Remembering the Sullivanians

Perhaps this shouldn't be a Remembrance post because I had never heard of the Sullivanians until quite recently but, when I did, my jaw metaphorically dropped. 

Apparently this was a cult that operated on the Upper West Side, just a few blocks south of where yours truly grew up, for almost thirty-years -- from the early 1960s until around 1991. And it attracted such people as the writer Richard Price, the singer Judy Collins and even Jackson Pollack in the years before the cult formally took shape. 

Living in multiple buildings around 100th street and Broadway, right around where the great Metro diner is today, the Sullivanian cult was founded by a neo-Marxist couple that claimed to practice psychiatry even though they weren't formally trained or certified in psychiatry. They believed that the nuclear family and monogamy were the root of all social ills so they started, as so many cults do, a polygamous commune. Like so many cults, it was one-part of a free-love gathering, another part an authoritarian, fundamentalist organization. The leaders controlled their followers lives, said who they could and couldn't hook up with, sent their kids away to boarding schools (because, you know, the nuclear family was bad in their opinion), and did all kinds of other weird-culty stuff.

Also, there was violence -- as reported about in this fascinating article about the Sullivanians. Eventually the founders died, people left the cult, there were lawsuits -- the usual mess that such cults find themselves in. And now there's even a new book about this cult, with some of the surviving followers sharing their memories.

In 2018 there was a popular multi-episode documentary on Netflix called Wild Wild Country about the Rajneeshee cult in Oregon that lasted from roughly 1981-1985 (I even interviewed someone who visited back then). But in terms of longevity the Sullivanians have them beat -- by a lot. And the fact that this cult operated in the heart of sophisticated, cosmopolitan Manhattan -- not way out in the middle of nowhere -- makes it all the fascinating.

I hope there might be a multi-part documentary or podcast about the Sullivanians -- and about how smart, successful people can get sucked into something dark and bad.