off contact
with their families of origin, by advising
childless patients not to have children, and by
requiring members who were already parents
either to send their children to boarding schools
or to hire full-time caregivers and housekeepers.
In the later years (1971 to 1992), most children
lived in communal households with one parent
and a group of same-sex roommates. Young
children spent most of their days and nights in
the company of paid caregivers and other
community children.
2 Pearce and Newton, Conditions of Human Growth, 1963 (Citadel
Press), p. 7.
