Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 333 - The Sullivanians: Therapy Sex Cult

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

In the 1960s, a strange new cult emerged in Manhattan's Upper West Side out of the Sullivan Institute. A cult created by shady "therapist" Saul Newton, who twisted the psychoanalytical teachings of Henry Stack Sullivan into something insidious - a way from him to sleep with paying therapy patients, have them move onto his compound, and play god over their lives. He and a few of his wives would run their scam for decades. They convinced members to live on their compound, pay to be in continual therapy, and pay to put on propaganda plays at their Fourth Wall Theater. Members also paid to be sexually used by cult leadership, leadership that decided who they had sex with, who they could have kids with, who would raise those kids, and so much more. Cult! Cult! Cult!  Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camps are ON SALE!  BadMagicMerch.com Bad Magic Productions Monthly Patreon Donation: We're giving $14,533 to The Museum of Tolerance - the only museum of its kind in the world, and an additional $1,614  to the scholarship fund this month. Thank you, Space Lizards! The MOT is dedicated to challenging visitors to understand the Holocaust in both historic and contemporary contexts and confront all forms of prejudice and discrimination in our world today. For more information, you can visit www.museumoftolerance.com.Get tour tickets at dancummins.tv Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1AgOQxbDDcIMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Are you sick of always have to take care of your kids? Do you have some problems with your parents? Maybe some unresolved problems? Do you think the idea of having sex with anyone and everyone, wherever, whenever, with whoever sounds incredible? If so, the Sullivanian cult might've been for you. Bummer that it's already come and gone. You missed your chance.

Missed your chance with the cult. I doubt you'd ever heard of before seeing this topic pop up on YouTube or in your podcast feed. The Sullivan Institute and the Sullivanian cult, as they begun to be called, not nearly as well known as many other cults in America. But that doesn't mean it's intense and practices weren't any less sinister. A lot of cult sex came at a cost. This group emerged at the end of the 1950s with an agenda to demonize the nuclear family, specifically women's roles as mothers, by abusing the power of the patient-therapist relationship. No God in this cult, just some therapists with some God complexes. Where so many of the cults we've covered previously

have sprung forth from the far-right spectrum of beliefs, specifically Christian fundamentalism, the Sullivanian belief system comes directly from the far left. Communism, casual sex, and who gives a fuck about God? What God? Interestingly to me, the end result, almost identical. Intense pressure to disconnect from any family members or friends not also in the cult, the sexual abuse of members by cult leadership, the total financial control of members, and more. They even threw in a kind of a quick-fail doomsday prediction. In 1957, Saul Newton, a man with no formal training in therapy, would leave New York's prestigious William Allenson White Institute, a psychoanalyst training and mental wellness institution. He worked as an administrator, not as a therapist there, with his then-wife,

Dr. Jane Pierce, who was a therapist, to form their own competing organization, the Sullivan Institute, a center loosely based on the teachings of American neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan. At their new institute, Newton, Pierce, and other therapists would begin a process of isolating their patients, convincing them that their families were evil, especially their mothers, and that to become full mature human beings, they had to live commune style with other patients in one of three Upper West Side buildings in Manhattan. Soon these patients would become the Sullivanians. Hundreds of them would transition from therapy patient to something that

looks a lot more like cult member, and a bunch of therapists would join their ranks. The purpose of the Institute, as the therapists pitched it to their patients Was to expand on the revolutionary promise of the 1960s Both for political and personal reasons Personally, patients would get to conquer their psychological demons Put their past behind them, become mature, thoughtful, self-actualized people Capable of intimate relationships, both romantic and platonic And in doing that, along with studying Marxist and Leninist theory and living communally, that would pave the way for a future utopia. No more exploitation, no more working for the man. Everyone would accept one another, come together to make revolutionary art, and a new era

of peace and well-being would manifest from the inside out. But in reality, of course, very few of these goals would ever be accomplished. In reality, it was, like other cults, about power and control for the leaders and being taken advantage of for everyone else. Instead of what they were promised, patients found themselves attending and paying for damaging therapy sessions for years and years, where the therapist convinced them that their families were terrible and abusive and they should cut off contact with their loved ones ASAP. They found themselves separated from everything not Sullivanian, separated from their children, their money, their autonomy. The Institute barely delivered on utopia. Instead of living in some egalitarian paradise, Sullivanians, while they did get to have a lot of sex, so much, orgies, constantly different partners, et cetera. They also paid out the ask for therapy, donated hours and hours of free labor, often worked multiple jobs at a time, even handed over

their own inheritances and assets to line the deeper and deeper pockets of the so-called mental health professionals who were supposedly helping them. They also paid increasingly expensive dues to a theater company called the fourth wall, paying to help produce revolutionary shows, political shows, and acting in these shows, building the sets, cooking to help produce revolutionary shows, political shows, and acting in these shows, building the sets, cooking, cleaning, renovating, working on communal property, babysitting many of the group's children. That last point would get particularly contentious, since a huge part of the group was to be against monogamy, since the nuclear family was responsible for fucking people up so bad. According to Saul Newton, children and family life were seen as the

enemy of psychological health. Children were either sent away to boarding schools or cared for by paid babysitters or other members of the cult or unpaid babysitters with their parents only seeing them for a couple of hours a day, if that. Protesting against that, trying to see your kid more or the mother or father of your child, and you would quickly be targeted for showing improper affection and possibly be expelled from the cult and shunned. The appeal of the cult started to dwindle in the 1980s as media outlets began detailing multiple custody battles between former and current Sullivanians. A group called PACT, People Against Cult Therapy, protested the group in public places, and as the group's leadership grew more paranoid, more people departed in droves.

The AIDS crisis of the 80s also did not help the cult, since so much of being in this cult revolved around having casual sex and lots of it with all sorts of people, including, of course, the cult's therapeutic leadership. Finally, after Newton's passing in 1991, after over 30 years of this bullshit, the Sullivanians appeared to be no more. But the damage the cult had done to so many was not over. It would take years for many of the people involved to move on from their decades of brainwashing, some of whom had been in the cult since childhood. And the Sullivanians would leave behind a strange and complicated legacy. We dig into the Sullivanians right now on another cult, cult, cult edition of Time Suck.

This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday, meat sacks. Welcome to the cults of the curious. I'm Dan Kelman's The Suck Nasty, a guy who probably spent too much time last week wondering what Patrick Kearney really did to dogs. Still think he was a canine salad tosser.

And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod. I love you, Lusafina. Praise be to the bestest boy, Bojangles. I promise to never try to have sex with you. And glory be to Triple M. No, Bojangles. I promise to never try to have sex with you. And glory be to Triple M. No promises, Michael McDonald. No promises.

A big thank you to all the meat sacks who came out for two stand-up shows at the Egyptian Theater a few weekends back in Boise. Grandma Betty did not disown me, if you're curious. She handled it better than I thought she might. Maybe better than my mom. First show she'd seen in years. I don't know. She'll be seeing another one soon. Hoping I had a great time

in St. Louis and Kansas City this past weekend. And now Sacramento and Denver are up next, followed by San Antonio and Dallas, Seattle, Pontiac, Michigan, Indianapolis, New Orleans,

Philly, and more coming up. Ticket links at dancummins.tv. Very excited for all the shows. Thanks to everyone who bought summer camp tickets. Going to be some serious fun. Info for that at badmagicmerch.com. There are tickets left.

And then one more quick thing. Very excited to announce a cool new mega collection in the store for this week's announcement. Introducing the American Cult Collection. By far the biggest release we have had to this point. Right now, if you head over to badmagicmerch.com, you can find merch for your specific state chapter. We're opening the collection with two tea options, one color version, one black neutral, on super comfortable garment-dyed comfort colors teas.

They're a little thicker, have a muted vibe to them if you're not familiar, very vintage-y feeling. There are also chapter mugs to rep your state chapter at work. We hope to add more products to this collection as time goes on So head on over and check it out May the best state win And now back to the realm of cult, cult, cult

The Sullivanians, what an unusual and very interesting group They blur the line between cult and social group Between some sort of pseudo-revolutionary club And a fucking insane asylum Masquerading as some sort of pseudo-revolutionary club and a fucking insane asylum masquerading as some sort of uh therapeutically a beneficial commune they also uh were somewhat well i guess are still somewhat shrouded in mystery but don't worry we do have a ton of juicy info on them to make for an entertaining episode there just isn't as much info as after finding out what they were

about i i would have expected there to be Though many of its former members are still alive, there hasn't yet been a comprehensive book written about the Sullivanians directly like there has been about so many other cults. Prior to around six or seven years ago, when a few members did start to speak out more publicly, there was almost nothing written about them. There may be a good core source coming out this summer, a book about the group called The Sullivanian Sex Psychotherapy and the Wildlife of an American Commune by Alexander Still is set to be published June 20th of this year. I hope it provides the deepest dives. I hope it leads to a documentary series on Netflix or HBO or the equivalent. But until then, you have me, motherfuckers.

Well, me and a few other podcasts and a variety of articles and memoirs. Articles and memoirs and a few documentary-ish videos are what we leaned on to put this episode together. Memoirs of memoirs of former members, a number of articles written in the 80s, 90s, and a few really well-written articles from the past couple of years. Looking at you, Gothamist.com. Well done, Erica Sudzinski. You probably Polish beautiful bastard. And thank you also to Shelly Feinerman for sharing your memories of the group and your self-made doc through a blue window, the Sullivanians.

What a strange, crazy fucking world inside a world you lived in back in the 70s, Shelly. Digging through all these sources unveils a world that is both very different from ours and in some ways, very similar. New York in the 1960s, when the cult was really gaining momentum, was a place of extreme optimism and also extreme anxiety. On the one hand, young people were rebelling

much more than they had in numerous generations before them. We've been over the counterculture revolution so many times here over the last few years because that cultural re-examination of almost everything birthed most of the cults that have captured our imagination today. Unlike the previous generation where, you know, following the status quo was what damn near everyone did outside of the rare beatnik or maybe communist sympathizer, both, now it was much, much more common to question that status quo. In a way, during the mid to late 60s and early to mid 70s, questioning the status quo became the new status quo. The youth

of America, much if not most of them, were embracing to various degrees, birth control pills, casual sex, drugs, rock and roll. They were abandoning the religious and political beliefs of their parents. Many of them hoped to channel this energy into the creation of a new egalitarian world, a world without exploitation, where everyone could spend their time creating art, sexing it up left and right, getting high as fuck, doing tons of drugs, right? Just really enjoying the hell out of being alive. Sounds like a lot of fun, like a utopia, right? Hail Lucifina!

It felt for many like the good times were going to last forever. It was the dawn of a new age, the age of Aquarius, brothers and sisters, right? Cue father-yode, shitty hippie rock. Ballin', baby! But also, on the other hand, these same youth had been raised by a generation that had suffered a lot of trauma and hadn't dealt with it as well as more people deal with trauma now. These kids were the children of the baby boom. Kids whose fathers often had gotten back from World War II or Korea, seen some serious shit and then did not get any treatment when they got back because almost no one did that back then, right?

It was seen as a sign of weakness. And that might've made them a little more distant from their families, a little less present as dads. Or maybe their fathers abused alcohol to cope with the horrors of what they'd seen. Maybe they took their mental health problems out on their wives and children. And the women of this generation, there was so much social pressure on them to raise the perfect little family, right? Be the perfect matriarch. America's economy was expanding in the post-war years. That was great, but it also shifted the culture, you know, from come on, we can do this. We're all in this together to keeping up with the Joneses mentality. Don't get left out. There was so much pressure to

have the perfect white picket fence, suburban home kept immaculately clean. Of course, a spotless car in the driveway, raise a couple of well-behaved kids who love God and country and didn't do drugs and didn't fuck dirty hippies or listen to that new long-haired commie rock and roll shit right there sure seems to have been a cultural parental attitude of god damn it this is what we fought for the suburbs this is why we beat hirohito and hitler and mussolini right we fought and died to beat back those commie fucks in korea to have this so i could have a nice boat so i can have a well-manicured lawn and a son who buttons his press shirt all the way up to the top and keeps his short hair, short hair, always combed to have a virginal daughter who always wears long dresses and only dates good boys who fear her father and call him sir.

Now my kids are smoking weed and listening to Zeppelin and talking about give peace a chance. What the fuck is happening? What did I fight for? And I'm speculating a lot here, but perhaps all this pressure to have things just so, and then not having them be just so, combined with war trauma and a shifting attitude towards war with Vietnam and a lack of self-care and better communication skills help lead to the nation's growing divorce rate.

And the U.S. divorce rates more than doubled from 2.2 per 1,000 in 1960 to over five per a thousand in the eighties. More and more families breaking down, uh, doing so long before we had a million books written about how to talk to children of divorce, right? Long before a lot of family therapy was accessible, a lot of good family therapy, anyway, therapy continually evolving. And it's evolved a lot from where it was back in the sixties and seventies. For example, until 1974,

homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. And it wasn't until the 1970s that family therapy actually began to really emerge as a helpful field. A small group of innovative therapists had really focused on studying the family dynamic and interpersonal relationships in the 1950s and 60s. But good luck finding a family therapist in your area prior to the 70s. It was still a time of children should be seen and not heard. Pulling all of this into today's topic, a lot of kids growing up in the 50s, 60s, 70s, when they became young adults,

they had, like everyone always has, their own trauma. But unlike everyone growing up, they grew up in an era where it was far more normal than usual To rebel and rebel hard against the previous generation Many of their parents thought therapy was stupid If they even fucking considered it For the week, a bunch of quacks Noodling around in people's brains

Well that gave some members of this generation All the more reason to prove their parents wrong Seek out therapy And because of the radical time of the counterculture revolution The more radical the therapy the better It was a time of so many new ideas. It must be a good idea because it's new. New religious ideas led to many of the cults we've already covered. And there were new psychological ideas, some good, some terrible. And some of these young people looking towards therapists, seeking out new ways of thinking, new ways of existing,

people not satisfied with the cultural norms of their parents. Well, they found what worked for them. They use therapy for what it's supposed to be, to make as much peace with childhood issues as you can, so you can minimize their ability to affect you in the present and the future, keep you from a fulfilling adult life, to not repeat the mistakes of the previous generation, to evolve and become a better person, more confident in who you are, happier, more fulfilled, more aware of negative thought patterns. So you can intercept those patterns, break them, right? Look ahead more, look back less on and on. But other people found not only dangerous quacks, people who did not have the fucking proper education and training to be

qualified to provide therapy. They found predators, right? They found supposed gurus, people who didn't want to be their therapist, people who wanted to be their gods in a sense. People like Saul Newton, who behaved exactly like a cult leader that arises from within religious teachings. We do not need religion to have cults. Don't need it for some of us to make others believe

that they hold the keys to enlightenment, to unlocking the happiest of lives, right? If those, uh, uh, you know, people will just listen to them to start a cult. You need to take what people are familiar with. In this case, therapy speak various emerging schools of psychological thought, then twist and bend it into something that does not serve the person's needs, but instead serves your own cult, cult, cult, just like the predatory cult leader preacher

who looks for people who are lost, confused, worried about their salvation, spiritually seeking, people often down on their luck in some way, people who want someone to tell them that they have all the answers, just come to me and your salvation is assured. And the preacher then speaks to them in a religious language they're familiar with

to help build trust, but then pivots from those teachings into new and improved teachings where they have all the extra answers not covered in the original textbook. And then cue the religious cult leader pressuring that person to cut ties with family and friends concerned that they're being brainwashed, followed by cult members cutting ties, dedicating themselves to the cult fully,

working long hours, handing over their financial assets to the cult leadership, literally being fucked all under the guise. They're going to be saved Well, just like that Saul did the same fucking cult leader bullshit But you know from a different angle with a different twist He came from the angle of psychology. He prayed on those who believed his new radical therapy could heal them Instead of praying on spiritual seekers. He prayed on therapy seekers. He looked for people who felt that they were broken

But didn't think a church could save them. They thought a therapist could Instead of praying on spiritual seekers, he prayed on therapy seekers. He looked for people who felt that they were broken, but didn't think a church could save them. They thought a therapist could. He tended to pray on people in a mentally fragile place. They wanted to feel better about their lives. And he convinced them that their families were the source of all their heartache and pain. But fear not, he could show them the path to self-actualization, right? He could heal their trauma.

Amen. Just trust in him completely. Just give everything to his organization, all your money, turn your back on your family, your friends, your previous way of life. Just let him fuck you. Let his friends fuck you. Suck his dick during therapy sessions. I'm oversimplifying all this a bit, but all of that is actually also true. And so fascinating to me, a cult based in therapy instead of religion. Kind of like Scientology in a way, but without all the sci-fi, alien, pulp fiction mumbo jumbo. I am so excited to share this story with you today.

We've covered so many religious cults. It is a nice change of pace to expose the dangers of a non-religious ideology. Extreme thoughts in any form could be dangerous. Saul Newton, let's get to know this creepy motherfucker and the cult he created. when it came to having some pretty fucking crazy therapeutic ideas. We'll delve into a brief summary of the history of therapy.

It helps to know where their ideas were coming from. We'll then summarize the teachings of the particular school of psychoanalytical thought they claimed their teachings aligned with, the theories of Henry Stack Sullivan. And then it's timeline time, where we give an overview of the life of this psychobabble cult and its primary founder, Saul Newton, and we meet some former members and learn how they got caught up in all of this bullshit. So let's get to it. The Sullivanians never got much press, especially not outside New York. Very little national press, despite existing in a highly visible area for decades, despite some famous members. A lack of actual murder helped them stay under the radar.

famous members. A lack of actual murder helped them stay under the radar. For the Sullivanians, there was no Waco, no Jonestown, no Heaven's Gate call to board a spaceship behind a comet. There was no explosive ending, just more of a fizzle. And many former members, even long-term former members, don't even think they were in a cult. One former member, Artie Honan, who we'll hear a lot from in the timeline, while acknowledging that the group's leadership was manipulative, engaged in forms of brainwashing and controlled them via therapy sessions and financially exploited them, he still stopped short of thinking of the group as a cult, still not ready to completely condemn them. Because the group would pretty much fizzle out by the 90s, while when many of the members were in their late 30s and naturally moving on

to more stable lives, it seems like a lot of them just remember their time in the cult like a lot of us remember our 20s, right? Shit got weird here and there, but overall, drugs, partying, casual sex, a pretty great time. Artie would remember summers spent on Long Island's Fonley, one of the cult's retreat areas, since having sincere gratitude for the people he met in Sullivanian therapy and think nostalgically about the amazing parties and the carefree sexual environment. Another former member, Mike Bray would recall the parties were a complete zoo. There'd be like 300 people.

You'd walk in and it was a throb. There'd be a garbage can filled with wine and stuff. And you'd get drunk and people were dancing, flirting and writhing. Oh, the writhing, a lot of writhing in this cult. These parties were essentially massive orgies. There were also some celebrity encounters. Judy Collins, the American Grammy-winning songwriter whose musical career has spanned seven decades.

She's still touring, I believe. Would be part of the group in its early days as well. Saul Newton even convinced her to send her only child to boarding school for years. Clark, her son, would later die by suicide a year after the cult ended. How much fault regarding his death would lay at the hands of the cult on

duty for following their crazy teachings to essentially abandon him? Who knows? Another celebrity drawn to the communal free love therapeutic promises of the Institute was Richard Price, author of Clockers. I know that book, but Spike Lee would direct the film version of 1995. And that book would serve as the inspiration for one of the best fucking TV dramas of all time.

God, it was such a good show. The Wire. Successful people being part of this group, successful New York City based artists undoubtedly helped recruit. Even painter Jackson Pollock, even though he died before the group officially founded was uh around some of the uh group's later leadership and uh you know they would reference him as well as as you know being associated with the group you know it can't be bad if their members uh you know are very successful people or if their associates are successful people a successful people can it the surface appeal of the group was cool and sexy be a part of the future of society When the trappings of the traditional family Will not bind you any longer

Live free, live with others like you Eat, drink, fuck and be oh so merry But under this facade Was a very strange and dangerous and destructive group A group who split up families Controlled people's lives, forced them to cut ties With family members, highly pressured members To have sex with people they didn't want to have sex with

There was no saying no in this group sexually, only yes. And the organization often ended up hurting its most vulnerable members the most, mothers and children. One mother known in the press only as Josephine would say, I think all of us wanted to be better human beings and make a contribution to the world. We were involved in a social experiment. There's something very heady about thinking you're involved in the social experiment. There's something very heady about thinking you're involved in the vanguard of something. I think we all got ripped off. We got psychologically raped. We got spiritually raped. We got morally raped. It's really pretty horrible. While this group did not condone outright rape, man, the sexual pressure they

put on members, pretty fucking rapey. At the end of Saul Newton's life, members would come forward with stories about how he demanded oral sex from them during therapy sessions. What the? All part of therapy. And how did that make you feel when your dad yelled at you, Sarah? When he told you you were stupid? Uh-huh. And how do you think this feeling has affected future relationships and your self-worth? Uh-huh. And how do you think this feeling has affected future relationships and your self-worth? Uh-huh.

Has it affected your sexual confidence, do you think? Hmm, it has, yes. Do you think you're sexy? Oh, you don't. Well, look who disagrees. And then just cue your fucking therapist whipping his hard dick out. Look at my little friend here. He clearly finds you very attractive. You know what I think would make you feel sexier? Maybe just put him in your mouth a

bit. Just listen to me tell you how sex you are. Let me heal you. Let him heal you. Let us heal you together. Just keep listening and sucking until the medicine comes out. Not creepy at all. Not predatory. Not taking advantage of anyone. Saul's wife, one of his many wives, would move him into his own apartment during his decline into Alzheimer's. And his last years go so far as to hire a caretaker from within the cult. Someone whose real job was to recruit female cult members, young female members, to spend the night with him and sexually indulge him. And many did so out of a sense of obligation. Maybe that's how we cure dementia. New puss infusions.

Have any studies been done? One Amy Siskind, who started therapy when she was only 13, her mom was a patient, said that her therapist, second in command, Ralph Klein, would ask her about her sexual experiences. Ask her if she masturbated, encourage her to be sexually promiscuous with as many young men as possible. She never said Ralph molested her, but this sure seems more than a

little incredibly inappropriate. To say the least, the line between doctor and patient, very firm boundary was very, very blurry within the Sullivanians. Therapists, while maybe Ralph maybe didn't sleep with Sarah, they did sleep with so many patients constantly. Therapists also slept with each other. Higher up therapists controlled which therapists below them got to take patients. Higher up therapists acted as other therapist therapists, also fucking them.

Pretty much everyone fucked everyone in this cult. Everyone often, you know, most people shared housing, both in summer houses and in apartments in New York City. Continual sex between almost everyone and anyone was not just encouraged, it was very much expected. Patients could and would be told what to do by their therapist regarding their love lives,

potential families, jobs, money, anything, all because it was for their emotional development and they would have no choice but to comply unless they wanted to be scolded or have dark secrets. They'd shared with therapists now shared with everyone to shame them, or they could be ostracized from the group, right? Shunned, expelled permanently. Many members were taken advantage of in so many ways, including financial. One member was charged $2,000 for calling a therapist too early in the morning one time. Another was asked to make a $100,000 contribution to the community because it would be good for his personal growth. By the end of the cult's lifespan and the 80s therapists were making at least $100,000 a year. And if you didn't pay

whatever rate they demanded, again, you were fucking out of the group. There is no doubt about it. The Sullivanian cult was incredibly sinister, but for many, it didn't start out that way. It began as a sort of search for meaning,

disaffected people, trying out a new course of therapy, slowly being absorbed into the group, exploring Saul Newton's crazy philosophy, but in a less pressured way to begin with. After launching quietly in 1957, excuse me, while we don't know much about the first few years of the group,

in the 60s, it seems the group was in its golden years, a time largely of playing music, free love partying, drinking on the train to Long Island, good time vibes. During the 70s, particularly with the entrance of Joan Harvey, a minor actress, Saul's new wife, who would displace his second wife and co-founder, well, yeah, second wife and co-founder, Jane Pierce,

that the group got increasingly more controlling, financially, sexually, etc. They began demanding members spent time and money on the fourth wall theater company and convincing them they were under attack from mysterious outside forces. When a nuclear reactor in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, partially melted down in March 1979, the leadership used this as an opportunity to convince hundreds of members to head down to Florida because New York was about to be obliterated. A mini doomsday of sorts. And then a week later, they returned to New York City when that did not happen. And now shit got weirder and weirder. Despite New York being just fine, members were now made to monitor radiation levels, listen constantly to news reports, even plan an escape route out of

the city in the event of a nuclear disaster. Through the 80s, this atmosphere of paranoia persisted and intensified with the beginning of the AIDS crisis. AIDS was the biggest killer of the free love ethos. Harder to pitch a casual sex cult when people are literally dying from fucking the wrong part. Now members were required to only socialize with other members, never eat in public, wash thoroughly every time after coming in from the outside, etc. In the years before its demise, the cult got more and more controlling, forcing more and more people to decide if they were with them or against them. And being against them meant jeopardizing their housing, friend groups, sometimes access to families.

What had started out as really shitty therapy, but quite a bit of social fun, became in the span of two decades, was just a fucking nightmare in every aspect. To better understand this, Elevanians, important to understand the history of psychotherapy in America, where Saul Newton's ideas came from. How we've tried to understand the human psyche, often getting wrong in the process over time. Today, we know more than ever about the mind, though still far from everything, and about how the human psyche functions and how one's relationships and moods can be improved if given the right help. This is partially because the stigma that has so long been associated with getting help with behavioral issues, mental health disorders, has been melting away more and more in

recent years, more than ever before. Easier to make mental health progress if more of the population is embracing mental health treatment. While it's hard to find comparable stats from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, according to Statista.com in 2002, 27.2 million Americans out of a population of 287.6 million people received mental health treatment or counseling in the past year so 9.5 percent of the population uh 2021 the number had increased to 41.7 million out of a total population of 331.9 million so that's 12.9 percent of the population it's a nice little bump for the most part the increase was steady from year to year in that time span i guess it steadily decreased uh you know as the timeline

went back into the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, etc. Other groups have reported that much more than 12.9% of Americans are in therapy. A recent study conducted by OnePool on behalf of Vita Health found that more than one out of every six, more than 16% of Americans started therapy for the first time in 2020. And there are now so many forms of therapy, such as virtual, some form of video chat over the phone or in person, there's even AI therapy. Now getting mental health help is, you know, easier, more effective than ever. But just a hundred years ago,

psychotherapy was still in its infancy. It was hard to find a good therapist. Very, very hard. Compared to now, none of them were very good. It was a wild West-like place full of wildly different ideas about how the human psyche worked and what best to do about it. Henry Stack Sullivan, one of

many early theorists active in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Since Saul Newton would warp Sullivan's ideas for his own purposes, it's worth covering what Harry Stack Sullivan believed about humans and relationships, both to show how Saul changed his ideas and to give a glimpse of how adults were beginning to think of their relationships

with one another in drastically different terms from the onset of widespread psychotherapy. That Harry Stack Sullivan's theories were so popular goes to show how average adults could be convinced to join a group that severely limited their autonomy because they believed it as, excuse me, they believed a group running on these psychological principles would help them live a healthier way of course it would be anything but healthy but

we probably you know shouldn't blame the sylvanians for not knowing that in fact the history of psychotherapy is a long one often riddled with things we would find absurd or harmful today practically since the formation of human society we have always struggled with how to treat mental health problems, what the relationship is between the mind and the body, and the best way to go about having healthy interpersonal relationships. Many ancient cultures viewed changes in mental health as omens, curses, or signs from the gods.

And they use crazy methods to cure that. Trephination is one of them. That's a surgical procedure where a hole is drilled shallowly into the patient's skull without damaging the brain, blood vessels, and membranes that lie underneath. Open that third eye, baby! As Quato creepily said in the original Total Recall, Open your

mind. Open your mind. The earliest evidence of trephination is from the Neolithic era. That lasted from 9,000 to 3,000 BCE. Forty prehistoric tree-fine skulls from around 6,500 BCE were found at a burial site in France. And similar remains and iconographic artwork have been found in Mesoamerica. and iconographic artwork have been found in Mesoamerica. Evidence of trephination dating from 950 to 1400 CE was discovered in Mexico, Guatemala,

Yucatan Peninsula. The earliest evidence found in China was a tree-fine skull dated to 5000 BCE and the remains amazingly showed evidence of healing and recovery. The person continued to live for a significant amount of time after having a fucking hole put in their head.

Humans once used trephination as a way to try and cure mental illness because they believed it occurred as a result of demonic possession and drilling a hole in the skull would allow the unwanted demons to escape uh this shit was still happening these happening in the 16th century in europe doctors were doing this doctors who would be considered witch doctors today It was happening as recently as 1958 Among the Kissy people in Kenya More witch doctors Holy shit

Listen, do you want me to let the demons out of your head or not? Hold still, let me grab my drill I know what I'm doing, I'm a doctor Demons can do a lot of things But anyone who knows anything about demons knows They can't pass through schools to get out of your head. Now you got to drill an escape hole for them, duh. But then how do they get in people's heads, doctor?

I don't have time for fucking reasonable questions. They quickly exposed my poor ability to reason, Dick Wizzle. I'm a doctor and I hate questions. Now hold still. That was medical treatment not that long ago. Some people currently believe that trephination has a scientific basis and it is still practiced today, though rarely. One British woman, Amanda Fielding, director of the Beckley Foundation, an organization that for over two decades has been carrying out research into consciousness, last used this ancient drilling technique in 2013. According to the article I found, maybe even more recently than that, an interview with Vice, she claimed that it has various health benefits and can be successfully

used to treat headaches, epilepsy, and migraines. Eh, maybe. This is at least the second time that she's had a hole drilled into her head. She's also been fucking around a lot with LSD since 1965, when someone spiked her coffee with some acid when she was 22 and it quote broke her. She had to go live with her parents for months to mentally recover. I've not been shy about embracing hallucinogens in recent years, right? On rare days off when the kids are with their mom and stepdads, right? I still experiment with LSD. Finally learned that I can function on a single tab and not need to be babysat. Now I dick around with DMT, shrooms, combo stuff with MDMA, et cetera.

I love consciousness exploration. That shit puts your mind in some real weird places. You know, helps change your perspective. But I can totally see how, you know, it could fuck you up too. How it could convince Amanda to drill a hole in her head. Not sure that's a good idea. Before moving on, I do like that the Beckley Foundation has a cool mission. It's twofold.

It says to scientifically investigate the effects of psychoactive substances On the brain and consciousness In order to harness their potential benefits And minimize their potential harms Learn more about consciousness and brain function And discover and explore new avenues for the treatment of illnesses And then two To achieve evidence-based changes

In global drug policies In order to reduce the harms brought about by the unintended negative consequences of current drug policies. Fucking hail Nimrod. And develop improved policies based on health harm reduction, cost-effectiveness, and human rights. Yeah, let's learn more. Stop making ignorant fear-based decisions when it comes to so much of this shit. And also, you know, who the fuck knows? Maybe we'll all be drilling holes in our heads in the next few decades. Jumping back to ancient times.

Now, the ancient Greeks often cited as the first culture to treat mental disorders as medical conditions. In ancient Greece, philosophers were the first to explore the connection between mental health and medicine. Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle all expressed curiosity into the realm of what eventually would become psychotherapy. As time went on physicians of the age like Galen and Hippocrates or Hippocrates excuse me aka the father of medicine further explored the link between mental state and

medicine rejecting beliefs that medical conditions stem from otherworldly influences. But the insights gained by the Greeks took a step back when the Roman Empire fell and the Dark Ages began. The Middle Ages swung back toward a common belief in the supernatural, and the teachings of the ancient world connecting mental health and medicine were temporarily lost for centuries. Those with mental health conditions suffered due to a lack of understanding. It may have been more common to view someone struggling with mental health as being touched by witchcraft. Maybe they were a devil worshipper Than it was to think of them as a person living with a disorder

It was more likely to burn them at the stake Than actually successfully treat their condition So some consolation For any meat sacks dealing with mental health struggles Listening to this now Not to minimize your struggles But whatever they might be At least you're not being hanged

Or burned or both You know for being riddled with demons As bad as the side effects of whatever medicine You know you're on might be At least there's no side effect of flames Cooking the flesh off your body In front of cheering village folk Burn the witch

Burn the witch Following the dark ages came the renaissance Things started to get a little better not overall when it came to mental health but there were now a few people at least who didn't think people uh needing mental health treatment should be fucking burned like uh paracelsus paracelsus a swiss physician who lived between 1493 and 1541 known as one of the great ancient contributors of medical chemistry was one of the few physicians during his time who advocated for the use of psychotherapy. And while the term psychotherapy hadn't yet been developed, Paracelsus believed that the most common cause of poor mental wellness was an emotional disconnect between a person and the world around them.

Head in the right direction. direction. Similarly, in the 1500s, German physician Johann Wehr was a major leader and frontrunner in the movement from religious demonological explanations of mental illness towards more medical explanations in treatment. He was the first medical practitioner to specialize in mental illness and advocated for treating the mentally ill instead of locking them away. Crazy thoughts. Treatment instead of locking people up. Right? Crazy thoughts. Treatment instead of locking people up. What?

Should have mentioned that locking people up until they die was another option outside of a fire or a hangman's noose for the mentally ill in the past. Veer was alive in the time of rampant witch burnings and was passionate about trying to quell the hysteria about witches, so-called witches. He wrote the book Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance, which was one of the first books arguing against the perception of the mentally ill as evil or possessed and pleaded for society to stop killing these innocent people during witch hunts. I thought he was going to be hanged and burned directly following the publication of that book,

but he was able to stay alive. Maybe because he also claimed publicly the demons and devils, of course, could be behind a lot of these afflictions. Not why you're throwing down preachers and priests, just saying that maybe sometimes, maybe sometimes we shouldn't burn them alive. Overall, the mindset of the Middle Ages persisted until the Victorian era, where traditional beliefs about family, home and self shifted to a more modern ideal. As the concepts around mental health started to evolve, physicians sought words to describe what they were witnessing in practice, particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries. Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, born in 1734, who died in 1815, received some of the earliest recognition as a founder of psychotherapy. Known for his process of mesmerism, he focused on treating patients by using hypnosis, trying to get to the root of their mental afflictions by delving deeper into their minds.

Right in their minds. Open your mind. Love his creepy ass. People get mesmerized. Around the same time, Mesmer was exploring hypnosis, French physician, Philippe Pinel,

called the father of psychiatry by some was credited with founding the field of psychiatry as he sought humane treatment for those living with mental health conditions. Pinel also disagreed with, uh, still mainstream assumptions that mental disorders were caused by supernatural forces around the same time as Pinel. And that's how they said his name was fucking said, or yeah, it was pronounced. Uh, Benjamin Rush was cultivated in the movement for more humane treatment in the U.S. and is considered the father of American psychiatry. One of the first to work with the mentally ill at his hospitals in Pennsylvania.

His treatments were meant to be more humane and rehabilitative, giving patients individual attention, emotional support. In 1812, Rush wrote the first American psychiatry textbook, cementing the beginning of the practice and study in the US. Then Walter Cooper Dendy, born in 1794, died in 1871, introduced the term psychotherapy in the 19th century. The study of mental illness was now largely moving away from religion, moving towards science.

Still, that didn't mean anyone really knew what they were doing when it came to treating mental health issues. Just look at something called rotational therapy. Rotational therapy is more or less what it sounds like. Patients sat down in chairs, often called Cox's chairs. After this guy we'll introduce in a second. And just fucking spun around. That was actually a mental health treatment plan, a popular one.

Spinning people around violently in a fucking chair. This outlandish treatment was invented by erasmus darwin charles darwin's grandfather in the early 19th century used to treat patients suffering from conditions of uh mania right or elevated arousal and more darwin proposed that spinning patients around excessively would increase pressure would increase pressure in their heads yeah and in turn decrease what he called brain congestion. Yeah, totally. That makes sense.

Well, God, of course this guy's having trouble. His poor fellow's brain is completely congested. We got to get him in a chair, spin him around. We got to loosen up that noodle. Dr. Joseph Mason Cox, right? The guy this chair is named after, alive from 1762 to 1822. Joseph Mason Cox, right? The guy this chair is named after,

alive from 1762 to 1822. He furthered this rotational therapy, really with a really pretty intense design for his chair. You can find schematics, drawings of this fucking torture device online. Basically, it was a chair, like suspended up in the air, like a swing, had four ropes, two attached to the front of the chair's two arms,

two other ropes attached to each side of the back of the chair, all four ropes connected to this piece of metal. On top of this piece of metal is a bar. That bar is set upon a hook coming down from a big wheel connected to a wooden plank above it. A rope then follows this plank from the wrapping around the

wheel down to another big wheel at the base, a big winch. Someone can then crank that winch around and around and spin the fucking shit out of anyone who had been suspended in the chair so fast, like a, like a top, but with a dude or a lady in the top, basically instead of a therapy device, you know, that's just a shitty carnival ride, but called rotational therapy. And then it spread across europe rapidly and while there were no objectively long-term adverse effects from this patients generally reported feeling less uh quote

good relaxed comfortable and calm after being violently spun around than they did before being spun around yeah i bet i bet they felt more dizzy and nauseous too and this is obviously fucking crazy uh but it was less crazy, right? Than believing that the heads of the mentally ill were filled with demons. In addition, Cox's chair was sometimes used abusively in psychiatric settings. Patients were, you know, just tortured by sadistic doctors and staff who just spun them around for their amusement. Right? Until they put them in a dark room sometimes.

Just keep spinning them until they puked and passed out. While researching the effects of rotational therapy on both healthy and mentally ill patients. How the hell did that become a thing? An early German psychiatrist said that healthy patients

begged for the machine to be stopped before two minutes had passed, while mentally ill patients endured the experience endured the experience for as long as four minutes. So that's cool. Like if you struggled

to express yourself because your mind wasn't working right, it would take you a couple extra minutes of just oh to be like i don't like this another later option for psychological uh intervention was uh even more horrific we've talked about this before but it's been a while it was common for women in the victorian era from the mid-19th century to the dawn of the 20th century, to be diagnosed with hysteria. She's hysterical, which had no medical explanation, but was loosely defined as nervous, quote, eccentric and erratic behavior, according to the very subjective standards of the men who observed these women. The word hysteria was derived from the ancient Greek word hysteria, meaning uterus. Dr. Maurice Buck, born in 1837, died in 1902. Respected professional in Canadian

gynecology who worked in a London asylum. His lifespan matched the Victorian era almost exactly. He believed that women's reproductive organs were related to their emotional well-being and were the cause of mental illness. They're not. That's what he believed. And then that's what a whole shit ton of other medical professionals believed. As a result, surgery, including hysterectomies, the surgical removal of the uterus, became a common procedure to treat mental illness in women. Newsflash, didn't fucking help. Finally, by the end of the 19th century, at the end of Dr. Buck's life, his procedures were then labeled as being mutilation and meddlesome. And by the time he passed away in 1902, hysterectomies no longer practice to treat mental illness,

at least not in Britain. Uh, but also during the late 1800s to the early 1900s in the U S to UK and elsewhere, physicians administrated or administered pelvic massages involving clitoral stimulation to also treat hysteria. That's right. They would fucking finger your clit or use some form of a sex toy

to help your mental health. Get you to calm down. Probably did work in some cases. Probably also led to a lot of pervy doctors. Hysteria treatments did not end in the US until hysteria was left out of the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 50 fucking years later, 1952.

We were pretty slow to catch on over here for some reason. It wasn't until psychologists Joseph Brewer and Sigmund Freud joined forces to investigate Brewer's talking cure for nervous disorders that today's much more modern psychotherapy would be born. Freud and Brewer co-authored studies on hysteria in 1895. The chair finally, or the hysterectomies and stuff, at least they went away at the turn of the century and then in the in the u.s and britain sadly the the old uh clitoral stimulation

in some circles lasted for a few decades but uh yeah the author of this uh book in 1895 credited with formally founding psychoanalysis while both psychologists continued on their own paths developing psychotherapy methods and theory freud's work became much more influential and he laid the foundation for what was to come over the next 50 or so years. Then Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, would go on and develop theories of child and adolescent development from within her father's psychoanalytic framework and create diagnostic profiles that outlined psychological abnormalities in children. She's celebrated as contributing greatly to psychoanalysis and child psychology. Jumping ahead to the 1940s, the decade before Saul Newton's Sullivan Institute was born,

American psychologist Carl Rogers continued the work of Freud's successors and created the person-centered therapy approach, aka the humanistic approach. This client-centered therapy placed the focus on the client's ability to create change for themselves with the help of the therapist's unconditional support and regard for them. So the kind of therapy most people get today is now coming into vogue being developed rogers uh published counseling and psychotherapy outlining his new approach in 1942 about 10 years later abraham maslow maslow helped establish a very optimistic approach to psychology pushing humanistic psychology further along with his theories of self-actualization and human growth. One of his most well-known concepts is that of

the hierarchy of needs. I've always loved the hierarchy of needs, often accompanied by an illustration of a little pyramid to show how it works. First heard about it back when I was an 18-year-old psychology student. Essentially, you have to fulfill or mostly fulfill needs at the lowest level before focusing on needs of the next level, and then fulfill or mostly fulfill needs at the lowest level before focusing on needs of the next level, and then fulfill most of the needs at that level before leveling up again, and so on until you can hopefully focus on self-actualization. The first, and this does help with like, you know, therapy needs. I'll kind of explain a little bit. The first level of needs are the most basic physiological needs. Putting this in my own words somewhat, by the way,

for simplicity's sake. Breathing, food, water, sleep, primary health functions that allow you to keep living. Basic sexual functioning often thrown into this level, but obviously sex is not as important as the ability to breathe or starve or not starve. Next level is safety. Do you have a place to stay, a job or other means of income to pay for that place? Are you healthy above basic baseline survival? Above this level is love and belonging. Do you have friends, family, and sexual intimacy? Next level revolves around esteem. Do you have the respect of others? Do you feel confident? Is your self-esteem healthy? Do you feel like you're achieving your goals? And the final level is self-actualization.

Are you realizing your creative potential? Are you living life more or less on your own terms you feel at peace with your place with what you've uh you know uh achieved in your life or are achieving are you at peace with your place in the cosmos you know you're right where you're supposed to be you feel good about that you're the best version of yourself looking at this pyramid it's unreasonable to expect someone to be able to focus on the on the highest level of it if they're fucking starving if they're worried about rent if they're struggling with severe illness so when counseling with maslow's approach you logically help the client as best you can working with the

level they're at address problems arising from that level be practical i think about this pyramid when i hear uh celebrities give very shitty aff, unpractical to most advice in bullshit grocery store checkout aisle magazines. Do these 10 things to be at your best. Maybe it's the headline of an article written by some affluent and incredibly healthy and attractive person. Someone often born into privilege. Someone who just tells you to make sure you're getting up at least eight hours of sleep every night. Meditating at least 30 minutes a day. Eating a diet built around a lot of organic

free range meat, pressed organic juices, working out five hours a week, spending a certain number of hours with friends each week at your, you know, healthy socialization out there. Have a bunch of mind blowing sex. That's important, et cetera, et cetera. And that's fucking great for people living at the top of Maslow's hierarchy. I mean, sure. If you're Gwyneth Paltrow, eat all the best shit, go to all the best yoga retreats, sleep on the best mattress with the finest linens, have time for therapy, friends, meditation on the beach in front of your ocean front home, et cetera. But if you're someone, you know, a month behind on rent, working a job that doesn't pay all your bills, someone cutting coupons to buy whatever meets the cheapest, someone getting

whatever fruits and vegetables are on sale. Someone who can't get eight hours of sleep in great sex because they have a job and three kids and no partner to help or fuck and no nanny, no time for friends because work and family take everything from them. Well then go eat a bag of dicks. Gwyneth, you bougie bitch. Yeah. Your advice has value,

but only for the very top few socioeconomic percent of society. So back to history. By the 1960s, Aaron T. Beck had further expanded psychotherapy modalities by developing cognitive therapy, which led to what we know today as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. By the late 1960s, psychoanalysts and clinicians benefited from revolutionary diagnostic tools like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, version of the DSM has been available since 1968, and offers criteria for diagnosing hundreds of mental health conditions. But even the DSM is not foolproof, right? We mentioned that the DSM

used to propose hysterectomies as a treatment for hysteria, and that homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in the first few editions of the DSM until 1974. As new schools of psychoanalytical thought emerged in the mid-20th century, when the Sullivanians were getting going, therapists began to also realize what works for some people might not work for everyone. What a novel concept. Sadly, it was a novel concept at the time. Sadly, a lot of people still struggle with this concept, right? What works for some often doesn't work for all.

Life's complicated, motherfucker. Anyway, these new therapists understood that spinning someone around in a fucking chair until they puke or black out or both might work for maybe one person in all of humanity's history, but literally no one else. But seriously, they realized more and more as time went on that some treatments once thought to be effective might later prove to be ineffective or have too many side effects. And that some treatments were actually straight up traumatizing, but some treatments were for some didn't work for others, different strokes for different folks. And now a good therapist, uh, you know, finds out which stroke works for you and doesn't push their agenda on you or actually stroke you or have you stroke them.

Good therapist today is someone you can trust to do what's right for you. Saul Newton would betray that trust. But first, before we delve into the details of how exactly he did that, let's talk about the exact school of psychological thought he pulled his bullshit from. Let's learn about the theories of Harry Stack Sullivan, his mentor. Right after today's mid-ish show sponsor break. Thanks again for listening to our sponsors. And now back to Harry Stack Sullivan.

Harry Stack Sullivan focused his attention on interpersonal relationships, and in particular, the effect of loneliness on mental health. Sullivan contributed much to the field of psychology through his teachings, his writings, and leadership. He was a synthesizer, bringing the contemporary ideas of his time of psychiatry, social science together to form what has been called social psychiatry. He was a co-founder of the William Allenson White Institute, also instrumental in launching the first edition of the journal

Psychiatry. And he'd be most influential in his interpretation of relationships, which suggested that the way people interact with others could provide valuable clues into their mental health and that mental health disorders may stem from distressing interpersonal interactions. Right? A lot of that makes sense. If you have a terrible and dysfunctional relationship with your parents or spouse or your so-called best friend,

probably going to fuck with your mental health a bit. If you have a manipulative parent constantly talking down to you and advising you to do things that are actually not in your best interest, probably going to negatively affect your self-esteem a bit. Sullivan coined the term self-system to describe the three components of a person, much like Sigmund Freud's conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. Sullivan identified the active self or the waking conscious self, the eccentric self, which is the source of a person's identity and personality

And the state of sleep or the dormant self Sullivan developed the concept of developmental epics to help explain the development of personality across the lifespan Like many other theorists of his time his theory is stage-based But instead of focusing on the development of say sexual characteristics in adolescence He focused on how those sexual characteristics changed the person's relationships to others, arguing that humans were, first and foremost, social beings. There's a lot of truth in that. I also don't feel like he was a big introvert. Sullivan often emphasized the pivotal importance of friendship and connectedness, and his stage-based theory sees social skills

as a bridge to greater development and enrichment. Sullivan acknowledged that the developmental process begins early in life. Infancy is the first stage. He believed that an infant becomes human through tenderness received from the mothering one. The satisfaction of nearly every human need as a baby demands the cooperation of another person. Infants literally cannot survive without a mother or some nurturing maternal-like figure providing food, shelter, moderate temperature, physical contact, cleansing of waste materials, i.e. your shit and your pee. Sullivan believed that the survival link between mother and infant led to the development of anxiety for the baby. Being human, the mother enters the relationship with some degree of previously learned anxiety,

of course. But unlike that of the mother, the relationship with some degree of previously learned anxiety, of course. But unlike that of the mother, the infant's repertoire of behaviors is not adequate to handle anxiety. So whenever infants feel anxious, they try whatever means available to reduce anxiety, crying, screaming, throwing things, etc. During the next stage, childhood, ages one to five, emotions become reciprocal. A child is able to give tenderness as well as receive it. The relationship between mother or maternal unit and child becomes more personal and less one-sided. The child elevates the mother according to whether or not she shows reciprocal tender feelings, not just whether or

not she feeds and clothes the baby as an infancy. This learning process, how to create intimacy with a parent while still defining one's own identity and desires, usually coincides with the development of an imaginary friend, a safe, secure relationship that produces little to no anxiety Because there's no possibility of rejection And before looking into that I questioned whether or not most kids Had developed an imaginary friend or not I thought that he didn't

Because I don't remember having one And no one in my family has told me that I ever had one I don't remember my sister having one But then I took a minute to search and I was wrong A 2004 study conducted at the University of Washington showed that around 65% of kids had imaginary friends at some point before they turned seven. Well played, Mr. Sullivan, well played. Then there's the juvenile stage, ages six to eight. During this period, a wide variety of playmates and access to healthy socialization and social skills becomes

increasingly important. During the juvenile stage,ivan believed a child should learn to compete compromise and cooperate doing too much of any of these three things could lead to an over-competitive hyper aggressive child or a child who acts like a doormat in the face of any adversity okay i like that makes sense to me the next stage pre-adolescence, ages 9 to 12. You get the ability to form close friendships that assist the child in developing self-esteem and serves as practice for later relationships. The outstanding characteristic of pre-adolescence is the genesis of the capacity to love. Previously, all interpersonal relationships were based on personal need satisfaction. But during pre-adolescence, intimacy and love become the essence of friendships. Intimacy involves a relationship

in which the two partners consensually validate one another's personal worth. Love exists, quote, when the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as is one's own satisfaction

or security. And if that concept makes zero sense to you, please don't kill me, you heartless fucking sociopath. Sullivan believed that pre-adolescence is the most untroubled and carefree time of life. Parents are still significant, but they've been reappraised

in a more realistic light. Pre-adolescence can experience unselfish love that has not yet been complicated by lust. Damn it, Lusifina! Why do you make life so extra complicated, but also so much more fun? Experiences during pre-adolescence

are critical for the future development of personality. If children do not learn intimacy at this time, they are likely to be seriously stunted in later personality growth. However, earlier negative influences can be extenuated by the positive effects of an intimate relationship. And then unfortunately,

this peaceful period is shattered by adolescence, fucking puberty. Friendship, right? Early adolescence, next stage, between 13 and 17. And friendship takes on a sexual dimension in this stage. And the focus on relationships with peers

shifts towards romantic interests. Boners and wet pusses start to complicate life. That's a Sullivan quote, by the way. Back in 1938 at a mental health conference, he said, boners and wet pusses start to complicate life. That's a Sullivan quote, by the way. Back in 1938 at a mental health conference, he said boners and wet pusses start to complicate life. And that a bunch of psychiatrists in attendance nodded and agreed. Yeah, yeah, yes, indeed.

Couldn't have said it better myself, yes. No, I said that, of course, you knew that. He said an adolescent's sense of self-worth at this stage is based in large part upon his or her perceived sexual attractiveness. The need for intimacy achieved during the preceding stage continues during early adolescence, but is now accompanied by a parallel but separate need, lust. In addition, security or the need to be free from anxiety remains active during early adolescence. Thus, intimacy, lust,

and security often collide with one another, bringing stress and conflict to the young adolescent in at least three ways. First, lust interferes with security operations because genital activity in American culture is frequently ingrained with anxiety, guilt, and embarrassment. Thanks, Puritans! Second, intimacy also can threaten security, as when young adolescents seek intimate friendships with other gender adolescents. and threaten security as when young adolescents seek intimate friendships with other gender adolescents. These attempts are fraught with self-doubt, uncertainty, and ridicule from others, which may lead to a loss of self-esteem and an increase in anxiety. Third, intimacy and lust are frequently in conflict during early adolescence. Although intimate relationships with peers of equal status are still important, powerful genital tensions, that's a funny phrase, I haven't heard

that phrase,ek outlet without regard for the intimacy need. Fucking boners and wet pusses. Probably mostly boners. Ruining intimate friendships left and right. Damn you, biological imperative. Therefore, young adolescents

may retain their intimate friendships from pre-adolescence while feeling lust for people they neither like nor even know. The person either emerges from the stage in command of the intimacy and lust dynamisms or faces serious interpersonal difficulties during future stages. Although sexual adjustment is important to personality development, Sullivan

felt that the real issue lies in getting along with other people. Next comes late adolescence, almost done with these stages, which stretches from 18 into the early 20s. The young adult struggles with conflicts between parental control and the desire to form an independent identity while beginning to focus on both romance and friendships. Late adolescence begins when young people are able to feel both lust and intimacy towards the same person and ends in adulthood when they establish a lasting love relationship. People of the other gender are no longer desired solely as sex objects or same gender but he's writing this long time ago um but as people who are capable of being loved non-selfishly unlike the previous stage that was ushered in by biological changes late adolescence is completely determined by interpersonal relations at college or in the workplace late adolescence began exchanging

ideas with others and having their opinions and beliefs either validated or rejected. They now learn from others how to live in the adult world, but a successful journey through the earlier stages facilitates this adjustment. If the developmental stages have not been normal thus far, people face serious problems in bridging the gulf between society's expectations and their own inability to form intimate relations with persons of the other gender or same believing that love is a universal condition of young people they are often pressured into falling in love however only the mature person has the capacity to truly love in a real healthy way others merely go through the motions of being in love in order to maintain security

and that leads to all sorts of fucking dysfunction and heartache such as when people get married because they feel like they should, as opposed to because they want to, and then get divorced 10, 15, 20 years later and create a lot of unnecessary misery. So common. Final stage, adulthood. The primary struggles of adulthood include family, financial,

and security obligations and pressures, and the pressure to find and maintain a rewarding career. The successful completion of late adolescence culminates in adulthood, a period when people can establish a love relationship with at least one significant other person. Writing of this love relationship, Sullivan stated that this really highly developed intimacy with another is not the principal business of life, but is perhaps the principal source of satisfaction in life. Sullivan had little to say about this final stage because he believed that mature adulthood

was beyond the scope of interpersonal psychiatry. People who have achieved the capacity to love are not in need of psychiatric counsel, was his belief. His sketch of the mature person, therefore, was not founded on clinical experience, but just extra extrapolation, there we go, of the preceding stages. So it seems like there's a lot of good information there, right? A lot of it now might seem obvious, but primarily because we're

more educated in regards to psychological development than those who lived before all of this was studied and explained. Above all, Sullivan stressed that a simple diagnosis wouldn't do much to help a patient unless you understood a patient in the context of their life, their relationships, their surroundings. For example, he felt labeling someone a schizophrenic wasn't so much therapy as simply picking out a definition that seemed to fit. He wanted to recognize everyone's humanity, including those in the throes of deep psychosis. So how was that practiced in a therapeutic setting? Emphasizing the here and now, Sullivan's approach was to focus on current interpersonal relationships

in order to alter inappropriate patterns of relatedness, patterns shaped by current and past experiences of anxiety, insecurity, and avoidance. And again, if that also sounds like common sense to you, it's probably because a lot of modern therapy has embraced and grown from these methods. What's of particular importance in our episode today is Sullivan's thoughts about the family,

how those would go on to influence in a very altered form, the Sullivanians. Sullivan believed that anxiety and psychotic behavior could be traced back to families who did not know how to relate to their children, who consequently did not feel accepted and loved. He explained this in his idea called the self-system, which held that psychological behavior was developed during childhood and reinforced by one's family and friends, either from positive affirmation or as a way to avoid anxiety and threats to self-esteem. He was clearly much more of a nurture guy than he was a nature guy. And Sullivan would die in 1949. Just a few years later,

Saul would begin distorting his therapeutic theories. Saul actually knew Sullivan. How closely we don't know, but Saul worked at his William Allenson White Institute. Sullivan co-founded the institution in 1943. It's still there today. It has provided training for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists while offering general psychotherapy and psychoanalysis since it opened, located in New York City on the Upper West Side. So in summary, Sullivan thought that relationships provided key insight into how a patient's mental illness functioned. And conversely, that a lack of important relationships or difficult relationships, relationships could make mental illnesses worse for Sullivan.

Most of these relationships, unless they were explicitly toxic, were a good thing. The best thing humans need relationships. For example, he would say it is, it is a rare person who can cut himself off from a mediate and immediate relations with others for long spaces

of time without undergoing a deterioration in personality he'd also say as we just said a moment ago that a mature adult would have a romantic relationship where their needs were met both physically and emotionally so right yay then sol newton would fuck all this up under the guise of helping people further when really it sure seems like he was just using them for his own sexual and financial desires. He would use Sullivan's name, right? Name his institute after Sullivan to make it appear more legit. Instead of thinking of anxiety around intimacy and sexuality as a necessary phase of life that we all have to grow out of by learning how to communicate, understanding our own emotions and emotions of others, Newton would say that it was the family unit that was responsible for generating

all of a person's anxieties or hangups. Sullivan never said that. He did say that many anxieties and disorders developed as a result of childhood relationships, but also that those relationships had to exist and a person ought to try to improve on them throughout their lives. Newton would argue that Sullivan's theories

meant the nuclear family had to fucking go. It was the core family unit that was the problem, the root of all of our mental health struggles. Demonizing the nuclear family, especially women's roles as mothers, Newton's cult would blend elements of psychotherapy with teachings from Marxism and communism that certainly were not in Sullivan's writings. I guess Marxist communism. He blended Sullivan's bastardized warped teachings and twisted communist principles into his own ideas of polygamy to create a uniquely cultish ideology.

With Newton, everyone had to live together communally. Institute members and therapists lived together in three buildings on Manhattan's Upper West Side. These buildings were located just over a mile and a half from Sullivan's William Allenson White Institute. How crazy for therapists working at that institute, following Sullivan's death. Newton and his wife at the time just moved a little ways

down the road. Both former employees started claiming to teach a lot of the same shit, but launching a mentally unhealthy destructive cult instead of a place of healing. And Newton's hidden in plain sight compound, he kept women and men apart, while also ensuring followers took part in weekly mandated therapy sessions. Several ex-members said during these therapy sessions they were told an array

of horrible things for the notion that their mothers loathed them to suggestions they were every bit as evil as the ss during the holocaust but thank god newton and his minions could fix them right uh reminds me of religion again they're called too you're broken you're broken but i can fix you uh ex-members pa Sprecher and Michael Bray said during some of these obligatory meetings, therapists showed them old childhood photos, insinuating their mothers were disgusted by them. Bray was so convinced by this manipulative tactic

that he started obeying all of the Institute's orders, including divorcing his wife. Former member Chris Cherney so fervently believed Newton's bullshit that he told his sister that their mother wished she wasn't alive as an infant. She was sickly and a challenge to raise. He not only cut off his relationship

with his mom, he encouraged her to do the same. The therapy continued to infect his mind and soon enough he believed his mom was the sole reason for his entire family's dysfunction. Paul Sprecher recalled a similar procedure. He was told to look at old photographs of him and his mom and, you know, was convinced that his mom had nothing but disdain for everyone in the footage. Look at how she's looking here.

Look at her facial expression. She hates you. According to Specker, the therapist suggested his mom's buried resentment informed the way he interacted with the world and his warped functionality is what brought him to seek help with the Institute. And also, here's where we really go. Cult, cult, cult. Because the nuclear family was bad, nobody at the cult was allowed to be monogamous. Ex-members shared stories of being forced to share beds with new partners on a nightly basis at one point. Nightly. At one point, there was a reader board where you would check it each day to see who you were supposed to hook up with that night. Married couples not permitted to live together.

They're not permitted to be sexually exclusive. Everyone's getting fucked in this cult. And the top guys decided who was fucking who, so-called therapists, some with degrees, some without, right? Who could and did demand dates with whomever they wanted. They had their pick of the litter and no one was in a position to refuse them since it was, you know, for their benefit, for the therapy. Paul Specker recalled Newton engaging in relations with a woman for whom Paul cared about deeply, simply out of spite. Wanted to teach him a lesson that he shouldn't get too attached to any one person. And now I'm getting ahead of myself.

We're going to go over all of this in more depth in the timeline. So let's get to it right after. Oh boy. Another two sponsors you will love. Time Suck today is brought to you by Whipple! Mental health edition. Tell your mom to shut the fuck up right after pounding a 48-ounce can of Whipple. Mental health edition.

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Now let's get into that timeline. Trap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-sucked timeline. On June 22nd, 1906 Some sources say June 25th The man who would eventually create the Sullivanians is born Saul B. Newton Newton's original family name was Cohen He was born in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada,

and later attended the University of Wisconsin. Of course he was Canadian. Sexually perverse, mother-hating, commie con artist. That has Canada written all over it. Classic Canadian dirtbag. You can't throw a fucking rock in Canada. From what I've read, I haven't been there in a while, as many of you know, without hitting a sexually perverse pinko mom hating fuck face kidding of course uh what if that was a common canadian archetype though what a weird country that would make uh we don't know much about newton's early life don't even know exactly what his middle name was uh he was very secretive in that regard guessing he hated the shit out of his mom minnie cohen based on beliefs there was no way in hell he had a warm, fuzzy relationship with her.

We don't even know his father's name at all. We know he was married to a woman named Myrtle, but don't know anything about her. He did have three siblings, all brothers. Doesn't seem he was in contact with any of them for most of his adult life. George, Irving, and Dobie. What we do know is that Newton at some point started calling himself, he started calling himself that, we don't even know when, went on to Chicago where he associated with radical circles, becoming a communist, easy bojangles, and an anti-fascist. His name change

bothers me. He might've changed his name because Cohen is a Jewish name and Newton is not. Maybe he'd faced discrimination and prejudice due to his birth name, or maybe the slimy piece of shit changed his name in order to hide from trouble he'd gotten into when he was younger. And that's why he left Canada as well. I feel like if the right investigator did enough digging, they might be able to uncover some dark secrets from this con artist's younger life. He served with the McKenzie Papano battalion of the Abraham Lincoln

brigade in the Spanish civil war as Saul. Oh my gosh. I i said we didn't know his middle i did i forgot we found it saul bernard cohen i was able to find the last bit of this random source so i do know his middle name bernard uh this was a group of soldiers fighting on the side of left-leaning revolutionary forces compromised of a lot of communists like saul and there was this random website documenting people who fought in this specific little brigade. These revolutionaries would lose the war in 1939. Saul was wounded and done with fighting in 1937.

He'd serve again, though, in the U.S. Army this time in World War II after being drafted in 1943. We think that came from him. Can't verify that in sources. Can't determine exactly how he participated in that war. While he would claim he got a medical license before starting his institute, a necessity to practice psychiatry legally, does not seem he actually did that. Many former group members would later say that he definitely did not. He had zero formal training in medicine or counseling, nada. 1914, eight years after Saul's birth, the man who would become Saul Newton's right-hand man, Ralph Klein, is born,

possibly in Germany. Not much info on his early life either. 1943, Henry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson, and Eric Fromm create the New York branch of the William Allenson White Psychiatric Foundation that I mentioned earlier. At the time, it provided a revolutionary alternative to mainstream Orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis in the U.S. orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis in the U.S. It would pioneer that interpersonal point of view, we summarize, as opposed to the traditional, distant, formal, blank screen psychoanalyst who had no human presence in the therapist-client relationship and did not focus on current interpersonal relationships. Saul Newton would begin working here, but in an administrative capacity, not as a therapist, and meet his soon-to-be second wife, Jane Pierce,

who actually was a therapist. Sounds like possibly a good one prior to Saul. She was born January 13th, 1914 in Austin, Texas, later studied at Radcliffe College, part of Harvard, then at the University of Chicago, got a master's degree in psychology, then a medical doctorate in 1941, interned at the International Harriet Lane Hospital hospital in baltimore in 1942 then

worked in their psychiatric center uh then worked in albany new york at the albany hospital in 1942 1943 was a resident psychiatrist there in 43 next worked at the new york state psychiatric institute in new york city in 1943 1944 then again in 1948 1949 and started working in private practice in psychoanalysis in new york in the city of manhattan starting in 1944 she began studying the william allinson white psychiatric foundation in 1946 graduating as a therapist trained in their methods in 1949 and then she worked as a therapist at william allen allinson white until 1957 when she and saul went on to launch their cult. I mean, institute.

Yes, 1957, Saul Newton and Jane Pierce co-found the Sullivan Institute for Research and Psychoanalysis. Very little known about the first several years. Doesn't seem they had many patients during that time. And those they did have, they might not have expressed such radical ideas to as they would later.

Six years later, 1963, they'll publish a full outline of their theories, their manifesto, if you will, conditions of human growth. By this point, their ideas are radical. In their book, they identify the family as a negative force. Your family's a negative force always that socially isolates the individual from developing healthy relationships with friends, especially in adolescence and adulthood. the individual from developing healthy relationships with friends, especially in adolescence and adulthood. Open-ended friendships, both sexual and otherwise,

were the way out of infantilization, I hate that word, infantilization, of the nuclear family and the road to maturity. Recreating family life by getting married and having your own kids was a symptom of ongoing emotional immaturity. Through friendships, they argued, people could experience love between equals and their practices. They encouraged people to expand their friendships and withdraw from their families. Soon in the early 70s, after Saul and Jane divorce and Jane leaves the Institute,

this shit will be mandated. This book stops short of suggesting the things that Saul's cult would later become known for, polygamy, free love, and a total ban on children. Now let's meet some Sylvanians and their family members from the early years. Amy Siskine's parents had gotten divorced in 1958 when she was five years old, the same year her mother became a patient of a Sullivan Institute therapist. In 1963, when Amy was 10, her mom moved herself and her children into one of the Institute's first communal apartments in 1966 at age 13 amy began psychotherapy sessions it was the same year her mom left the country to pursue her dissertation research in anthropology and amy was left to live with her father feeling uncomfortable and

disoriented and a bit abandoned she soon visited her mother's ex-roommate who urged her to see a therapist not just any therapist but sullivan institute ralph klein right saul's right hand man he uh he had also happened to date amy's mother years before and by date i mean fuck but also amy was fucking a variety of uh you know other sullivan members so it's ralph doesn't seem to have been a free-for-all exactly quite yet wasn't exactly mandated but it was heading that direction uh this is how amy would describe her sessions with ralph she said i started seeing r Ralph once a week, unbeknownst to my father. I was a quiet, shy kid. I had not done well in the seventh and eighth grades. I began the ninth grade at Hunter College High School after I moved in with my father.

I was interested in boys, but very shy. Ralph was apparently trying to help me improve my self-esteem. He complimented me, told me how pretty I was and asked me if I masturbated. I told him not really. He said I should go home and try it out. Then he followed up on this advice by asking me how it went. I didn't really want to talk to him about it and I somehow succeeded in avoiding this question. Ah, wow. You know, I've never had a therapist ask me how my masturbation has been going. Hmm. I'm going to have to let Debbie know that I'm pretty fucking bummed that she's not more interested in that aspect of my life. I should probably share a lot of details about masturbation that she's never asked for.

Amy moved back in with her mother and younger brother soon when they returned to the country in June. Ralph then offered to have Amy stay with him in his summer home in Long Island. Her best friend, also the child of a group member, invited to stay as well. Totally normal. Lot of classy male unmarried therapists in their 50s ask teenage girl clients to come stay with them for the summer and also bring a teen girlfriend. Very up and up. Nothing seems weird about any of this at all.

Nothing to worry about so far. Amy does go stay with Ralph and gets a job working as a counselor at a local day camp, spends most days at work, at home. She said Ralph made a lot of comments about her body, many of them sexually explicit, and he encouraged her to have sex. Not with him though, it seems. She said she began to have sexual encounters with boys she met over the summer that Ralph always wanted to hear about them. Right? Get some details, lots of details, and sometimes she would tell him. And I am sure, as a mental health professional.

There was no fucking way. He was thinking about what she told him later. And beaten off. No way. I hope no one thinks that. Because that for sure never happened. Not with Ralph. Not with that stand up cat.

We'll catch up with Amy again soon. But first another Sylvanian. One who would stick with the group. Almost till the bitter end. In the summer of 1963. Also in the summer of 1963 uh rise also in the summer of 1963 rising star music star judy collins gets involved with the sylvanians back in 1961 she had released her first album a maid of constant sorrow at the age of 22 she was also facing demons and alcohol and drug problem which interfered with parenting her young son she had to attend meetings with a social worker to prove she was a fit mother. Not knowing where to turn,

she would start seeing a therapist, Ralph, for sure not beaten off to fantasies about teen girl client slash house guest, Klein. This is how she would describe it later in her autobiography. I told Ralph in our first session that I knew I was an alcoholic. I'd known before I was 20. By now, I was rather proud

that I could drink grown men under the table and drive better when I was plastered. Ralph said he was rather proud that I could drink grown men under the table and drive better when I was plastered. Ralph said he felt that when we got to the bottom of my emotional problems, why I had tried to kill myself, why I was depressed, my drinking would become manageable. He even suggested it might stop. I realize today he had not one single clue about alcoholism. I did not drink because of my problems.

I had problems because I drank. It would take me 23 years to figure that out. But at the time she liked Ralph because she felt like she confided in him about everything. Ralph is a core member of the Sullivan Institute. Of course, tried to convince her that her parents were what was wrong with her. For example, he told her that Judy's father

confiding in her when she was younger about some affairs he had had was kind of incest. I don't think her dad should have shared that shit with her, but incest? I don't know about that. Pretty soon she had moved on to seeing Saul, who told her to call him, as many premier therapists often do, father. Please call me father. Did I mention he was never trained as a therapist?

I think he did. And she did call him father, right? She called him that hot, hard father daddy. She called 1-900-HOT-DADDY to talk to real, nude, rock-hard father daddies completely covered in olive oil. Sorry. She also said she saw Saul's wife,

actual therapist Jane Pierce, for some more therapy sessions. Judy would never live in a group apartment, but she did, in her own words, get a lot of mileage out of the Sullivanian belief that alcohol was good for anxiety and that having multiple sex partners was a political statement and a healthy lifestyle. She had sexual relationships with both men and women, highly encouraged by Newton and others, mostly blacking out by the time actual sex occurred. She would be with the Sullivanians for 15 years before moving on to different therapists. I'm guessing they never pushed her to have to live on the compound

because she became a Grammy-winning hit record having recording artists. Celebrity privilege and all that. Now let's meet another cult member, a guy who did fall very deep into all this mess, who did not have celebrity privilege. 1969, 25-year-old Artie Honan. We mentioned Artie before.

He's feeling like a failure. He'd gotten his MBA two years earlier, worked as a securities analyst at a large brokerage company in Manhattan. He's living on East 91st Street in a studio apartment. His college girlfriend, Jess, had dumped him two years before. He'd moved to Manhattan from Long Island to meet someone, but nothing was working out. He spent his weeknights largely alone, watching the news, watching long-haired kids preach sex, drugs, and rock and roll and feeling like a square.

When he returned home to Long Island to see his friends from high school, he felt more and more like the odd man out as they began getting married and having kids. On paper, Artie knew that he had an idyllic life. He'd grown up in an affluent home with two siblings. His father was a prosperous banker. His mom was a homemaker who made sure that her children always had what they needed. But, and I hope you're sitting down for this,

his parents weren't perfect. Nope. They were regular old meat sacks, just like you and I. And poor, poor little Artie Fartie. They had character floss. For starters, both of his parents, having grown up during the Depression, were pretty thrifty. Holy shit! That poor bastard, how sad that his parents weren't loose with their money. How psychologically scarring. Also, Artie's father was often Busy with his career And couldn't hang out all of the time

My god And This hot hard father daddy Would spend the first two years of Artie's life In Burma and China fighting against Japan To help save the fucking planet in World War II Where he got a good conduct ribbon Two battle stars and a distinguished unit badge

And that was really hard on Artie Farty And still not not done. And actually, this does suck. Artie's mommy could have a violent temper. The slightest provocation, like trying to get a snack when she was cooking, would sometimes lead to her exploding. And sometimes she would grab a wooden spoon to hit the kids with. And Artie would run, hoping he could make it to his bedroom where he could lock the door. The other option was a merciless beating once she hit him so hard that the spoon broke and his dad didn't do anything about it. And I know that's terrible, but also very typical for parenting in that era.

There is that. Compared to the culture around Artie, that was not unusual. Doesn't make it right, but important context. Growing up, young Artie spent a lot of time out of his house with his friends in the neighborhood, especially his best friend, Robert's house. He grew up trying to escape without being noticed, envying people who were spontaneous and outspoken.

Speaking his mind always felt dangerous to him. And when his friends, especially charismatic Robert, when they shined in social situations, already felt jealous. Now that he was an adult, he felt like, uh, now that he was out of that situation. Uh, but still he felt like some part of him was incapable of moving on from his childhood. He couldn't see a way of a way to family life, excuse me, amid all the confusing feelings he had about his own upbringing. So in 1969, he decides to see a therapist at the recommendation of his new friend, Anna, not her real name. He changed his name to this memoir. Anna told him that she was getting into something called Sullivanian therapy. She described it as a radical form of psychotherapy that helped people in their relationships.

That it was based on the theories of Henry Stack Sullivan, Jane Pierce, and Saul Newton. Artie had never heard of any of them. But he thought it might be worthwhile to see a therapist that Anna was talking about. This guy named Irv. Not his real name. Artie made it through the first session with irv which seemed promising and then irv asked what he wanted from therapy and already said to fall in love and get married why asked her already was confused well doesn't everyone not necessarily irv said you may want

to make some close friends first right okay this isn't bad irv told him that already should uh make some new friends get more of a social life, who was feeling the serious pressure to get married, societal pressure, and his own desire to find someone who loved him, yet not being truly sure if he was ready to take that step, he was relieved. As they had more and more sessions, Artie opened up about his mother, and with Irv's feedback, started to wonder

if his mom was a dangerous sadist. He also did his genuine best at making new friends, but invariably, the friends would announce That they were getting married or moving away And Artie would call up Anna to complain Don't worry Anna said people in Sullivanian therapy Don't get married They hang out in the group

On the Upper West Side This was the first time that Artie had heard about the group Anna went on to explain that a lot of people In Sullivanian therapy socialized together And became friends In his next session with Irv Artie asked about how he could meet people in the group. And then Irv said, you'll meet them in due time. Later in August of 1970, Artie now hears from Anna's sister that Anna has committed suicide.

Sullivanian therapy did not work out for her. Crazy that being pressured to hate her parents and fuck her therapists and strangers didn't heal whatever mental afflictions she was suffering from depressed arty now feels like his situation is more hopeless than ever that his friend group is shrinking by suicide and marriage alike and then larry who he'd met through anna another sullivanian patient began seeing her for therapy sessions before arty uh and he asked arty if he wanted to have dinner with him already assumed that this was uh the group that anna had talked about and excitedly accepted finally some people who socialized together didn't get married became friends with each other and his dinner with him. Artie assumed that this was the group that Anna had talked about and excitedly accepted. Finally, some people who socialized together, didn't get married, became friends with each other. In his dinner with Larry at a Greek restaurant, Larry explained more about Sullivanian therapy and said that he was in a PhD program in psychology, training to be a

Sullivanian therapist. He said that one of the key differences between Sullivanian therapy and other therapies was that people in Sullivanian. Socialized mainly with each other. He then asked Artie. If he wanted to join a mixed group. The way he put it. It was just a group of people. Who would get together every week to talk. Artie thought that sounded great.

Soon after he was. He went to this mixed group meeting. In someone's Upper West Side apartment. Met a dozen people. All of whom were in Sullivanian therapy. And everyone took turns telling the group. About their therapy. And at that mixer already got invited to another party. And at that party, he hears more about Saul Newton. A woman tells him that Saul is supervising her therapy sessions

and that he's an incredible man. Godlike. He fought in the Spanish civil war, world war two, started the Sullivan Institute, wrote a book, a very monumental book called the conditions for human growth. He also meets a lot of people who tell them that they live with other Sullivanians wrote a book, a very monumental book called The Conditions for Human Growth. He also meets a lot of people who tell them that they live with other Sullivanians in apartments nearby that the Institute owns. And after he hooks up with another Sullivanian, to his surprise, two of her roommates immediately ask him out. He asks Irv if that's okay. And the therapist explains, it's not only okay, it's recommended. And then Irv said, go get your dick wet, buddy. Hail Lucifina. Mental health is mostly about a steady supply of fresh, strange puts.

If you're not fucking hitting some strange every week, you're not living. Right? You're just existing. Just some dust in the wind waiting to blow away. Go get your fuck on. Get out of here. No, he didn't say that. He probably didn't say that.

He said, exclusive relationships prevent growth. They keep people from developing other friendships. Within a month, Artie Fardy had slept with a number of Sullivanian women that he'd met through these Saturday night parties, and he felt like a kid in a candy store. All these pretty, available women who had no qualms about getting straight to the point. His self-esteem had never felt better. Yeah, I bet. Hey, Lucifina. Only thing now bothering him was that he got a little jealous when one of the women he slept with quickly then went out and slept with someone else. But other women sleep with him would help cure him of that jealousy. At least at first.

In the fall of 1970, four therapists, two married couples, leave the Sullivan Institute, taking many of their patients with them. Not everyone was down with where the ship was heading. Not everyone was cool with increasing pressure to let other members and therapists fuck their wives or husbands. Meanwhile, Artie quickly finds out that dating more than one person at a time is the most important rule of the group,

that all of the therapists encourage it. The term dating meant getting together with someone on a regular basis, and it almost always included having sex. If it was the opposite gender, sometimes with the same gender. For most women, but not for most men Interestingly, you know, they would be pressured

To have sex with kind of everybody However, even with male friends, Artie was Encouraged to share the same bed with them for the night after dates Which now began to be assigned He quickly got used To having a sleepover date almost every night Either with a man or a woman Artie would remark to Irv, people in the group

Seemed to want to be with each other all the time. And Irv's response confused him. If you're not with other people, you're with your mother. Totally, right? God, that makes a lot of sense. Like on the rare night that I'm home alone, if the kids are with their mom and stepdad and Lindsay's out of town by herself without me for some reason, and I'm just hanging out of the house by myself, you know, I tell people if they ask that I'm hanging out with mother, you know, playing a little PS5 with mother, watching a horror movie with mommy, laying in bed masturbating before I go to sleep with mama. Wait, what? Artie assumed that he knew what Irv meant, that his mother had created his view of the world

during his early years and alone, he was stuck with her negative thoughts and attitudes but by meeting other people he was exposed to other influences and away from mommy in october of 1970 already tells larry that he's going to see his parents for the upcoming weekend and larry not a fan of that decision larry tells already farty that he written a letter to his own parents saying he didn't want to see them ever again that many other people in the group had done the same thing that it was the Sullivan way the right thing to do if you wanted to progress with therapy and be happy so Artie decides instead of visiting his parents just to completely cut ties with him cult cult cult that'll teach your dad for fighting valiantly in world war ii instead of hanging out with you when you were a baby

for working instead of playing with you all the time growing up. That'll teach your mom for whooping your ass as a kid in a way that most other moms whip their kids' asses. Later, Artie would find out that one Sullivanian therapist was known to write scripts for his patients, telling them how to cut their parents out of their lives. Some therapists told their patients that their parents were not only destructive, but murderous. He'd hear people in the group boast

about how exactly they told their parents off. Artie wouldn't have a big story. He would just stop calling his parents, stop returning their calls, or stop listing their calls. When his mom asked him to visit, he would decline saying he was seeing a therapist and wanted to be left alone.

He could hear the disappointment in her voice and then eventually she stopped calling. How fucking sad. It wasn't long before irv encouraged arty to stop hanging out with his non-syllabian friends as well and then with arty when arty complained about feeling lonely irv suggested that he move into a group apartment come to our compound arty moves into his first sylvania department in june of 1971 he's in now immediately he stopped feeling so lonely unlike other co-living situations he'd been in,

everyone was extremely respectful. And if he got jealous when he saw his roommates hanging out with women, he did it before, right? He just tried to push those feelings down. Now he started to have trouble fitting in with his coworkers at the office though. When he started at his firm in 1969, he had short hair, wore Brooks Brothers suits,

white button-down shirts, and he repped ties. But now his hair is down to his neck and he's changed into jeans in his work bathroom precisely at 5 o'clock. He also hasn't told anyone at his job about the group. He just doesn't think they'll understand. The cult's reality not meshing with the reality of the rest of the world. That's how they fucking get you. Until they pull you in deep. Eventually, their world becomes your world. In the summers, the group shares a bunch of houses in Amagansett, Long Island on the beach.

Took me a second to figure out that word. Artie quickly joins as often as he can get away from work. Also starts noticing how the people in the group don't socialize with anyone not in the group and how therapists who they call the shrinks act above everyone else in the group's social hierarchy. That summer Artie takes a bunch of acid mescaline, laughs hysterically,

feels electric currents running through his body and fucks a whole bunch. It sounds pretty incredible. He also gets, uh, also goes camping with a bunch of cult members in Vermont and sees Aerosmith play in a big barn and then sleeps in the barn with the cult members and Aerosmith. He doesn't state this explicitly, maybe worried about some kind of defamation lawsuit.

And I don't know that this ever happened, but it sounds like there was probably a big orgy in this barn with cult members and Aerosmith. And that may be the coolest cult benefit I've heard of so far when examining the cults we've covered, you know, to this point. Losing your relationship with your parents,

giving up financial freedom, having maniacs manage your life, having to fuck people you don't really want to fuck, having your kids sent off to boarding schools, losing pre-cult social ties. Yeah, that all sounds pretty shitty, but getting to fuck in a barn orgy with Aerosmith, pretty cool. Good story you get to cherish for the rest of your life. Artie now feels like he's finally found his place in the group. In the fall of 1972, Artie starts a class that everyone in the group must take, a class on the conditions of human growth, and he'll be in that class for five years. Some class. Sounds almost like classic brainwashing. The psychologist, quote unquote, teaching this class explained that reading this book isn't nearly enough, since it's so complex with psychological terms, concepts, detailed sections on the structure of personality development and diagnosis or diagnoses. It would be important for everyone to get together to talk about it often for years.

Dom, his teacher, tells them that the first principle of the book is simple. The personality is controlled 100% by environment. In Nature vs. Nurture, Saul, all in on nurture. Fuck genetics. Just like birds, it's not real. Artie wouldn't realize how much he took Saul's crazy opinions as unquestionable truths until years later, thinking he was the ultimate authority on everything. Here are some of those Newton truths. People are who they are because of the people who raised them.

Yeah, asterisks. They are who they are because of genetic predispositions and the people who raise them and all the other people they come into contact with throughout their childhoods. People need validation, recognition, support, encouragement in order to grow. Without it, people stagnate.

Do not learn new skills and deteriorate. Not always. Some self-starters, some loners and hermits, extreme introverts actually grow and evolve outside of social immersion Put the right person alone in a library They're not going to stagnate Parents are primary validators

But friends, teachers, relatives, and therapists Can provide what the books call alternate validation To encourage growth Okay, fine, sounds reasonable for most upbringings People develop ways of interacting in their families Their experiences, skills, and opinions are shaped mainly People develop ways of interacting in their families. Their experiences, skills, and opinions are shaped mainly by their parents and embodied in their self-esteem. While these behaviors and opinions may be functional and necessary for survival in the family,

they can interfere with the relationships outside the family. Okay, sure. Sometimes your family's weird and you develop bad habits in how you interact with them. And then those habits affect other interactions, relationships that you have. Okay. Sounds reasonable. Personal growth involves expansion of the self system. This causes anxiety. So people protect their self system with security operations and repudiate new experiences.

Okay. Yeah. Got it. Change is hard. Got to really work on getting comfortable with being uncomfortable To progress in life, oftentimes In therapy, a person analyzes Interactions with others They gain insight into thoughts and behaviors that interfere with relationships

The goal is to have better, more intimate Relationships This involves an expansion of the self-system And consequently, anxiety And that is actually based on Henry Stack Sullivan's teachings Artie would learn a lot of Sullivan's teachings and also learn a lot of shit that was radically different. For example, the chapter on the hostile integration implied that most people were not mature enough to have truly intimate relationships and that exclusive relationships lead to jealousy,

possessiveness, anger, and a mutual denial of needs. That exclusiveness is destructive. and a mutual denial of needs. That exclusiveness is destructive. That was all Newton. Speaking of Rootin' Tootin' Newton, in the winter of 1971, 1972, Saul announces a new program at the Sullivan Institute, a program to teach young people without graduate degrees how to do therapy. Finally, finally, they're just going to let anyone play around with patients' noodles, and not just uppity trained therapists. This was a huge change. The Sullivan Institute had previously trained only people with MDs or PhDs. And I'm guessing that Saul was getting sick and tired of educated people pushing back on his nonsensical ramblings.

There was a rumor that Saul told one of the women in the program that she was an ideal candidate because she hadn't gone to college. And therefore, he didn't have to unlearn her because he's smarter than everyone who went to college. Of course, no one's even sure that Saul ever got a college degree. Also by the winter of 71, 72, the group had grown to about 200 people and there was a demand for more therapists. Irv would tell Artie that he didn't qualify to be in the training program to become a therapist because the trainees needed to be uncorrupted from higher education. Damn you, Artie, and your previous education. Artie also finds out that Saul kicked out a man in the conditions class because the man was writing a PhD dissertation proposal to do a study on the Sullivanian community. Colt, Colt, Colt, how dare you look critically

at our group? How dare you expose the corrupt hold I have over them. Saul also expelled a woman who had thoughtlessly invited a so-called narc to her birthday. He expelled a guy who talked to an FBI agent when the latter came looking for an army deserter. Saul ousted another guy by simply deeming him psychopathic. Guessing Saul got called out on his bullshit by that guy. None of the Sullivanians ever saw these people again. Saul is tightening his hold over the group. These actions send a clear message to the group. Be careful what you say about the group

to people outside the community. Now the Sullivanians become a little more cautious. They'd always gotten more members by recommending Sullivanian therapy to those outside the community, but now they slow their roll in that regard and trying to bring attention to the group. Saul also now bans drugs at the houses.

Oh, Saul, what the fuck? If you're going to keep having orgies, which he did keep doing, you got to let him be drug fueled, don't you? Not having been in an orgy, I imagine that the only thing better than an orgy is a drug fueled orgy. In the spring of 1972, Artie gets fired from his corporate job. He applies to masters of social work programs, even calls up to his parents to ask for money to pay for them. Not, not talking to his therapist or excuse me, his parents, but we'll call them,

you know, for money. That's the only way he'll communicate with him. And then when they don't give him money, cuts off communications again. He wants so badly to be a Sullivanian therapist, even though Saul has shown no interest in putting him on the therapist path, even though a degree might hurt him more than help him in like another degree.

Still a month later, he's admitted to the MSW program at NYU, set to begin in September of 1972. While he likes the program, he knows that there's a mindset in the group that Sullivanian therapy is the only therapy that matters. So he also takes Sullivan Institute classes, continues to take them, like a class with Jane Pierce, Saul's wife on Sullivan's interpersonal theory of psychiatry but i just love all these classes from a guy who doesn't have an education in psychiatry

uh by this time jane is in her 60s dressing in shapeless clothing sipping vodka throughout classes but still seems sharp already tries to focus on his studies working two jobs to pay for his tuition hoping he will get invited to a trainee party. New therapist trainees have become the group's coolest cool kids. And then that does happen. His friends, Mitch and Mike, both trainees invite Artie to a party on Barnes Landing thrown by Luba,

a second tier Sullivanian therapist. Various hierarchies forming within the cult. Luba had rented a large white stucco house that was owned by two other Sullivanian therapists. At the party, he will learn from Luba that she is seeing a new therapist named Joan Harvey, a woman rapidly becoming a prominent leader in the Institute. Pretty soon, Artie will start meeting Luba for fuck dates, kind of fuck dates. Artie had trouble performing in bed with her because he was not attracted to her. He didn't

want to date her to begin with, but she wanted to date him. And he knew that being in the community meant you did not refuse people who were interested in you meanwhile saul is getting crazier he's become more prone to explosive anger whenever anyone does anything that saul or his therapist disagree with they encourage patients to explore their actions unconscious malevolent intent towards the group now let's catch up with amy in the summer of 1973 right the girl who'd been a patient of ralph klein's as a kid possibly his victim. I do wonder if more went on with them than her telling him about her sex life.

She now goes on to finish high school and apply to college, but becomes depressed and drops out before the end of her first semester. When she returns to New York City in the summer of 1973, she starts up with a new Sullivanian therapist, Tina. Tina had a college degree, but not in psychology and no advanced training in psychotherapy other than what she learned from the Institute. Amy would see Tina for seven years, seven not so

fun years. Tina was not a warm and fuzzy person. In fact, Tina scared her and Amy tried to be a good patient in her sessions more than she tried to actually get better. With Tina, the first and main project in psychotherapy was for Amy to do her history. Doing this entailed Amy recounting childhood memories, bringing in family photos and other memorabilia from her past, and having Tina interpret everything. Much of the interpretation involved casting both of her parents, of course, in a very destructive light and suggesting that she break off contact with them, which she now did. Tina then encouraged her to move into a group apartment with other Sullivanian patients. By the way, I like that she cut off contact with her parents

who were both previous Sullivanian fucking cult members. So now she actually moves into a group apartment. She says this will move, this move will accelerate her interpersonal development by allowing her to work on her peer relationships, which means fuck everybody. Now Amy moves into an Upper West Side

apartment, cult apartment with four other women. Now let's jump ahead a year to the summer of 1974. For many members in the summer of 74, it seemed like things were going well, at least on a social level. There were sex parties every weekend. The cult's beach houses were packed. Group members would take the train out every weekend,

filling cars, singing loudly while they swigged drinks. There were classes, beach days, lots of casual sex dates, roommates to hang out with, essentially no time alone. By this time, there are over 350 people in the group. And then in the fall of 1974, things get less fun for some. Luba, that second-tier therapist, had met a man in Paris a few years before. She'd brought him to New York. He'd joined the cult. And now the two discuss having a baby together. But Saul wanted the man to have a baby with someone else, a woman he was close to. Luba had no choice but to accept this if she wanted to remain at the Institute. She got her therapy referrals from Saul. And if she rejected his wish, it was all over. In his supposed attempt to make up for now, condoning

her having a baby with the man she loved, or condemning, and in fact, advising him to have a child with someone else, which is so fucking cruel. This fucker loved to play God. Saul now gives her the position of director over the group's new improv comedy group. Yep, they're doing improv comedy now. And lets her start teaching acting classes, even though she has no training in acting. Yeah, these weirdos have moved into improv and theater because why not? Pretty soon, she will use the class to form a repertory theater company

called the Fourth Wall Theater Company. And then she'll quickly plan performances of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Soon, the Fourth Wall Theater Company will rent the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village, which had 88 seats. Company members would not only perform,

the group convinced him to pay dues to cover rent and production costs how predatory like i love comedy i've been touring as a stand-up for over 20 years but if suddenly i had to pay to perform instead of getting paid to perform well i'm done with comedy uh now let's look at how children were faring in the cycle babble cult between 1973 and 1974 nine kids will be born into the group at least nine that we know of and all but one of their parents were therapists the group, at least nine that we know of, and all but one of their parents were therapists. The kids were taken care of by babysitters, either professionally hired babysitters or random members of the cult who were unpaid sitters. Babysitting was considered

a significant part of group life, a way to learn to take care for kids if you wanted to be a parent someday. Each kid had several unpaid babysitters, mostly on weekends. It was seen as an honor in the group to babysit, especially for one of the children of the leadership. It implied that you were interpersonally mature. One child who was born to a therapist in 1973 was given up by his mother, or she was forced to give him up, and he was then raised by another therapist who was close to Saul. Another boy who was born in 1973 would live with his mother, a therapist, and her roommates until he was five, then moved to live with group leadership. His mother subsequently became less involved with the group, but did not get her boy back for years.

Most of the children who were born before the parents, before parents were involved with the group, were encouraged to be sent to boarding schools. Instead of the old adage of children are to be seen and not heard, they prefer kids not being seen at all in most cases. Some of these kids will become the subjects of explosive custody cases in a couple of years. December of 1975 now, New York Magazine publishes an article titled, Totalitarian Therapy on the Upper West Side, written by David Black. This is the group's first media exposure and it's not good, indicated by the article's title. This is the group's first media exposure, and it's not good, indicated by the article's title. It was based on David's brief experience in Sullivanian therapy and said that while the methods may be beneficial in addressing poor parenting,

the group was authoritarian and secretive, that people usually cut ties with former friends and family after being pressured to do so. He pointed out that crazy behavior like adults sucking on pacifiers was glamorized because it was a sign of growth. Uh, okay. And he noted that patients were directed by therapists to do things they wouldn't normally do, like have sex with people who they weren't attracted to. He said members were encouraged to always be with someone from the group, but spending too much time with one person from the group was called a romantic focus and was discouraged. Roommates who got into a romantic focus with someone would be the subject of an emergency house meeting. He also wrote that leaving the group always meant an abrupt end to all of one's friendships within the group, right? Cult, cult, cult. Let us be your entire

world, motherfucker. And then if you fuck with us in any way, if you don't obey us, we're going to banish you from that world and leave you with nothing. Control, control, control. By early 1976, Artie is now thinking of getting a new therapist. Irv's just not cutting it for him anymore, but to replace him, Artie will have to talk to Saul. It was his first time visiting Saul's office on West 91st Street. It was the center of the group, a hub where the four supervising analysts in the Institute lived and worked. The group called them the leadership. I feel like that's another sign of a cult when it's a lot of the's in front of stuff. Is this the leadership? It's the leadership. Saul was now 70. He's on his third wife, at least.

He'll have several in the later years that are not identified. By name, we know that first there was Myrtle, a woman from Canada before his time at the Institute, then therapist Jane Pierce, who maybe now left the group, I think. Timeline's a little unclear. And now there's Joan Harvey, who arrived on the scene in the mid-70s, that woman we mentioned earlier. He'll also have 10 kids with wives and cult members

by the time it's all said and done, 10 that he claimed, and live-in babysitters took care of all these kids, or they were sent to boarding schools. Again, much of Saul's life remains a mystery. Here's what we know about Joan. Born in Los Angeles, 1933, she was a former Hollywood actress who had starred in two B movies, The Hand of a Stranger and Pretty Boy Floyd, before getting her PhD in psychology. She will take over the Fourth Wall Theater Company. She had a reputation

for being assertive and demanding and for routinely giving people a sharp summary, which was Sullivanian speak, right? Very cultish, have their own language, just like we do here. Wait, what? The summary was Sullivanian speak for telling someone all of their problems in cold, harsh terms, right? To help them. You're a dumb, selfish, ugly piece of shit who smells like old gym socks and no one likes you. Stop crying. I'm helping you. Most people thought she was just a bully, but they wouldn't dare say anything about that to a supervising analyst, right? Because she's Saul's wife and they would get kicked out and shunned for doing so. Anyway, Saul suggests that Artie actually sees Saul himself or Ralph Klein and Artie's pumped, right? He gets to see the master, the guru, But then later, Saul will call Artie and say,

nevermind, you're not gonna see me, you're gonna see Ralph Klein. Artie's disappointed, but Ralph had almost as much prestige as Saul, so still pretty cool. Okay, by 1976, now the Fourth Wall Theater Company is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the group. Membership in the company had grown to more than 100.

Also in 76, a member named Julia Dede Agee, or Agee, excuse me, loses custody over her older son, James Bollinger, to her first husband, William. A judge, Frank Blangiardo, working hard not to loudly say, spaghetti, maserati, Antonio Banderas,

who I know is not Italian, ruled that Agee's way of life was indeed her own concern, but that it was not in the best interest of her son. He wrote, undoubtedly the plaintiff loves her son, but spends more time with her therapist. A blow to the cult,

but also a rallying cry to the counterculture kids who composed most of their membership. Of course, the man had ruled against them. The man still promoted the dangerous and damaging status quo of letting your parents raise and ruin you. Jumping to the summer of 1977 now. Over 200 people in the Sylvania community are renting houses in Amagansett.

Putting on shows, playing music, making art, nourishing their inner childs. That they felt hadn't got enough attention from their parents. And Joan now names herself the new director of the fourth wall theater company. Saul will be named consultant. He would propose that the group will be called the fourth wall political theater and that they only do shows with revolutionary political content. This theater, these presentations will become, you know, not only a money-making device for the cult, it'll become the way they recruit most new members. Many in the group will wonder why Joan and Saul, who didn't seem to have much of an interest in theater to begin with, would want to

take over a theater company. What they would learn later was that Joan was writing a play called In the Beginning, an attempt to put the theory in the conditions of human growth into a stage production by dramatizing the struggles of a young woman who was trying to become independent of her parents. Right? A lot of criticism of the nuclear family will be woven into the play which i could have found a copy of the script joan tried to get the play produced through mainstream channels first contacting people she'd known as an actress uh trying to get picked up but there were no bites so saul encouraged her to use the fourth wall for much of the next decade she will write a new play almost every year and it'll be the fourth wall's main production that she will also direct and of course course, star in.

Of course she'll star in these plays. She once starred in the 1962 horror film Hands of a Stranger, a movie about a man who received a double hand transplant, and those hands wanted to constantly murder. And that man's sister, played by the incomparable Joan Harvey. Ah, that movie was a huge flop. In addition to feeding Joan's ego, there was economic incentive to put on productions. Over 200 people paid monthly dues now,

about $75 to The Fourth Wall. And this would only go up over the next decade. They're making millions running this theater scam. In the spring of 1978, The Fourth Wall buys an old resort in the Catskills. It was a communal purchase, but really mostly Saul's purchase, and members called it their workshop.

The resort was on a back road in the little census- place of accord new york about 500 people in this rural community group's main house was on the left hand side of the road with a sizable common room a dining room a kitchen an annex several bedrooms next to it was a two-story rectangular building with 32 bedrooms next to that six more individual cottages across the road was a pool basketball court tennis courts and a large barn this was uh you know becomes another one of their cult compounds whole lot of fucking goes on all over this place uh many members now spend every weekend as well as vacations on work crews here preparing meals cleaning up hauling dumping refuse doing laundry fixing up the buildings also going on a lot of dates uh second floor above the main house will

house saul joan helen ralph their kids and uh babysitters with everyone getting their own room these are all you know the the core four now saul joan married uh ralph helen uh i believe married joan joan will later marry ralph helen will later marry saul they're probably all just fucking i'm sure uh yeah the kids babysitters with everyone getting their own, much more space than regular members got, who were often sleeping seven or eight to a room. Then soon after the first summer at the workshop, the group signs a lease on a new theater space in New York City,

the Truck and Warehouse Theater on East 4th. But the current theater troupe working there does want to leave. And that does not sit well with Saul. He's used to getting whatever he wants and getting it yesterday. No one tells him no. He's a fucking cult leader. Don't they know? He wants the theater immediately

because as he puts it, Joan has written a play that needs to be seen by the public. Like now. And that makes sense. 100%. The public needs this play. It's going to be revolutionary.

Can't even find the fucking name of this play. Saul now organizes a crew to take possession of the theater. At the time, the current tenants were a gay theater troupe performing a moderately successful play about a group of men who came out of the closet and then found happiness at the Hot Rocks Hotel. And Saul, mental health guru, has his cult goons attack these people,

attack their sets, and destroy them. Finally, we get to a suck with some theater troupe on theater troupe violence. The attack is scheduled for the night of september 28th 1978 but then for some reason saul pushes it up a day to the 27th members of the group will take taxis downtown to the corner of east forest street and second avenue they then burst into the theater and announce everybody out we're taking over most of the hot rocks crew had already left but the director was still there and instructed remaining staff to call the cops and not leave. The police then arrived, but so do more fourth wall members. Pretty soon, they're occupying all the seats in the theater.

Everyone on both sides chanting, it's our theater. It's our theater. It's our theater. But then the other theater troupe, you know, chanting back, no, it's our theater. It was a classic. Again, theater on theater battle. The Jets are going to have their day tonight. The Jets are going to have their way tonight.

Hell yeah. Puerto Ricans grumble, fair fight. But if they start a rumble, we'll rumble on right. We're gonna hand them a surprise tonight. We're gonna cut them down to size tonight. You don't get a lot of chances to play a scene from West Side Story here and have it feel appropriate. Within 30 minutes the fourth wall members had dismantled the hot rock set and just tossed it out on the curb. No idea why the police aren't being more active stopping any of this uh saul and joan were just

arriving at this point along with more cops who now order the fourth wall members to unlock the doors but they ignore those order orders and begin building a barricade right not gonna fucking stop them we said okay no ruffles no tricks but just in case they jump us, we're ready to mix tonight. Now the cops obtain the key from the Hot Rocks director and push through the barricade. The cops will make three arrests, but not get all the Sullivanians out. I mean, I guess they

did take over the lease. Now the remaining members are instructed by Saul and Joan to sleep in the theater. Be on guard duty. We're never leaving this place again. Artie Honan's putting a charge at guard duty. Forty volunteers will be needed around the clock to protect the theater at all times from a rival theater gang attack.

We're gonna rock it tonight. We're gonna jazz it up and have us a ball. While Joan and her crew begin setting up for the play, conversations about how to deal with the counter attack buzz through the theater. We're gonna get it tonight. The more they turn it on, the harder they fall.

When Artie now feels himself beginning to crack under the pressure of finding people to keep security at this theater 24-7, as well as working a couple jobs, completing his NYC studies, going to all these fucking therapy sessions and classes, he tells Saul he's done. He quits. Saul doesn't accept it. He demands that he talk to Ralph, his therapist. And Saul listens to his cult leader. And Ralph, of course, tells him to stay. You gotta stay.

Already thought about leaving anyway, but he was worried that he would start deteriorating if he left, right? And he was cynical about finding new relationships in the outside world. So he stayed. They fucking got him. There's a lot he doesn't like about this group,

but he's still going on a lot of fuck dates with hot chicks. And you know, that influences his decision-making process a little bit. Fourth Wall Theater Company now starts producing plays in their new space. Each season, they'll do three productions, a political drama, a children's musical with some political overtones, and a comedy show that has a lot of politics in it.

All three require people to spend almost all their time, while not at their jobs, the members of the troop, to be working on the shows. Those who taught in colleges or high schools were required to bring their classes to see these plays, and of course, pay admission. And every performance had a big security team, because Saul kept telling members that someone is trying to hurt the actors or Joan. To improve security, volunteers take Arnis,

a Filipino martial arts class based on fighting with sticks. You know, you never know when the fucking sticks are going to come handy if another fucking theater troupe shows up to rumble. Well, they be getting it. Well, they be getting it. And we're the ones who stop them once and for all tonight. March of 1979, disaster strikes. That theater gang they kicked out is fucking back. No, real disaster strikes this time.

Wednesday, March 28th, 1979, around four in the morning, the Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor near Middletown, Pennsylvania, partially melts down. It'll be the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history, although its small radioactive releases will have no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public,

at least not according to official sources. We'll be doing an episode on this meltdown in March. I'll look in further. I'm not going to get into more details here. All you need to know for this episode is that this partial meltdown scares the shit out of a lot of people for hundreds of surrounding miles,

none more than Saul Newton. March 30th, pregnant women and school-aged children are advised to leave the area, including the New York area. This announcement unleashes a wave of panic as some residents toss a few belongings into their cars, speed away. More than 140,000 will eventually flee.

After the meltdown, more than 200 Sullivanian members, commanded by Newton, fly down to Orlando, Florida, where they hole up at a Howard Johnson hotel and conduct emergency strategy meetings while also swimming around the pool, while also having a lot of sex. It was a mix between a sex-fueled vacation and a panicked evacuation, as Artie would later describe it, saying, staying in the motel was like being at a big chaotic party.

One of my roommates had sex with six different women on the first day. Cult, cult, cult. We got to get out of here. No, we got to fuck first. Okay, but after that, we got to get out of here. No, we got to fuck some more. Members slept six to two beds or on folded blankets on the floor some went to see the movies the theater nearby everyone's also worried about doomsday for several days saul preaches that a form of the end

times is upon them here we fucking go yeah yeah not a biblical end times a non-religious nuclear apocalypse was gonna for sure obliterate manhattan And that'll be just the beginning. It's about to get real dystopian real quick. And then, you know, nothing happens just like with every other doomsday prediction. And now Saul looks like a fucking idiot. About a week later, after kicking a few members out for telling outsiders, they'd fled to Orlando because Saul panicked. Most of the group returns to New York and shit gets extra weird. This blunder marked a turning point in the group. Anyone who did not go down to Florida with Saul are ostracized forever. Anyone who did go down to Florida,

but who speaks about how fucking weird it was to panic and do that, get banished. After the Three Mile Island incident, former member Mike Bray, who joined the group in 1972 said, paranoid beliefs and distortions of reality really began to set in, particularly among Saul Newton and Joan Harvey.

Bray was soon dispatched to build a secret steel-lined room with quarter-inch plates at their Catskills retreat so that Joan could edit her film without further interference from the CIA. Uh-huh. Totally, I'm sure the CIA was very worried about Joan's new film that fucking no one saw. After this, a bunker mentality said well

a few people did see it but it was never like important after this a bunker mentality sent in amongst the sullivanians you were either 100 in the group or 100 out you're with us or against us saul and jone capitalized on the nuclear incident as a way to further control members for months after the accident troops of members are dispatched with geiger counters to monitor radiation in harrisburg others tracks you know strontium levels in milk. No surprises. Their makeshift tests are always inconclusive. Uh, the group now starts its own food co-op and new dietary rules are enforced. Patients are sent care packages with recommended foods to give their children at boarding schools, right? Co-op, uh, the co-op is called the cherries food co-op with every apartment

submitting grocery request lists each week and the co-op billing individual and the co-op will bill individual apartments for food orders. Members now aren't supposed to eat certain foods like pizza because cheese may come from the Pennsylvania meltdown area. The group now also buys a fleet of escape vehicles, five buses, an ambulance, and a bunch of fucking motorcycles. You know, we see motorcycles in a dystopian escape. And they established an emergency communication system that includes pay phones along exit routes out of New York. Why are they doing all this? Because leadership's fear is that in the event of another bigger nuclear meltdown,

millions of people are going to try to flee Manhattan. And they need a plan to detect traffic and weather in order to evacuate the entire fourth wall immediately. And also, who the fuck knows when the CIA is going to come for everybody. The code words Dr. Benjamin are used to relay messages from member to member as they evacuate the city, when they run mock trials. Walking and driving instructions to Fort Lee, New Jersey,

where the fleet was parked or issued. Members are required to carry beepers now, so they can be reached instantly. Meanwhile, Jones' plays start to include a lot of anti-nuclear material. And these plays are paying for all of their new escape plan shit. There are now 222 members, each of them paying $120 a month. That's over $26,000 a month, over $320,000 a year, roughly the equivalent of over $1.3 million a year today. And on top of that, therapists are billing members for their sessions, about $75 a session. Saul charged a similar rate, earning about $3,000 a week or about $140,000 a year.

All four of the leadership members charge a similar amount, meaning each family earns about $800,000 a year in today's money. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to include a graphic design business where workers labor without pay, of course, to make high quality marketing material for the shows that the fourth wall produces. And they have a print crew. Joan also starts making films under the company named Parallel Films.

In total, it'll produce three films. The first, We Are the Guinea Pigs, is a documentary about the hazards of nuclear energy. It actually aired on PBS. I thought about playing a little bit from the trailer, but it is really fucking boring. The next film is America from Hitler to MX, which draws connections between the nuclear industry,

the defense industry, and the government. Finally, A Matter of Struggle stars one of Joan's daughters and portrays political struggle from a kid's point of view. Wish I could have found that trailer. Some of the funding for the films comes from, when not coming from the theater dues, comes from art auctions where they sold paintings that have been donated from well-known artists.

Most of it comes from group members' inheritances. Let's check in with one of those members. In 1980, a group member named Paul Sprecher, we heard from him briefly in the intro, begins dating D.D. Agee, the woman that lost custody of her son back in 1976. Sprecher is shy and smart, grew up on a farm in Wisconsin that was run by his family,

devout Pentecostals for several generations. He went to Harvard, graduating summa cum laude, I think that's how you say that. Now I'm worried, whatever, in social relations. After getting a master's degree, he takes a teaching position at the collegiate school and all boys prep school in Manhattan. Very prestigious. Sprecher moves into an Upper West Side apartment with a bunch of roommates in 1974. takes a teaching position at the collegiate school an all boys prep school in Manhattan very prestigious Sprecher moves into an Upper West Side apartment with a bunch of roommates in 1974

he enjoyed hanging out with his roommates, large group of friends going to parties, eventually one of his roommates encourages him to see a Sullivanian therapist, by the fall Sprecher now views his childhood, of course as devastating and horrible in 1980 Sprecher starts seeing Deedee, they start dating twice a week,

which has, which was itself somewhat questionable. Group members would criticize them for being too focused on one another. Monogamy. Oh, monogamy alarm. When Didi soon thinks that she is pregnant,

she tells Sprecher she wants a child. He asked Saul Newton, who was then his therapist, for permission, as one does with a good therapist. They went ahead with the birth without living together. We'll catch up with them in 1983 with the birth of their first son, David. Back to 1980.

That year marks the beginning of the Community Jam program on Tuesday nights at the theater. The idea was to invite people from the neighborhood to play music with fourth wall members, feel them out, maybe recruit them. to play music with fourth wall members, feel them out, maybe recruit them. After a period of time, the cult turned the jam sessions into a songwriting workshop for people from drug treatment programs across city. Build up a little public goodwill.

Why not? They would play songs in theater they'd written later, like Robin Hood in reverse about inequality, War Machine about the arms race, and a song about Ronald Reagan with the refrain, a Hitler with a Hollywood smile.

And here's my favorite, a little track they put together called New World Order. I know it starts slow, but... Oh, you wait! Genocide cannot be legal. Genocide cannot be legal. Genocide cannot be legal. Fuck yeah. Isn't anybody watching?

Doesn't anybody care? Does anybody care? Find this on YouTube. Nice. Yeah, what about that? Housing a home that's not how many to pay? Or saving the rain for a city of the air? Isn't anybody's life? Doesn't anybody care?

It's a new world order. It's a president's plan. He gives the orders with a gun in his hand. He wants the power and if you disagree You'll be invaded on network TV That is how you do music. That's music. That's not just noise. Like today's bands.

That is melody, percussion, harmony, perfection. Not shit. They also fucked around with some hip hop. Eventually the group would put together a songbook called the Wrap Up Rap Songbook. Songs like Shelter Life, Homelessness, Black and Hooked. That's seriously one of the names of the songs. Also in 1980, another historical moment

would make the group increasingly more panicked. December 8th, that year John Lennon was shot and fatally wounded in the archway of the Dakota, his residence in new york city by one mark david chapman saul now becomes very worried more worried than ever that someone's gonna try and kill joan probably on stage when she's acting which you know fucking makes sense i mean in terms of celebrity status she was 100 on par with john lennon i bet most people in New York, after John Lennon was shot, quickly then thought, oh God, what about Joan?

Is Joan Harvey, the greatest thespian and music producer of our generation, also safe? Solano has group members construct an observation booth above the stage where a security person

is always watching the audience through one-way glass. Gotta protect Joan. If someone pulled a gun, the person in the booth could flip a switch, throw the theater into darkness, alert people in the lighting booth to kill the spotlights. Cast members would be instructed to drop to the floor. Somebody would fucking cover Joan with their body. Two people would also be stationed outside scanning for snipers. Seriously.

Another person would also keep Saul's car running until Joan and Saul were ready to escape. The group had to role play assassination attempts often. God, I bet they thwarted dozens of attempts on Joan's life. I love it when cult leaders forget how completely unimportant they are to most of the world, to 99.99999999% of the world. At this time, around 300 people in the whole world

think that Joan is hot shit. The rest of the planet either doesn't know who she is or just thinks she's a fucking delusional, laughable, wackadoodle moron. In the summer of 1981, the Sylvanians' free-loving ways were dealt fucking a massive blow. One of the members who worked as a doctor

stood on the small stage of the workshop in the Catskills, announced that there was a new disease that was going to help lead to the Colts' demise. He didn't say the demise part, but said there was a new disease. He said, we have to be very careful. It's contagious. We don't know how it spreads and there's no cure. He said that at the time there were large numbers of cases in the gay and Haitian communities and doctors were calling it GRID related immune deficiency disease it would later be renamed acquired immune deficiency syndrome or aids the doctor advised group members not to have sex with anyone outside the group anymore if anyone got the virus it would spread quickly since everyone

was fucking one another not worrying about condoms age really was the biggest of bummers for the fuck everybody orgy crowd. Stupid AIDS. Why can't STDs be helpful? Like, you know, you got a cold. You got it from not washing your hands and touching your face. How do you cure it? Vagina juice, semen. You have throat cancer. Most effective treatment, suck as many dicks as possible or eat as much puss. You have colon cancer and you get it. Get it up your loophole. That's the cure. What in the world that would be?

Right? To cure some afflictions, you need genital contact from multiple partners. Fucking is caring. Fucking is healing. Because of uncertainty at the time over how AIDS was spread, they didn't even have the term HIV in use yet. Members were also ordered not to eat in restaurants within a 50 mile radius of New York City. Special sinks were set up for members to use after being on the street.

Shoes had to be removed before people came indoors. Everyone who worked in a prison or school had to quit those jobs ASAP, including Artie, who was now working in a women's prison. That's over. One member had lunch with a coworker on a new job, ate a salad at a restaurant, was fined 500 bucks for almost bringing some of those salad AIDS into the cult orgy. Uh, members now became even more isolated.

Members were required to take AIDS tests regularly, which were administered by the groups on doctors. And now with a group, more and more paranoid, more and more people are getting kicked out. One woman gets kicked out for not editing film for Joan quick enough for free. Fourth wall dues now rise to 150 bucks a month to compensate for the people getting kicked out. By early 1982, Saul is 76 now. Not very steady on his feet. He's yelling constantly at members who don't respect him enough or do the jobs he wants them to do.

He's yelling at other people for being sellouts. I don't know. He's done all kinds of shit. Also, 1982, the Institute begins offering computer training programs. Mm-hmm. Before, members had been encouraged to follow their artistic pursuits, but now dancers, painters, former musicians being directed to become computer consultants

so they can infiltrate major companies. The teachers for the computer classes keep track of job listings and will even submit applications on behalf of members. Why do they need to infiltrate companies? Well, that's not made clear, but it probably has something to do with the CIA trying to fucking kill Joan. Things are falling apart.

Saul now really wants members to make more money to pay for increasingly expensive therapy and fourth wall dues. Fourth wall dues go up again to 175 bucks by 1984, right? Rent goes up at the compound. Therapists are charging 80 bucks a session, but it's hard for members to get uh high paying jobs when they're not allowed to eat out uh you know and

so much and do so much so many other things outside of the cult due to the other paranoia over aids despite all this insanity membership somehow doesn't really fall apart much and somehow grows a little bit by 1983 uh by 1983 arty's apartment is home to 11 men and two kids in a seven-bedroom apartment, unbeknownst to him at the time. About a half a dozen other groups in the home, groups in the building are planning to have kids, meaning the communal apartments will quickly become more crowded.

Search Committee now finds a seven-story apartment building at 2670 Broadway, near 101st Street for sale at 1.1 million. Each person who signs on to finance the building will be given partial ownership over this apartment. And so they buy it by late 1983. The building's almost finished. Every floor has 15 bedrooms,

each with a window. They're all around 90 square feet in the center of every floor, four showers, four sinks, four toilets, and a stacked washer and dryer common room on common room on each floor will host meetings, dinners,

and rehearsals, right? They got a lot of place and rehearsals March of 1984 the first members will move to this new building and to fill even more spaces under the guise of age restrictions Joan and Saul will mandate that non-fourth wall members can't live

with members so those who are in Sullivanian therapy who lived with fourth wall members but were not themselves fourth wall members now but were not themselves fourth wall members now have to join the fourth wall and pay those dues or get the fuck out of this cult. Insanely, almost all of them do join bringing more money in. It's now truly a psychobabble and theater cult. Never expected to see a psychiatric theater cult combo before.

Now let's catch up with paul spretcher and dd ag their son david is born in 1983 at first leadership threatens to take david away from dd then saul begins dating her a woman 40 years younger than him almost to the day cool cool he's a good therapist when spretcher complains about saul dating dd he's told he's too possessive uh and for going against Saul, his roommates decide to fucking throw him out of the apartment building. He fights back. He records an audio tape of a house meeting against him. His roommates discover the tape, corner him, try to walk him over slash drag him to his office to look for other recordings. He escapes, catches a cab

and makes a break for it. His next step will be suing for custody of David now that he's out of the cult. Something similar will happen the very same year to another member, Mike Bray, right? We heard from briefly earlier. Mike Bray, a former Roman Catholic seminary student who moved to New York 1970 with his wife, Jean, to study clinical psychology at Fordham University. The move took a toll on his marriage

and he was referred to a therapist by a fellow student. Within a year and a half, his new Sullivanian therapist convinced him that his mother wanted him dead, that he should leave his wife and that he needed to live in a fellow student. Within a year and a half, his new Sullivanian therapist convinced him that his mother wanted him dead, that he should leave his wife and that he needed to live in a group apartment. 1974, Bray severed contact with his parents and his wife and so sad his parents will die

before he can reestablish communication with them. Bray will work his way up to the Sullivanian ranks in four years, become a trusted therapist. Later, he'll say, I fear that if they said we're going to mix up a pot of Kool-Aid, I might've merely wanted to say, you want raspberry or lemon lime? I was pretty far gone. Referencing the Jonestown massacre there, if you're confused. Bray now

married Sullivanian Alice DeBosch, an open marriage, of course, and agreed to have a child with her after Newton gave his permission. 1983, DeBosch gave birth to twin daughters. Shortly afterwards, they were divorced, but Bray loved his daughters and he was now aware that the group didn't have, didn't give him any control over his family, his children. Bray begins to look at the group with fresh eyes, doesn't like what he sees. He said, I was an infantilized,

I never figured how to say that word on the fly, adult. He was a baby adult, okay? I was not gonna have any satisfying relationships to people. I never figured how to say that word on the fly adult. He was a baby adult. Okay. Uh, I was not going to have any satisfying relationships to people. Uh, this is his words, like with people. I realized this was going to be a group of aging people dating each other.

Like an extended one night stand. I barely, barely an extension of that. And he starts planning for a way now to get out. In the summer of 1985, the group will become violent outwardly for the first time since their takeover of the theater. All started with some paint.

Three young men who lived above the Cuban restaurant next door to one of the group's buildings splashed a little bit of paint on the wall. And Saul decided that action meant war. Anita's gonna get her kicks tonight. We'll have a private little mix tonight. We'll have a private little mix tonight. On the evening of July 29th, 1985, group members break into an apartment on 100th Street on behalf of Saul's commands. Dressed in

dark colors and stocking caps, they're prepared to beat tenants with sticks, slit open mattresses, smash the sink, toilet, and television set. The men are told not to strike women, right? They're to hold them down so that the women can strike them. Fuck yeah, good thinking! This will all be great to talk about later in therapy. But

when they get into the apartment, there's not any people in there. The three young men are gone. After the raid, the pillagers return to their seven story co-op at 2643 Broadway. Paul Sprecher will later say we were prepared for them to invade, like the three dudes to come now find them. We had security down at the front door to make sure that they would be duly chastised.

I don't remember. I think one guy did show up to complain and he was manhandled. Well, that guy definitely was manhandled. One of the group members punched him and broke his jaw. The confrontation only ended when one of the fathers of the three young men pleaded for mercy, saying his son and their friends were young and foolish and had recently graduated college and wouldn't bother them again. Now some of the group members finally begin to feel like what they're doing is not quite right maybe they're not saving the world and paving the path for a future utopia maybe they're all just a bunch of bullies maybe Saul

and Joan are the biggest bullies of them all March of 1985 now Amy Siskind leaves the group she had been with the Sullivanians for two decades since she was a literal child she made her decision to leave the community with her new boyfriend, a man named Matt, or when her new boyfriend, a man named Matt abruptly broke up with her. A few months later, they reconnected and he told her that his therapist had told him to break up with her.

Matt was a trainee and was higher up in the hierarchy than Amy. And after they got back together, he told her about how the leadership interfered with patients, private lives. It took her that long to learn that they were secretive about a lot of this stuff, and she decides to leave. Amy moves out of her group apartment, and as soon as she starts packing her bags, her roommate calls Saul, who tells Amy and Matt to leave immediately. But they have a mover coming the next day, so Amy and Matt refuse. Her roommates hide while they finish loading their things.

As she leaves, some of them accuse her of being a whore for Matt. I love how cults invert things, right? The abnormal becomes normal. The normal becomes abnormal. You want to have sex with everybody? Great, healthy, solid cult member. You only want to have sex with one person? Whore, betrayer. At the age of 31, Amy is now finally free. December of 1985, Mike Bray leaves the group for good. He'd been living on the fifth floor at 2670 Broadway while Alice and their twin daughters lived at 91st Street with Saul. Around the same time, a member named Mike Cohen also leaves.

Afterwards, he's threatened by Newton in a phone conversation, which Cohen recorded on a tape later played in court. Newton rants, you cannot do this to me. Not you and your arrogance. Not the mayor. Mayor cock. Not Hitler. If I have to go to the work of mobilizing 200 people to find you, believe me, I will find you. All right? You declare war. I'll get you. He's a great therapist. God,

Saul was a wonderful mental health professional. Truly a self-actualized individual. Shortly afterward, two group members, Robbie Newton and John McCloud, corner Cohen at the Union Square subway station and slap him around and then dangle him over the fucking tracks, threatening to kill him. Saul wants other members to know that there can be severe consequences for leaving. But Mike wouldn't be the last to leave. 1986, Sullivanian Marcy Pappo kidnaps her own 10 month old daughter, Jessica,

and goes into hiding. She had been in the group for years by this point. Shortly after having her daughter, Saul decided she couldn't see her baby anymore, even though the infant was just a few months old. Saul gave custody of the baby to the baby's father, who was also a member. She freaks out and is then kicked out of the cult and then fights back.

Marcy takes the baby while the babysitter was walking her around in the stroller, gets in a waiting car, speeds off Mike Bray, who she contacted for help, made sure no one climbed into the car after her. Saul was outraged, demanded they find Marcy and the baby members,

tail her after work, walk around neighborhoods, showing Marcy's picture to shopkeepers asking if they'd seen her, but no one rats her out. Saul even hires a private detective who organizes members into teams of four, each team shadowing people that Marcy knew for a little while.

Marcy did Saul one better. She goes to the press with her story. For days, TV cameras and reporters wait now in front of buildings on Broadway to interview Sullivanians. Reporters use words like sex cult, talk about the members' isolation and Saul's control over their lives.

Not a good look for the cult, but this will not destroy them. They're in their final years, but they're still not done. Inside the cult, Saul is pissed about more bad press, right? He's also pissed that male members are being stingy with their dicks. Seriously, he's got a lot of problems right now. Saul will announce to members, there's no reason a person should be treated differently because she's born with a cunt instead of a cock.

That actually is one of his quotes. He then describes how women in the group outnumber men two to one, but some of them are still having trouble getting laid, which of course was due to the AIDS epidemic. He didn't care. He yells at the men for refusing these women, saying that they have to stop their clear displays of male chauvinism. I don't think he knew what that term meant.

The actual definition of male chauvinism is a male prejudice against women women The belief that men are superior in terms of ability, intelligence, etc Doesn't have anything to do with Refusing women on dates Joan and Saul now demand the men Rethink their relationships with women And then Saul randomly And he's literally 80 years old now Punches a male member in the face

Out of nowhere apparently And then he and Joan just head back to their private quarters Treat those pussies right, boys! Or this hot, hard therapy father-daddy is gonna take you to pound town. You fill those pussies with your face

or this throbby, dripping in olive oil therapy father-daddy is gonna fill your face with knuckles. Call 1-900-HOT-DADDY to talk to a mature, dominant therapy father daddy who knows how to take control. Anyway, for the next several weeks at their individual and group therapy sessions, meaning to all of their roommates,

the men will have to talk about their relationships with women, including their mothers, grandmothers, and sisters, to figure out why they hated women in general. Clearly they hated women, or they'd stop hogging their dicks. And these sessions already will remember that there was no right way of answering questions. If you said your relationships were good, the other men, especially ones close to leadership, uh, would ask you, you know, how you knew that. Uh, if you said you dated plenty of women, they would say you were bragging. Paul Sprecher now also leaves the group. He would try to figure out how to have another child with Dee Dee, but every time he thought he did, Saul found a way to keep Dee Dee

away from him. Saul even suggested that Dee Dee have a child with Mike Bray, partially causing his departure. While he was still planning to leave, Paul made a recording of one of the house meetings to use in a future custody battle, but one of the members found out and told Saul. Saul then commanded everyone to search Paul's room and his office while two men physically restrained him. After searching his room, the two men would escort Paul to his office where Paul would break free like Mike and Marcy. He would now go to the press. Mike Bray and Paul would then move into an apartment in Brooklyn Heights together and begin working on how to get their families back. And they would both decide to sue for custody. Meanwhile, to counter the claims that the Sullivanians were a fucking cult,

Joan and Saul hold an election for leadership positions, and both of them, wouldn't you know it, win by a landslide. Crazy. May of 1986, now Joan asks the group for $200,000, or about $1,000 per person, to pay for legal fees regarding all these custody battles. She does this while they own an estimated $12 million in real estate. In the fall of 1986, a local newspaper called the West Side Spirit runs a story condemning Saul as a cult leader.

Meanwhile, Marcy's custody battles in full swing. Members circle the courthouse initially with walkie-talkies trying to intimidate Marcy, but the judge orders them to stop or be arrested, and the incident brings more negative media attention to the cult. And then the courthouse ends up being packed by a group of people in another, excuse me, a group of people called pact mentioned them earlier people against cult therapy, many of whom are relatives of people in the Sullivanian cult.

So hail Nimrod love this group. Plenty of former members come out to testify, describing years of surveillance, financial control, abuse of all kinds. Newton angry, angrily denounces their testimony saying they damn well know they are telling lies. They are murderous characters.

They make my skin crawl. They are liars and cheats, and they are doing it for pay. He keeps insisting that there's nothing strange about people living with roommates, and there is no organized group situation. But of course there is. He also insists to the press,

the Institute and the theater are utterly separate. They're not. He says, it just happens that a few of the people in the Institute like to take part in theatricals. Rent is very high. Every day, young people look for roommates to cut their rent. We share apartments at a convenience. And our ideology runs the gamut from radical to liberal to conservative.

No, it didn't. It was only radically liberal. In the end, the trials will become very contentious. All will end differently. Marcy will reconcile with her husband, decide to live as a family. Didi and Paul, excuse me, settled on a custody agreement with Didi, agreeing to move out of a communal building and drop out of the fourth wall. She gets her own apartment.

And after that, Paul moves in with the kids. What wasn't different was the media coverage all this caused and that they showed members other, that all of this showed other members how life could be different on the outside. And now more and more members start to abandon the cult. It wouldn't be until February of 1989 that Artie will leave the group. Three years after he has a child with another member, Renee. And he doesn't leave voluntarily.

Not exactly. He was kicked out. Kind of. After his baby mama, Renee, discovered she was pregnant a second time. Her desire to leave the communal house and Artie's desire to stay led to screaming fights. By February of 1989, their housemates informed them that they would have to leave by the 1st of March. Saul will call Artie a few days later, though, and say that he could arrange for him to stay in the building. But Artie has already realized that life on the outside is better, so he turns him down. But the place they'll move into

was a different home with a bunch of group members, about a hundred, so they still weren't out. In fact, though it was Renee who wanted to leave the group, Artie would be surprised to hear that now she starts therapy sessions with Saul. A few weeks later,

when Artie accidentally almost lets her infant daughter slip out of his grasp but catches her, word gets back to Saul who now accuses Artie of trying to kill his daughter. This soon becomes common knowledge of everyone in the group.

Artie is filled with shame. He knew that he wasn't trying to kill his daughter and the Sal was trying to take away his family, but also he doubted himself. Did he try and kill her? What was wrong with him? Saul was in his fucking head. How could he not be after all these years? And then Renee changes her mind again, tells Artie she wants him around the kids, doesn't care what Saul thinks. It's a minor victory. Also now Artie knows that the only thing that's important is his kids and their mother, not Saul, not his friends, not other women, his family. Still as months wear on, Artie is aware of how people in the group and leadership keep trying to force them apart. His therapist suggests he sues Renee for custody and hires a woman-hating lawyer to argue that she's crazy. Artie doesn't want to do this, but he also doesn't

trust Renee or the group to not cut him out of his child's life if he does nothing. But then Renee tells him something shocking that finally leads to them both getting out. She tells him that she has quit therapy with Saul because he had begun to pressure her for oral sex during sessions. Right? What I mentioned earlier. He's fucking 83 years old trying to get women to suck his dick during therapy sessions. She tried to avoid it by bringing James into the appointments, right? Baby James.

But Saul doesn't care. He doesn't care if a baby boy is in the room while he, you know, tries to get a baby boy's mom to fucking suck his dick. Now she decides she is 100% done. By the late 80s, more disturbing stories about Saul like this can start to circulate. That he's been asking many of his female patients for oral sex during sessions. And that he has been molesting young girls at 91st street charges are never drawn up but that's a persistent rumor and that he's hitting male children some babysitters have quit because they're tired of

his advances right no one uh knew how long this has been going on and i'm fucking shocked that saul is doing this that amazing mental health advocate oh man some of sa Saul's patients also said that he had started to fall asleep in sessions. He regularly was now forgetting their names. Histories will rant angrily about people that haven't been in the group in years. He is canceling sessions last minute despite charging a flat monthly rate for therapy, whether he works or not. And because he has Alzheimer's, he just doesn't know yet. Also around this time, a woman was told to go to 91st street to pick up a check for Saul for a

friend. She was buzzed in, took the elevator to the third floor. And as she walked down the hall to Saul's bedroom, she said, he appeared at the door naked and began to scream. I am the boss. I make the rules.

You follow them. I can change them as I please. I don't give a shit what you think, what you think means less to me than dried up dog turds, hardened in the rules. You follow them. I can change them as I please. I don't give a shit what you think. What you think means less to me than dried up dog turds hardened in the sunlight. And then she, you know, fucking left. Because he's crazy. Man, we don't always get to hear about cult leaders, you know, getting this old,

losing their fucking mind. This is great. This is very entertaining. January of 1991, Artie finally is completely out of the cult. He sublets an apartment on 100th Street in Riverside, ending all of his ties to the Sullivanians. No fourth wall membership, no therapy, no communal apartment. But soon after he hears about something else

incredibly disturbing. Saul had moved into a 98th Street duplex since his dementia had gotten so bad his wife didn't want him at 91st Street. And which wife he's talking about here, we're not sure. His wife then enlists another woman, a patient of hers, to move in with Saul to be his caretaker. And that woman arranges dates for Saul every night

by calling women in the group and asking them to spend the night with him. We mentioned this earlier. Many of them do so simply because they feel obligated, right? Sleeping with an 85-year-old man with terrible hygiene, a non-functional memory, and an insational demand for oral sex. And that is some vision. That description sounds like the preview for some new creepy horror movie. Coming this summer. From director James Wan. And Blumhouse Pictures. There's something in your house.

It's ancient. It stinks. It's ancient. It stinks. It's greasy. It's kind of hard, but also spongy. And it's going to make you suck it. It's a dirty old man. And it's opening in select theaters.

Very select. Like maybe just one, or none at all. This summer. By this time, only about 170 people are still living in group apartments. I'm amazed there's that many. The number of paying members in the fourth wall is under 100 and rapidly declining. Most are convinced now that Joan is misusing funds and on the edge of leaving herself. Over the next two years, all fourth wall communal assets will be sold,

including the theater, the workshop, and all of the vehicles. The theater is sold to the New York theater workshop for about 750,000 proceeds used to pay off with mortgage. Some members get repaid for money. They'd put into the group property from the sale of the workshop. Most don't group buildings would finally be totally vacated by the fall of

1992. But just before that, December 21st, 1991, Saul Newton dies at Methodist hospital in Brooklyn. He was 85 years old and he died about 40 years too late. If only he would have died in 1956, the year before he started his cult,

that would have been better for everyone who met him going forward. Probably would have been in the best if he was never fucking born. He died of septicemia after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for years. In total, one source says that Newton was married and divorced six times. Not sure if they're all legal or not, but there were possibly three women after Joan, perhaps one was before who may have married him in some form. It's never clearly laid out.

He would be survived by four sons, Robert, Keith, and Michael, all of Manhattan, Paul of California, and six daughters, Sarah of London, Wendy of Los Angeles, Amanda of Chicago, and Pamela, Jennifer, and Esther, all of Manhattan. Without him, the group's collapse would be messy. Most members had spent decades of their adult lives trying to escape mainstream society. Now they're in their 40s and 50s with little money saved and no property. Even worse, they had no way of trusting themselves after decades of being brainwashed. Some reached out to family and friends.

Some were not accepted back by family and friends. There were parents and children who could not forgive them for abandoning them. Women who hadn't had children because of the group now had to look into adoption or give up their hopes of becoming mothers. Other women had to try and reconcile with the children they'd abandoned at the cult's urging. Joan will marry Ralph now, Saul's second command, and they will move to Westchester, New York. They will surrender

their medical licenses without contesting accusations against him. And then Ralph will die in 2011, followed by Joan in 2014. Both will live their final years in obscurity. I hope in poverty as well, but I fucking doubt it. And now for a bit of happy news at the end of the timeline, Artie's son James will have his first child in December of 2019 and now Artie gets a chance to be a grandparent, a chance his parents never got because they died while he was still a Sylvania. Artie continues to work as a therapist and social worker. He and his wife split up in 1997, but continued raising their children together, committed to being a family no matter what that looked like. And it seems as if he is practicing therapy in New York today. a family, no matter what that looked like. And it seems as if he is practicing therapy in New York today. March of 2020, he published a book about his time in the cult titled, How Did a Smart Guy Like Me... My 21 Years in Sullivanian Therapy in the Fourth Wall Theater Company. And now let's get The Sullivanians, such a strange story. In fact, so many strange stories, it's hard to think of an episode where we followed more people.

Perhaps that's because of the highly personalized nature of this cult. Everyone came to Sullivanian therapy with their own unique problems. Feeling left behind by friends, questioning one's relationship with one's family, figuring out what one wants out of life. Just in general, trying to figure out how to be a meat sack in this perpetually confusing world of ours. A lot of people turn to a religious leader to make sense of this world and our role in it, right?

What has God has planned for us? A lot of other people turn to a therapist. How do I find my way in all this confusion? How do I get to a place where I feel happy and fulfilled? How do I improve the relationships I have with my family, friends, romantic interests? How do I get rid of all this unresolved pain and anguish, this baggage I carry around, these psychic scars? Turn into a therapist to help answer questions like these, well, it takes a lot of trust.

And unfortunately, Saul Newton would greatly betray the trust in some of the most insidious of ways. Emotionally, Saul and the other therapists at the Sullivan Institute, named for Harry Stack Sullivan, but not in adherence to his theories, convinced patients that their families had mistreated them, that their mothers hated them. They didn't even need patients to bring up bad experiences with their parents. They just knew the parents were terrible. They thought they always were, that they deep down loathed their children. They thought they did terrible things, things they often actually didn't do, like already

supposedly trying to murder his daughter. They isolated patients from their families. Was that what they really thought would make people happy? Or were they making calculated cult moves from the very beginning? They told patients to cut non-Sullivanians out of their lives. Soon they started using patients' confidential information to manipulate them, to do what they wanted. Did they just justify all this as psychologically sound, or did they know they were 100% taking advantage of people? They forced breakups, assigned people, partners to reproduce with, to make children that they might only see a couple hours a week before being shipped off to a boarding school or sent to go live with Saul. Financially, it's hard to overstate

how the Sullivan Institute exploited its patients. Even as the fourth wall theater company was rallying against exploitation and their anti-capitalist communist propaganda plays, members had to pay ever increasing fees, along with the increasing cost of therapy, occasionally hand over any money they might have on hand for their personal growth.

Rumors of demands for inheritances and six figure checks from wealthy members were common. And too many people did give everything over to the Institute. And what did they end up having to show for all that? After the cult's demise, many members found themselves in middle age, having worked two or more jobs to make cash they hardly saw a penny of without any savings, unsure of how to create a future for themselves. They had been completely fucked. Sexually, while there were never criminal charges of sexual abuse waged against this cult,

we know that Saul Newton was unethically using patients for sex. He was demanding blowjobs well into his old age. He was having his wife or maybe one of his wives coordinate women to keep him company at night

as his brain unraveled into dementia. Too bad his dick didn't go before his mind did. And there was plenty of accusations of him molesting, you know, some of the kids that he had taken from other members. Just never charged. Saul had other perverted associates like Ralph Klein,

who seemed to have had his young female patients tell him about their sex lives. While there were no deaths stemming from this cult, no, you know, again, charges of pedophilia, it was still predatory. And now, luckily, the Sullivanians are no more. Once the head of the snake died, it was still predatory. And now luckily the Sullivanians are no more. Once the head of the snake died, the body followed.

And it was looking like it was about to all come crashing down, even if Saul had remained healthy. So what do we learn from all this? Well, as I mentioned at the beginning, it makes me realize that a cult can truly come from anywhere. If there's someone malicious enough behind it, it can come from a fucking, you know, theater company. It can come from a psychiatrist and his cronies.

A cult doesn't have to be some mystical lady telling people about their past lives or a bunch of UFO people living in the desert. Doesn't have to be led by someone claiming to be God's new chosen prophet. Someone claiming to know exactly when Jesus is coming back and how to avoid God's wrath when he does. It can be any group that gets too hands-on with the lives of its members, that tries to tell people what to think and make them live in ways that don't align with their values,

or else a group that keeps people purposefully powerless. In this era of social media, I think it's so important to be reminded of the different ways people can take advantage of you, the ways they can exploit your desire to grow as a human being and twist it around. What cults are being formed right now led by various influencers who act a lot like, you know, Saul and his cronies acted. Also important to remember that truly helping yourself, getting help with your mental health invokes trust that shouldn't be broken. It involves people with medical degrees who have studied for years and are committed to helping you get better.

Right. It should involve those people. Don't let people take advantage of you, meat sacks, even if they do have a degree. If the advice doesn't feel right, don't hesitate to talk to someone else. Get the help you need and fuck anyone who tries and stand in the way of that, including your therapist if that's what they're trying to do. This episode, outside of any cult stuff, also a good reminder that not all therapists are good therapists. Every profession has bad apples. There are quack doctors, quack scientists, and there are quack therapists.

Again, if you're questioning your therapist's advice, you 100% should get a second opinion. Not only okay to do so, it's healthy, right? You know, test out several. And super important, don't suck any of their dicks. You should never spend part of your counseling session with your therapist therapist dick in your mouth. This episode was a great reminder for that or in any of your other orifices or in your hand, probably not even let your therapist, you know, rub their dick or puss on your feet or chest. Those are all big red flags. Even if the

dick itself is only a couple inches long, the red flag is still big. And now time for today's takeaways. Time Shock, top five takeaways. Number one, at its peak, the Sullivanians were around 400 members living in three buildings in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, all of them living communally and shunning a traditional family life, believing that that was the root of all anxiety. Members were told by manipulative therapists that their families were against it, that their mothers hated them, tried to murder them even, wanted them dead. And many believed them, sadly cutting off contact with their confused families and embracing a new communal life. Cult, cult, cult.

Number two, the man at the heart of the Sullivanians was Saul Newman, a Spanish Civil War veteran, self-taught Marxist therapist who claimed he could solve both personal and societal problems with his practice and book, Conditions of Human Growth. But it seems like mostly he just wanted to fuck a whole bunch of young women and play God with a bunch of lives. I don't think Saul ever gave a shit about helping anyone other than himself. Number three, this cult was an incredibly sexual place to be. Judy Collins would later write in her memoir about how she slept with both men and women, years of constant casual hookups, orgies. Members would say that almost no one refused anyone.

And it was practically a free love paradise, right? Continual partner swapping, but all of that free love came at a very controlling price. Long-term relationships were not permitted. Members were eventually required to have many dates each week with people, as many people as possible, whether they wanted to or not. Leadership could separate you from whoever you liked or loved and even assign you to be with someone sexually you did not care for or even to reproduce with someone you did not care for. Number four, as ranks swelled in the mid-70s, the group took on an increasingly authoritarian nature and expanded into new ventures. world in the mid-70s, the group took on an increasingly authoritarian nature and expanded into new ventures. Many credit Joan Harvey, right? Soap opera actress, Newton's third wife, with how paranoid the group became. Joan and Saul convinced members that Joan was such a radical

revolutionary, like John Lennon, that she would be targeted by the CIA or other shadowy figures for speaking too much truth to power. The new world order was after her. And that's the kind of order in the world today. Don't want no protest. Don't read about no unrest. This would lead to the group becoming excessively paranoid about nuclear power, the AIDS crisis, to them trying to find escape routes out of New York City and OUSI members they thought were against them.

And number five, new info, the pain splatter that started the ordeal on July 29th, 1985, with group members broke into an apartment at 100th Street looking for the three guys who had splattered that paint, right? Members dressed in dark colors and stocking caps prepared to beat tenons with sticks,

slid open mattresses, smash shit. Well, that paint splatter is still visible today, or at least was as recently as the fall of 2016. On a brick wall just above the Metro Diner on 100th and Broadway. And it is pretty much the only remaining physical remnant of such a strange time and place in New York's long history.

Time suck, top five takeaways. The Sullivanians therapy sex cult has been sucked. Cult, cult, cult. I wanted all the free love sex shit To be so much more fun than it was Damn it, Lucifino Nope, it was built on a bed of manipulation, lies, and exploitation What a bummer Thank you as always to everyone involved with making this podcast

Every week, starting with the queen of bad magic Lindsay Cummins Thanks to Logan Keith, the art warlock, for directing and producing today. Thanks to the Suck Ranger, Tyler C., helping with production of clips for social media. Come on, Instagram. Lift our shadow ban, you assholes. How dare we talk about controversial subjects?

Thanks to Bit Elixir for upkeep on the app, the Time Suck app, the art warlock, Logan Keith. Again, creating the merch at badmagicmerch.com and for helping run our socials, along with our Suck Ranger, Tyler C., and a team managed by our social media strategist, Ryan Handelsman. Thanks to producer Sophie Evans with the initial research this week. We fucking crushed it, Sophie.

Not an easy one to put together. Also thanks to all the all-seeing eyes moderating the Cult of the Curious, private Facebook page, the Mod Squad for making sure Discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Time Sucks subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit next week we start february with another space lizard chosen topic what have our patreon supporters voted in well we're heading to china it's been a while and i cannot wait to see what pronunciation hurdles await me uh we will be sucking the tiananmen square massacre uh june 3rd and 4th 1989 the, the People's Liberation Army of China killed hundreds, possibly thousands of protesting civilians

in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. Why? Well, the massacre occurred after days of student-led protests at the square. After the death of Chinese politician Hu Yaobang, students came to the square to mourn his death and demand political reforms. Thousands of students came to the square to protest.

And then after 10 days, a state-run newspaper published an editorial criticizing the students and threatening punishment for lawless people who plan riots and disturb social order. The students were outraged. Thousands of students staged a demonstration against the editorial, and the protest quickly spread outside of Beijing. The Communist Party of China was embarrassed, outraged by the student protests, which interrupted a visit from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

There were a lot of internal debates within the CCP about how to deal with the protests. Some wanted to work with the students. Others wanted to end the protests as quickly as possible, without dialogue, through brute force if necessary. And those voices won out. CCP leaders made a final decision to end what they called a counter-revolutionary riot. On June 3rd, 1989, they sent in the People's Liberation Army with two very conflicting orders. The army was officially instructed not to harm civilians, but, and this is a big but, they were also ordered to clear Tiananmen Square by 6 a.m. on June 4th with no exceptions or delays.

So they weren't really there to not harm anyone. Angry protesters clashed with PLA soldiers And on the night of June 3rd The army started shooting Chaos ensued and an unknown number of people Were shot and killed As the night continued, student protesters voted to leave the square But hours later, crowds of

Courageous people returned And were also shot at The PLA accomplished its goal of ending the protests With extreme violence Seemed like order had been restored, but then on June 5th, an unknown lone man stood in front of a line of tanks. This man was ushered off the road by an unknown group of people, and as far as we know, has never been seen again. To this day, no one knows who he is or what happened to him. The Tiananmen Square Massacre made a lasting impact on the world.

Next week, we will cover the full timeline of the massacre, the important political figures involved, and how China has both changed and not changed in the years after the protests. Did they accomplish anything? We'll also cover how the Chinese government has spent the past 30 plus years attempting to suppress the legacy of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the mysterious and mythical symbolism of Tank Man. All that next week here on Time Suck.

Right now, let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. mysterious and mythical symbolism of tank man. All that next week here on time. Suck right now. Let's head on over to this week's time. Sucker updates. Updates. Get your time sucker updates. Starting off with an Amanda Knox update from a faithful sucker by the name of Eddie. And he writes dear master sucker senior,

most mush mouth and Mro de Italiano. I just finished the Amanda Knox episode and wanted to write you with an update on Italy and the pervasive culture I came to understand while living there. Back in 2013, I was a fresh faced 20 year old Erasmus student headed to Florence from California for the next year.

I thought I'd won the jackpot. I was going to live where history was made. It was a few weeks before I left that suddenly everyone I knew was warning me not to get killed by Amanda. I, like many, assumed she was guilty at the time, but my opinion would change shortly after arriving in Italy. Flash forward to a month later, I had fully settled into my life as a student abroad, but being a tall male, six foot seven, I didn't see what was happening to the female students around me. After I began to make friends and go to bars more often, my female friends started to tell me

how grateful they were to have me around because no one was bothering them. That was when the stories came pouring out. I said I didn't want to go home with the guy and he shoved me to the ground. My date left a bruise on my arm when I tried to leave without kissing him. One story I heard essentially detailed a physical assault at a public bar where no one tried to help and instead laughed at the woman for being drunk. After that conversation, I began offering to walk other students home. These instances were sadly not few and far between, but a wake-up call to what women were dealing with

instead of having fun and exploring their time abroad. Don't get me wrong, Italy is a beautiful country full of excellent food and wine with a rich history to explore, but they also tend to look at women as subservient to men. I may be able to stumble across a foreign city alone at two in the morning, but for a woman, that could have meant death or worse. As they say in Italy, Sergio Spaghetti Calzone, forget about it! Or as they actually say in Italy, in Bacalupo, which directly translates to in the mouth of the wolf, but colloquially is used to say good luck. This comes from a time when hungry wolves would come down from the hills and prowl

the city, which meant leaving your house could mean running into them. The reply would then be Crepe a Lupo or death to the wolf. I believe the sentiment is the same. Today, there aren't any wolves on four legs, but still plenty walking amongst us as evidenced by your many true crime episodes. Sorry, not sorry for the long message. Three out of five stars. Keep on sucking your faithful time sucker, Eddie. Well, thank you, Eddie. Yeah, man, I spent a week in Florence in 1997 and saw a lot of what you are talking about. I was visiting a bunch of kids from Gonzaga who were there for the year. They'd been there for months already. We were all juniors. Most of us had known each other for a couple of years.

And I heard so many stories. Numerous girls I knew had a story about being out fucking jogging in the middle of the day and seeing a dude openly jerk off watching them run. And it wasn't even the same dude, like different dudes doing this. Just beating off on balconies or fucking wherever. I don't recall one girl encountering that back in Spokane, where Gonzaga is based. Girls talked about how pushy a lot of the men there were, very sexually aggressive. I witnessed some of that in a bar. I mean, there's flirting and then there's borderline trying to kidnap someone when they're

drunk. It was like if a girl was out at a bar, right? She just must want to be taken home by whoever and fucked. If she was out running, you know, wearing some form-fitting workout gear, well, then she must want to be leered at by some creep beaten off. Now, of course, not everyone was like that, but the culture was very different. All cultures are, and Italy's culture was very predatory when I was there towards women. And I do think that played into Knox's trial. Dudes over there seemed all too happy to over-sexualize women. So thank you for for sending that in And as they also say in Italy

A book in a bad boy's soup with the scar A heart in the father of the dad Is a covenant out of an oil on Antonio Banderas Now another awesome message From another awesome Ed Who writes Hey Dan, I'm a newer listener I just started

In fact, six months ago I was in a real dark mental space And needed something to take my mind off things. A friend at work actually told me about your podcast. I've been listening ever since. Of course, I started on episode one and listen while at work. I'm currently on episode 139, the Vietnam War episode, which brings me to why I'm messaging. My father, the greatest man I've ever known and the type of man I aspire to be served during Vietnam, U.S. Army Infantry and Communications Division.

He was 15, excuse me, when he enlisted on papers, he was 18. He tried to forge the documents two years prior and join the Marines. However, they wouldn't take him due to him looking so young. So not just once, but twice, this man went down to enlist underage

and fight alongside so many others. He only did one tour in Vietnam. However, it's not what you think. He and his best friend, Edward Green, went through basic and then to the jungle on the same date. They didn't know, or yeah, same dates for Basic and Jungle. They didn't know one another at the time and only met due to being in the same company in Platoon. My father had never talked to a black man before.

Due to where he had been raised and had always been told they were evil and disgusting creatures. He believed that until he met Edward. The man who not only changed my father's life, but literally saved him. Eddie G, they called him. A strong, and by all accounts, as I was told, hilarious man, made it so I could send this message to you today, when he not only took a bullet for my dad, but also gave his life to save Private Paul William Presley by jumping on a grenade that had been thrown at them. Holy shit. That was 278 days in the jungle or after 278 days and only 20 days before they were set to come home. When he died, my father swore he would avenge his fallen ally and then volunteer to stay

an additional two years. He would return home at the age of 18. Now fast forward 20 some years later to the day I was born and named Edward in honor of Eddie G. This man never forgot the first black man he'd ever met who showed him he had been raised wrong in his beliefs and never forgot the sacrifice he'd made up until that day my father passed away, which brings me back around to why I was in a dark spot and how you saved my life. Dad passed away in July 8th, 2022 after suffering the long-term effects of agent orange. This man, the strongest,

proudest man I'd ever known had to be carried from the bathroom to the couch the night before. I'll never forget how helpless he looked, how defeated and scared he was. This was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my entire life. Not due to the weight I was holding physically, but due to the fact that I was carrying him and my heart was sinking. I knew this would be the last time I'll see, I would see him alive. He was rushed to the hospital where he would pass away. 13 hours later, he was unconscious in the hospital. The last time I would see him alive. He was rushed to the hospital where he would pass away 13 hours later. He was unconscious in the hospital the last time I spoke to him, where I told him I understood

that it was okay for him to go. He could be with mom, his best friend. I told him I would bear the weight and burden of taking care of not only my family, but also my sister and her daughter as well. He then had a tear fall from his eye just the second time in my life I saw him cry. The first being when he shook my hand

after graduation from bootcamp at Parris Island in 2008. I promised him not to cry or mourn the loss I'd experienced and have kept that promise this whole time. Currently, I'm paying two mortgages, mine and his. This is to keep the promise of taking care of my sister and niece and I'm supporting my family too. My wife, ironically also named Lindsay Marie

and daughter Emma are truly all I have left and I wouldn't be here to support them had I not found your podcast. So thank you for myself and my four-year-old daughter for showing me light when I was in my darkest. Thank you for saving me from a fate that I surely would have had if I not, if not for finding the cold, the curious, I'll become a space lizard as soon as I catch up. Although that might be a while, LOL live always Edward Presley, Ed, fuck man. Thank you for telling us that incredible tale, tale of your father holy shit what a fucking champion and also what a hero eddie g

was man rest in peace edward green damn hope lucifina has made sure that you have been getting everything you ever wanted the past 50 or so years how awesome to have such a powerful namesake right and an amazing dad and to now And an amazing dad. And to now be an amazing dad yourself. You're a top shelf sack, Eddie. Hope you like this message when you hear it about a year or so from now. Hail Nimrod. And one more today from a sucker who can't see shit. It sees so much. More than most, I bet. Kick-ass sack, Yvonne writes, Dear Dan, I'm compelled to write you again after listening to the Helen Keller suck. I'm not sure if you remember me.

I do. I was a blind woman that wrote to you after listening to the triumph over tragedy suck while getting unbelievably challenged in Argentina. You read my email and you're homeless in America suck. I was deeply honored. You have no idea. Anyway, I wanted to thank you

for your most amazing telling of Helen Keller story. You presented her in a way that wasn't pitiful or tragic, nor in an inspirational porn type of way, which is typical. My allergies really acted up for most of the episode. And I laughed aloud at the Helen Keller jokes. I remember those and wondered if she would have appreciated them to be included rather than ignored for fear of offending. I like to imagine she would have come up with a few of her own. I was also very interested in your shedding of toxic people in your life. I'm so glad you dealt with it. It explained a lot as I could feel the burnout in those episodes. Good rule of thumb is to indeed trust your gut, resist being seduced by personality,

always search for the person inside. Then you talked about donating over 13,000 to Guide Dogs for the Blind, then said you sang karaoke at camp and my allergies took over even more. I just received my newest guide dog named Karaoke from Guide for the blind. Uh, she is the sweetest thing. And I think you'll enjoy seeing this. How amazing your donation is firsthand. When we meet you in March in Vancouver, we have meet and greet ticks. Looking forward to meeting you in the crew. I was wondering if I could possibly thank you for not just what you do, but who you are. So I'll throw it out there. I've been formally trained in existential analysis and just started co-training the discipline here in Vancouver.

I was trained by Viktor Frankl's disciple, Alfred Langell, who is continuing the work of Frankl in living a fulfilled and meaningful existence with inner consent. If you are ever in need of some information on psychology in this modality for your work or research,

I would be honored to contribute slash volunteer. Either way, I will hopefully see you in March, Master Sucker. You shine so bright, I might just be able to do that, but don't let will hopefully see you in March Master Sucker, you shine so bright I might just be able to do that, but don't let it go to your head Well, Yvonne, what a lovely fucking message I am so jealous of what you're studying I would love to spend months studying existential analysis

That is so, so cool Obviously, I'm a huge Frankel fan And I am so sorry that I will not be able to see you in Vancouver I dressed on The Secret Suck But not here, not really Well, I had to cancel that show because it didn't seem as if I would be able to get across the border to make that show. Why? Back in 2010, if you're a fan of my standup, you know this. I made fun of myself a bunch on my old Hear This standup album for getting a DUI. To be precise, a misdemeanor DUI

in Santa Monica. Was it stupid and dangerous for me to drive drunk? Absolutely. Was it hammered? No, still doesn't make it right. But I wasn't, I wasn't even pulled over. I wrecked a car while arguing with the girl I was dating and waited for the police to come. And then my blood alcohol levels found to be over the limit. And I was given a misdemeanor. Went to months of mandatory alcohol classes, went to some AA meetings, had an airlock ignition device, installed on my car for months, paid more insurance for years, paid thousands of lawyer and court fees. And in the U S I'm all good. That paid I've not gotten in trouble since do not get behind the wheel. If I've had more than two drinks over a few hours of time, but in Canada, they passed a law which banned you for 10 years. Plus however

much time you were jailed or quote suspended for a DUI felony or a misdemeanor. And the 10 years wouldn't begin until the end of your quote sentence. Canada would interpret me having a two-year probationary license as a sentence. So I was banned for a dozen years, unless I filed a bunch of paperwork. Each time I came up for work, paid fees, and still risked getting sent home from the border. So I stopped going to Canada for shows, decided to wait out the 12 years, then took the Vancouver date because it's been fucking 13 years coming up now. Then found out that 12 years in 2017 got changed to a lifetime ban for even a misdemeanor DUI,

even just one. I can contest in a form of immigration court and probably be reinstated. But to do that, I have to first get my full FBI record and original copy, you know, a California state record, which my Idaho record, which um, you know, uh, California state record, which, uh, my Idaho record, which may, uh, you know, entail going to these state agencies, uh, get official copies of each and a lot more. And because you can't do that stuff quick, there was no time to make it to the show. So hopefully one day we can meet. I'm so fucking bummed about this personally, while I don't take a DUIs lightly, I do think Canada abandoned me for fucking life. For one, I got 13 years ago and I have nothing else on my record is

a bit harsh. Especially since I didn't get it in their country. And I'm not having a problem traveling to any other country and haven't had. When I get time, I plan on going through all the stuff to be able to once again, visit your beautiful country. It's just going to take some work. Until then, I hope you keep listening. Hope you keep being awesome.

And you know what? Fucking don't drink and drive. Well, for you, Yvonne, don't drive at all, but you know that. You get it. Drive safe, meat sacks, and hail Nimrod. Next time, suckers, I needed that. We all did.

Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Don't become a therapist this week so you can turn people We all did. Now let's jam on a little more of this fucking sweet track, New World Order. Man, I just can't get enough. He'll try to make it stop By sending in a billion cops He's using fear and hate Fear and hate stop by sending in a billion cops. He's using fear and hate. Fear and hate.

Separate the human race. Separate the human race. He's got new weapons. He's got new plans. He's got new weapons and plans. He's used the world in his power-hungry hands. Power-hungry hands. It's a new world order. It's a new world order.

Oh, fucking get that sax in there. And trumpet. Men have been trying since the world began to control the world in the palm of their hands. Caesar, Hitler, Ronald Reagan too They all had a plan of just what to do Bush is a con man, he kills with a smile He murders women and children with gentleman's style

Fuck it, that's what George Bush is showing right now Isn't anybody watching? Doesn't anybody know? It's a new world order show right now. Show pictures of the UN and shit now. It's the New World Order! Now suck my dick and get some therapy.