Harry Stack Sullivan.

Posting something about a survivor of the Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple cult reminded me of an odd obituary I came across a couple months ago. It was a 1991 New York Times postmortem about psychotherapist and commune leader Saul Newton, who was an avowed enemy of the traditional family, who wanted to break our accepted bonds–chains, as he saw them–smash them to bits. He thought he could create a new reality.

I vaguely recall speaking some years ago to an old NYU professor who was a believer of Newton’s and spoke glowingly of the late doctor. I was left chilled by the conversation. From the Times obit:

His beliefs had radical political themes. Earlier he was a union organizer, an avowed Communist and a soldier in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. In recent years, he was an ardent foe of nuclear arms and power.

‘Hated and Loved’

“He was both hated and loved,” said Esther Newton, his eldest daughter, who was not involved in his therapeutic community. ‘His ideals were lofty — the results are for others to judge,’ she said. “He was very bright and creative, charismatic and definitely difficult, handsome, attractive to women and tyrannical.”

At its peak in the 1970’s, his organization had hundreds of members living in three buildings on the Upper West Side. Its formal name was the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis; a subsidiary group was the Fourth Wall Repertory Company, a theater organization based in the East Village.

In recent years the Sullivanians declined in membership, beset by unfavorable publicity, investigations by state authorities into charges of professional misconduct by therapists, child custody lawsuits, the organized opposition of disaffected former members and estranged relatives of members, internal disputes and Mr. Newton’s deteriorating health.

The group’s name was derived from the late Henry Stack Sullivan, a prominent American psychiatrist. In 1957, Mr. Newton and Dr. Jane Pearce, his wife at the time, split off from the Sullivan-oriented William Alanson White Institute to form their own organization. Most mental health experts view the Newton group as having distorted Mr. Sullivan’s name and theories.

Through their unique brand of psychotherapy, Mr. Newton and his disciples controlled virtually all aspects of their followers lives, former residents said.

Members were taught that traditional family ties were at the root of mental illness and needed to be broken to foster individual growth, ex-members said. They were assigned to lived in group apartments and were expected to sleep with different sex partners, changing as often as each night. Married couples did not live together. Permission was required to give birth. Children were raised by babysitters, with parental visits allowed one hour a day and one evening a week. Members often broke off contact with their own parents and other relatives. Under outside criticism, some of these practices were moderated in recent years.•