We do love us some accounts of cults gone wrong! Maybe that’s because that there does seem to be overlap between Ordo Templi Orientis and any number of wacky and extreme groups… when it comes to some of the original founding principles and perspectives involved (removing the unthinking obeisance to received, wisdoms, polyamory), but when it comes to application – NOPES! You look at the classic list of attributes of a cult and we’re pretty much the opposite: encouraging members to stay engaged with friends, family, vocation, to share dissenting opinions and, finally, to figure out what it all means and how to apply it to their lives for themselves.
THE SULLIVANIANS: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune, by Alexander Stille, recounts one such group that operated out of New York City in the 60’s – 80’s. Here’s some excerpts from the NY Times review:
‘Its fundamental premise was to break the bonds between parent and child: “splitting the atom of the nuclear family,” Stille writes, “and scattering its pieces.” Mothers were thought to be particularly malevolent. Free love was encouraged— if insisting that close, exclusive attachments are unhealthy can really count as “free.” Alcohol was considered an elixir, as salubrious as green juice.’
So far so good, but then…
‘There is theft (“Only in a lefty group would someone be accused of stealing a pottery kiln,” Stille notes) and wacky food restrictions, prompting two rebels to make a “cheeseburger oath” of secrecy as they sat in a forbidden restaurant and discussed their doubts. After the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown, many in the group fled for a time to Disney World, where in a kind of “apocalyptic bacchanalia” they took sedatives and had group sex in a Howard Johnson’s.
‘The community always had its own special vocabulary. One exercise, sometimes postcoital, was delivering a harsh character assessment known as a “summary.” Getting too involved with someone, which was seen as dependency, was “romantic focus.” “The Conditions of Human Growth,” a book co-authored by Newton and Pearce in 1963, suggested especially intense romantic focus was a form of “hostile integration.” (“What most people would call ‘falling in love,’” as Stille observes.)
‘Ethics were questionable from the beginning: Pearce glugged vodka even in morning sessions, while Newton, along with serial cheating on Pearce and his subsequent wives (he had six in total), often demanded oral sex from female patients and domestic help. Members were inspired to regress to childhood and recoup missing stages of development. For a couple of summers in Amagansett, where the leaders built a summer residence, men and women walked around sucking on pacifiers, carrying stuffed animals and meting out martinis from baby bottles.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/18/books/review/the-sullivanians-alexander-stille.html.
