allaboutcults

[allaboutcults]

The first group I want to talk about it the “Sullivan.”

The Sullivan Institute was founded in 1957 by Saul Newton and his wife Jane Piece and was named after Pierces old teacher, Harry Stack Sullivan, a neo-Freudian psychoanalysis. However, it is believed that the work done by the Sullivan institute was a far more distorted version of what Harry Sullivan taught.

The group started off in Newton and Pieces own town house in upper New York (specifically 332 West 77th Street.) It mainly consisted of other psychiatrists psychoanalyzing eachother.

Now, this doesn’t sound too much like a cult at this point, nor does it sound too sinister (not all cults are evil… but you could lump this one in with that category.) The Sullivan Institute had the idea that nuclear families were the route to all mental illnesses and heavily discouraged permanent couples. They also believed that “the worst thing you can do is raise your own children” which was what Lauren Olitski said was told to her parent, Jules Olitski a patient and painter. The Sullivans would also push folks to cut ties with their families as soon as possible so they could live a free life.

Yeah… so they weren’t a great group to be honest. They heavily believed in polyamory (which is not a bad thing) and straight up not taking care of your kid (which is a bad thing.)

In the 70’s they moved to a larger buildings and their member count was in the several hundreds… however towards the 80’s the group began to die out due to a lot of negative press. This mainly coming from the alleged professional misconduct (wouldn’t doubt it, many women said that Newton sexually harassed them) and a series of custody battles due to them not giving back two kids to their mother, causing her to have to kidnap them. (Which I guess isn’t really kidnapping…)

In 1991 Saul Newton died due to complications with Alzheimer’s. After that, the group kind of… just died. The main building was bought by a Jewish group. Ex members of the group called it a “psychotherapy cult.”

And that’s it pretty much.

Oh and fun fact, Jackson Pollock and Richard Price were patient of this institute. So there’s that.

Hope you liked this post:)) Will try to find much more weirder groups:)))

[allaboutcults]

Howdy! This is the intro to my blog.

My name is David, or Dave for short, and I have a strange fascination with the weirder parts of our history. Specifically, if you couldn’t tell by the name, I want to focus on cults. Not the ones you may be thinking of either. I am not interested in the kind of cults that are only after money, sex, or to marry as many child brides before their inevitable arrest. Those are the kinds that you are probably more used to hearing about and they bore me.

I want talk about the kind that are closer to what you’d see in horror movies.. though there aren’t many of them that actually exist.

I might also talk about other weird things that have my interest (like the human skin books that doctors were making in the 1800s….) just depends on what I find.

I hope you like what I have to offer :))