Culture | American cults

Meant to be liberating, the Sullivanian community became a nightmare

In his new book, Alexander Stille tells a story of experimental living and exploitation

New York City, 1966 — Image: Magnum Photos / Rene Burri

Jun 15th 2023

“How many cults have reunions?” So muses a former member of the Sullivanians, a therapeutic community that thrived in New York in the 1960s. As Alexander Stille shows in this absorbing account of the group’s rise and fall, many of its alumni do indeed remain in close contact with each other. But others regard it as a failed utopia or even “the most traumatic experience of their lives”. One interviewee tells Mr Stille, whose previous books have covered his own parents’ marital woes and the Sicilian Mafia, that he “joined a movement that turned into a business, that became a racket”. Another describes the Sullivanians’ driving force, Saul Newton, as “a sexual monster”.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Paradise bossed”