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The worst potential of narcissism, for which we reserve the term ―malignant,‖ was
fortunately not realized by Freud, whose work, in spite of his imperial tendencies and many
serious mistakes, has nevertheless been profoundly generative. But because the
psychotherapist is a potent transference figure—not quite a parent, not quite an Oracle, not
quite God Almighty, but, for many patients, something like all three—it is within our power,
if our power goes unchecked, to gain almost total control over our patients, or a group of
patients, and, in the name of psychotherapy and with the power invested in us, to abuse,
exploit, and enslave them in every conceivable way. That is precisely what happened when,
in 1957, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce began training therapists in what they called the
Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, later described in their book, written
primarily by Pearce, The Conditions of Human Growth (1963). Aside from a New York
magazine article (Black, 1975) and a Village Voice article (Conason &McGarrahan, 1986),
little has been written of the Sullivanians, until recently.
Amy B. Siskind, raised within the Sullivanian community and now a sociologist, has adapted
her Ph.D. dissertation into the first published book about the Sullivan Institute. Siskind does
not provide a tell-all personal account of her own experience as the child of a Sullivanian
patient, nor does she provide a psychological analysis of the dynamics of the group, its
leaders and followers. What she does present is a thorough sociological-historical account of
the group, its leaders, and its practices, as well as excerpts of accounts of the experiences
of former members. The publication of Siskind‘s book presents the psychoanalytic
community with an opportunity (although the opportunity has been there for quite some
time) to confront and try to make sense of some of the most egregious professional
violations and abuses ever to have occurred in the name of psychoanalysis. This review of
Siskind‘s book is a preliminary effort in that direction.
As Siskind tells the story, Jane Pearce, a psychiatrist who studied with Harry Stack Sullivan
in the late ‗40s, met Saul Newton in the early ‗50s at the William Alanson White Institute,
where he worked in the bursar‘s office. Newton had no degree and no formal training. He
was a charismatic confabulator, who convinced people who knew him that he had fought
with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Revolution. In fact, he had not been a
soldier at all, but a payroll clerk. Newton and Pearce married, and together they sought to
extend and elaborate Sullivan‘s ideas. They were particularly disappointed that Sullivan‘s
critique of society and family norms hadn‘t gone far enough. Dissatisfied with the White
Institute and seeking full control of an institute of their own, they permanently severed their
ties to White. Like many others swept up in the counterculture revolution of the ‗60s,
Newton and Pearce sought to create a community, like a Puritan city on a hill, whose
members would disdain decadent bourgeois conformity and convention, and reach superior
psychological status (and, by implication, superior moral status) through radical processes
of regression, corrective experience, and personality restructuring. The hidden problem with
many of these kinds of personal growth and self-realization projects is that they can often
degenerate into an attempt, for leaders and followers, to gain power so as to compensate
for a sense of impotence. Things go very wrong in these groups when narcissism runs
amok, and when omnipotence, as opposed to power, becomes the unconscious goal. In
such cases, these groups develop delusions of superiority accompanied by self-righteous
justifications for scapegoating, dominating, and controlling others.
Before cataloging some of the practices of the Sullivanian community, I want to emphasize,
for those who may not know, that these things did not happen, for example, in a
fundamentalist, apocalyptic, UFO, or other cultic group in the deep south or the remote west
of the United States, far from the reach of progressive contemporary cultural and
intellectual influence, and from the culture of psychoanalysis. This story took place on the
Upper West Side of New York City, involving a population of middle class, liberal, college-
educated artists, professionals, academics, and intellectuals—many of whom were notable

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in their professions, and several quite famous. At the group‘s peak in the 1970's and ‗80's,
Siskind describes how hundreds of patients lived communally in large apartments and saw
their therapists several times a week. The second-tier therapists were current and former
patients of Newton‘s and the other founding leaders. The patients saw the senior and junior
therapists not just for therapy, but also at meetings, classes, legendary parties in the
Hamptons with plenty of drugs and alcohol, and in bed. Patients were told to spend as little
time as possible with anyone not in the group and to carefully schedule every minute of
their time to be with other group members. They were encouraged to never sleep alone, to
experiment and sleep with anyone and everyone in the group. They were taught that
families, and especially mothers, are toxic. Pressured to cut off contact with families of
origin, they were told that if they did not, they would likely become hopelessly mentally ill
and end in suicide. Patients were discouraged from marriage, and some mothers in the
group were persuaded to have their children raised by others in the group. In the 70s,
parents were expected to send their children to boarding school as soon as they could afford
to, so as to have as little contact with their own children as possible, and thus not poison
their child‘s development.
Much of the above was justified on the theoretical premise, derived from Sullivan‘s work,
that infants react to their mother‘s anxiety, viewed as being cultural in origin, by restricting
their own development, by splitting up the self into good me, bad me, and not me parts.
Children raised by unconscious, overly anxious parents, according to Newton and Pearce,
contributed to the endless perpetuation of a sick society, a culture of convention and
malaise. Up to this point, many of us might, to some extent, agree. What made Newton and
Pearce‘s execution of their theory particularly destructive was the quality of disavowed
hatred and contempt in their scapegoating of parents, which they insisted their patients
share, and which they effectively disguised, even from themselves, as zeal for therapeutic
transformation and social reform. Disavowing their hatred and rage, they were blinded by it,
dissociatively unaware of the obvious: that planning to reform and liberate society at large
by psychologically enslaving a group of people, calling them patients, exploiting them
financially, emotionally, and sexually, and controlling and directing every move they make,
is sheer madness, plain and simple.
As the group grew in size, Siskind chronicles how it became ever more paranoid and
coercive. A former actress named Joan Harvey became Newton‘s wife after he divorced
Pearce, and Harvey created a political theater group called the Fourth Wall, which became
the chief activity of the group in its latter years. Now community members not only had to
support the therapists, but to support a theater as well, and demands on members for
contributing money and participating in group activities increased to the point that members
barely had four hours a night for sleep. The Three Mile Island nuclear reactor crisis, and
then the advent of AIDS, became flash points for further panic, demands, and restrictions.
Siskind‘s portrayal of the group‘s reactions to these events is particularly chilling, as she
describes how the typical dynamics of an apocalyptic cult came into play.i As with
apocalyptic groups in general, the failure of Newton‘s and Harvey‘s dire predictions about
nuclear devastation and germ warfare triggered a deepening of their paranoia and the
florescence of their underlying psychosis. By the time it all started winding down for the
Sullivanians, Newton was alleged to have attempted to seduce several children, including
his own daughters. Splits among the leaders, now numbering even more ex-husbands and
ex-wives, and finally Newton‘s death, were the last nails in the group‘s coffin.
In the space permitted, I have been able only to scratch the surface in describing the
innumerable abuses perpetrated on the followers of this group. Siskind‘s book is valuable
not just for clarifying the nature of these abuses, but for many reasons, not the least of
which is that the accounts of followers whom she quotes puts a human face on the suffering
caused by these abuses. Their testimony should be heard. As is often the case, it is all too