VOLUME 13 |ISSUE 3 |2022 27
Book Review
Manhattan Cult Story: My
Unbelievable True Story of
Sex, Crimes, Chaos,
and Survival
By Spencer Schneider
Arcade, July 5, 2022. ISBN-10: 1950994554 ISBN-13:
978-1950994557. Hardcover, 264 pages, $15.95 (Kindle,
$17.99 also available as an Audiobook), Amazon.com
Reviewed by Donna Lamb
I was so gripped by this memoir I practically inhaled it in about
two days. One reason was personal: I spent thirty-two years
in a similar, though not secret, group—highly intellectual,
philosophical, and educational—headquartered in SoHo,
just one neighborhood to the east of Tribeca where Spencer
Schneider attended Sharon Gans’ “School.” I’m in the process
of writing my own memoir about my experience in the cult
of Aesthetic Realism, founded by Eli Siegel. Therefore, I know
just how difficult it is to do what Schneider has done: Explain
cogently for people who haven’t “been there, done that,” how
you get drawn into a cult (not realizing it is one, of course)
what keeps you there despite incredible mental, emotional,
and, in some cases, physical abuse (still thinking it’s all to make
you a better person or create a better world) and what finally
breaks the cult’s hold on you, brings you to your senses, and
gets you out. Truly, my hat is off to Schneider for having the
emotional courage, generosity of spirit, and skill to write such
a book, so that his twenty-three-year ordeal can benefit other
people’s lives.
Over the last few years, I’ve read many excellent exposés
by people who escaped cultic groups. The majority have
been about ultra-religious establishments, what could be
called hippie-type groups, or organizations that looked and
sounded peculiar in some obvious way—the stereotype of
what most people think of as a cult. One thing that makes
Schneider’s memoir useful is that it is about a cult that does
not outwardly fit the popular conception. That is partially due
to the fact that the Sharon Gans’ cult maintained the deepest
secrecy. There was no clearly identifiable personal or public
proselytizing that would tip someone off to what it was and
warn them away. Perhaps even more important, due to the
group’s terrifyingly well-honed recruitment methods, the
people in it were intelligent, well-educated, highly successful
individuals—doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, architects, and
multiple other well-respected professionals—all of whom
looked and behaved perfectly “normal,” according to our
society’s standards.
In Schneider’s telling, the Gans’ group “fished” (and is still
fishing under another name) for candidates who fit certain
criteria. His description of these criteria, based on notes he
took during his own training, is important because he not
only makes them explicit, but explains the reasoning behind
them. I paraphrase some of the points in what he calls “the
‘Recruitment Manual’” (pp. 91-92).1 Qualified candidates, he
says, should be:
• Between twenty-five and forty because “they are
already somewhat established in life but are not
crystalized or set in ways which are hard to change.”
*Gainfully employed, earning at least $100,000
annually. “No losers allowed.”
• White and straight, for, as Sharon Gans put it, “People
of color and gay people tend to have a ‘chip on their
shoulder’ and are skeptical and unwilling to be open
to the Work.” (In some cases, a gay person will be
considered if they are open to being converted to a
straight life and getting married to someone in the
group of the opposite sex.)
• Not already involved in any religious, spiritual, or
other groups because School should be “their prime
place for spirituality. The Work is a jealous mistress.
No dabblers.” Nor does the group want anyone who
is in therapy, uses drugs, or is disabled because
“these people are damaged goods. Sharon does
not have the energy to help them.” Also excluded is
anyone who is employed as a journalist, author, or in
any kind of law enforcement—or has a member of
their immediate family in one of these professions—
because they “tend to be curious or nosy by nature
and it could pose a risk to the invisibility of School. If
someone wrote about School, it would kill it.” And no
candidate can be living with a parent or sibling.
And Schneider articulates one of the most frequent
circumstances in which people are attracted to cultic groups:
Candidates must be “disappointed” in their life
or at a crossroads and looking for answers. This
…due to the group’s
terrifyingly well-honed
recruitment methods, the people in
it were intelligent, well-educated,
highly successful individuals…

ICSA TODAY 28
is probably the most crucial qualification. The
candidate needs to be unhappy or dissatisfied
about something important in their life and looking
for answers, meaning, and help. Not despairing, but
disappointed: empty. (p. 91)
In his description of how he became involved, Schneider does
us a great service: he traces explicitly the steps by which he
was pulled in. In 1989 at the age of twenty-nine, Schneider
was working as a corporate lawyer at a Park Avenue law firm.
The twelve-hour days and long weekends doing grunt work
to help large corporations had nothing to do with the noble
Atticus Finch-type work he had envisioned himself as doing
when he chose the profession. And even though it had been
four years since his father died, he was still grappling with his
grief over that loss. Most of his closest friends were getting
married and moving to the suburbs. Even though he lived in
a fine Greenwich Village apartment, had all the wonders of
Manhattan at his fingertips, and earned a salary many would
envy, he felt isolated, bored, and lonely.
When an acquaintance he calls Bruce first told him about the
School’s existence and invited him to a class, Schneider was
skeptical and even said it sounded cultish. However, Bruce
assured him it was the farthest thing from a cult: People were
free to come and go all he needed to do was commit to a
one-month experiment. After that first free month, tuition
was only $300 per month.
Schneider decided to check it out, more out of curiosity than
any serious interest. As he found out, School was based on the
philosophy of G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, two Russian
mystics who cobbled together several Eastern and Western
spiritual theories. The theory of “the Work” or “Fourth Way” as
it was called, was that with the assistance of a teacher within
a school setting, a student could achieve, through many years
of sustained effort, a high level of self-awareness that would
transform their life.
Schneider writes that he found the first class he attended
almost impossible to follow, and he left rather unimpressed.
What happened next is, again, a frequent recruitment method
of cultic groups. It is unlikely he would have returned if he
hadn’t gotten a phone call the next day from a man whom
he calls Morton, a “friend” from School, who said he would
be Schneider’s sustainer. He explained that a sustainer is an
older student with whom a new student would be able to
talk outside of class, one on one, about everything discussed
in class, the readings they would be doing, and anything else
the new student wished to talk about regarding himself.
For the next year and a half, Morton called Schneider every
single day. Schneider had never had anyone take such an
interest in him before. Very soon, he became dependent
on Morton’s calls, in which Morton never told him anything
about himself they only spoke about Schneider and his
problems. He revealed everything about his life to Morton—
not knowing that Morton was reporting every word back to
Sharon Gans.
Schneider began looking forward to classes. He had a
bachelor’s degree in philosophy, and the classes provided
some of the intellectual rigor he had missed after his college
days. They read and talked about ideas, ideologies, and ways
of life. He also thought that some of the teachings of the Work
seemed helpful, such as self-observation, the act of trying to
step back and see what thoughts, emotions, and sensations
he was experiencing at any given moment.
Almost immediately, in classic cult fashion, Schneider
began spending less time with any of his old friends and
his family, all of whom he came to see as less important
than his “essence friends,” as the people in the cult referred
to themselves. After all, he wasn’t allowed to speak about
School and the Work with anyone outside, plus he thought
they wouldn’t understand even if he did. He was being drawn
deeper into the cult’s magical thinking, such as believing that
School protected him from the “pain factory” of life and that
every positive event in his life was the direct result of being in
School. Conversely, anything bad that happened to him was
because he wasn’t yet sufficiently proficient at the Work.
It was only after having attended school for a while that
Schneider actually saw Sharon Gans for the first time. His first
impression of her was that she looked “positively nuts.” She
had a “wild mane of Halloween-orange hair” piled high atop
her head, wore a flowing black dress with a silk scarf, and
was bedecked with jewelry. However, influenced by others’
adulation of her, he soon fell under her spell:
We revered our teacher—whose name we were
forbidden to utter outside her presence—referred
to simply as “S.” There she was, upstairs in the Space,
recumbent on her leather recliner, surrounded by
sixty of us seated on white stackable metal chairs,
hanging on every one of her words. ...We weren’t
engrossed—we were transfixed, under her total
command. We felt her brilliance, her emanations,
her love (or wrath), her ferocity, her power. (p. 14)
Because he describes so successfully the external and internal
dynamics through which someone becomes a devotee, the
reader is able to believe the result:
For S we would do anything. She gave us detailed
directions on how to live our lives. ...Where to
In his description of how he became
involved, Schneider does us a great
service: he traces explicitly the steps
by which he was pulled in.