22 ICSA TODAY
• In time, can I free myself from continual rumination
and allow myself to move on—again, for my own sake?
To improve your life, you might consider participation in
therapy, where you can learn the multiple meanings of your
anger and acquire different strategies to help you gain more
control over this powerful emotion.
You cannot change your past. But by increasing your
understanding of that past and allowing for all the complex
emotions that you begin to feel after you leave the cult, you
might, in time, be able to change the way you live your life today.
Part 2:
Understanding Intention (by Ann Stamler)
My parents were both children of immigrant families. They were
artists who left their homes in a New York suburb to pursue
their art in Greenwich Village. They met each other and began
studying with Eli Siegel, a poet and philosopher in the Village,
as the United States was becoming engaged in the Second
World War. In fact, my father was on a troop carrier off Normandy
waiting to land in the Allied invasion that helped end the war
when I was born. He did not meet me till I was about a year and
a half old.
In the years after World War II, my parents were part of an
American era called the “period of adjustment,” when soldiers
returned from war to wives and children they barely knew
and tried to pick up lives in a postwar world. Some of my early
memories are of listening from my bedroom late at night as my
parents called Siegel on the telephone to mediate the fierce
arguments the two of them had that almost tore our family
apart.
Siegel’s basic philosophy, which he called Aesthetic Realism (AR),
was that art contained the answers to life problems. In personal
sessions he talked about how what made a poem or painting
beautiful could help people understand their families and also
world events. I think his teaching offered my parents a sense of
rationality and hope in a frightening and tumultuous time in the
world and their own lives. Siegel was not yet, as far as I know,
the demanding narcissist he later became, claiming that he had
discovered the Truth sought by man throughout history. As he
moved in that direction, my parents were caught up by their
early commitment and their sense of indebtedness to him, which
I think blinded them to his growing irrationality.
As I grew up, my mother led efforts to promote Siegel’s
philosophy. She started an art gallery near Greenwich Village
with exhibitions illustrating Siegel’s theory of beauty and public
readings of his work. At one point, she had an exhibition of her
own paintings in the gallery. The New York art critics praised her
paintings, but belittled Siegel they basically said she was better
than Siegel’s philosophy, and that she needed to detach herself
from him in order to get ahead. She realized she had to make a
choice between promoting Siegel and advancing her career as
an artist. She chose to be loyal to Siegel. To me she seemed noble
and courageous. I admired her, almost to the point of worship.
Yet, even though my mother was such an outspoken supporter,
Siegel treated her in ways I could not understand. He would
criticize her scathingly in front of other students. He once
made her read a statement in public about all the ways she had
failed him. He even told her that her efforts in his behalf were
motivated by guilt. When she wanted to start the Aesthetic
Realism Foundation, which she actually did, and which still exits,
he told her it was a substitute for showing her gratitude to him.
What confused me was that she seemed to accept his harshness
as if it were deserved. She seemed to have an underlying
sense that she was inferior. Whenever she spoke about her
childhood, she chose sad incidents that reflected on her family as
suffering. She did grow up during the Depression, and her family
struggled—but they owned their home, her father worked, and
her two younger sisters who faced the same adversity had a
much more positive attitude to life.
To some extent I internalized Siegel’s attitudes and excoriated my
mother for being ungrateful to him. But I also felt, though I could
never say this, that she was horribly mistreated—after all, she
had done more than almost anyone else in his behalf.
At times when Siegel was criticizing me most fiercely, and I
was miserable, I could tell that my mother struggled between
agreeing with him and wanting to protect me. I actually
sometimes had a sense that she was more sympathetic to me
than supportive of him.
During the years just before and after Siegel died, I began to
recognize that people around me, even those I had grown up
alongside, were acting more and more like a cult. There were
meetings about how to protect our school and its beliefs from a
hostile press. People attending public readings of Siegel’s work
were often screened before they could come through the door.
We assumed anyone who criticized Siegel was really driven by
envy of his greatness and wanting to destroy it. Control over our
everyday lives, our work, our families, where we lived, and whom
we talked to was absolute.
I sometimes shared with my mother my feeling that people were
acting irrationally, and she agreed with me. She was a skeptical
…I still find it hard to
accept that she would
renounce the bond we
shared for all those years.
…did she really lose any
sense, however buried, of
the outside world?

23 VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 3 |2018
woman, some would say cynical sharp and savvy in business
and I knew she was often exasperated by how people’s praise of
Siegel seemed unmoored from any critical thought.
During those years, two women Siegel had praised rose in the
ranks to pretty much take over management of the group and
the Foundation. They were forcing my mother out as director of
the Foundation and editor of Siegel’s books. She and I together
were pariahs because we did not jump on the bandwagon of the
new leaders. They put us both through hell. But as beaten as she
was, my mother held on to the belief that Siegel had understood
her as an artist, and that she therefore owed her life to him.
There was an AR term for people who had misgivings. It was
called “having two stories,” which meant, in AR-speak, we were
grateful for what we were learning from Siegel, but we were
ashamed to receive such great wisdom from someone without
credentials and degrees that would reflect well on us. There was
no such thing as valid criticism of the philosophy or its teacher
if you knew it, you saw its greatness. Either we were grateful, or
we wanted to “kill our gratitude.” We were constantly exhorted to
“make up our minds.”
A few days after I left my letter of resignation at the Foundation
and was not answering the phone in my apartment, I heard my
mother on my answering machine say to my father, “I’ve had two
stories for so long that now that I have one, she doesn’t believe
me.”
My parents had told me that, if I left, they would treat me as any
other person who left and they did exactly that. They cut off
communication. A few months later, my mother shipped me a
carton of belongings I had stored in their loft. When I met her
on the street, shortly before I married, I put my arms around her
and said how glad I was to see her. She stiffened like a board and
walked away. Some years later she shipped me a box filled with
all the photos she had of me.
In the first years after I walked away, as I was building a very
different (and successful) life, I continued to believe that
though she had to toe the line outwardly, inwardly my mother
recognized the difference between the group’s world and the real
world. We had agreed so explicitly on how cultish the group had
become. I also thought the deep bond we had had for more than
40 years, including those final years of terrible shared pain, had to
still be alive.
At the same time, I knew how her mind would work defending
the philosophy because, for so many years, my mind had worked
exactly the same way. I had had the same internal mindset. She
would hear anything I might say through her filter: not what I
said, but a version of what I said that justified her predetermined
answer. I knew all the logic. Though I did write her some letters
in which I talked about my life now, and the harm I felt had been
done, I did not try hard to persuade her because it could not work.
My parents were very close. Part of their bond was that they were
both artists, and they respected each other’s art. Also, though they
had difficult years and fights that almost drove them apart, they
stood together to defend their beliefs against their own families
and an art community hostile to Siegel and his philosophy.
My mother was deeply tied to my father she was also deeply tied
to me. My father and I had a subtle but definite tug of war over
my mother’s loyalty. This is certainly not unique to a cult-engaged
family. But when I left, my mother had to make a choice, and
given all they had been through together, I am not surprised she
chose my father. He gave her an anchor in the only life she had
known for 45 years.
As the years went on, after she spent 50, 60, 70 years in the
movement, and then after my father died, I knew it would be
almost impossible for her to leave it. I know how much my
mind has had to change and is still changing after decades in a
normal life. As she reached her 90s, she woke every day knowing
realistically she might die tomorrow. Even if she wanted to, she
didn’t have the time or space to build a new life.
One day last October, a cousin called me to tell me that, early that
morning, my mother had died. She had remained active, walking
from her Soho loft to the Foundation to give classes, and was,
according to relatives, as sharp at 97 as they or I.
I had been thinking about this day for many years. I thought it
would be incredibly difficult. I did not know what I would feel.
I kept watching for some kind of notice to be published by the
group, if not in The New York Times, at least on their website. My
mother had been a pioneer, a leader, a teacher, a supporter for
longer than most of them were alive. I began thinking about
posting something myself: What would I say? A few weeks later, I
posted a notice on Facebook that said, in part,
A woman of great natural compassion, integrity, courage
and wisdom, my mother spent 75 years of her long life, until
the day she died, promoting the ideas of Aesthetic Realism,
and trying to prove herself worthy of its leader….
…
In her devotion to Siegel and his ideas she sacrificed her
own ambitions, her ties to family, critical recognition as an
artist during her lifetime. He was relentless demanding more
from her, and she was tireless trying to give it to him.
I have missed her for many years. Though she caused pain
to her parents, her sisters, me, I understand that she thought
she was being true to something beautiful. I once thought
that way too.
I will never forgive those who caused my mother to stifle her
natural warmth and live in a prison of the mind. She is free
of that now. May history be kinder to her than she was to
herself. She deserved more.
Trying to understand what motivated my mother’s choices and
decisions has definitely helped me act in my own self-interest
and establish firmer boundaries that are healthy for my life. But
while I accept the difficulty posed by her history and the length of
time she was involved, I still find it hard to accept that she would
renounce the bond we shared for all those years. In the time since
I left, did she really lose any sense, however buried, of the outside
world? How much did she struggle between her attachment to
me and her devotion to Siegel? Did she really think, as she wrote
me once, that I was a traitor, like Brutus, who killed Julius Caesar,