# Sullivan Institute · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

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The Cult Dossier · No. 093 · Commercial / Therapy / Lgat
Sullivan Institute
the Sullivanians; Fourth Wall Repertory Company
1957 – 1991 · Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York
XI. THERAPY, POLITICS AND THE SMALL GROUPS
Non-religious — a psychoanalytic institute that became a commune
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- 1957 Newton and Pearce found the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis in New York.
- 1960s–70s Grows to several hundred patients and therapists, peaking in the late 1970s, heavily drawn from New York's artistic and intellectual class and living in group apartments on the Upper West Side.
- c.1976 The Fourth Wall Repertory Company begins performing.
- 1979 After the Three Mile Island accident, the group decamps en masse to ORLANDO, FLORIDA, to await the destruction of Manhattan.
- LATE 1980s Unfavourable press, investigations into alleged professional misconduct by its therapists, and CUSTODY CASES — Paul Sprecher against Dee Dee Agee, and Michael Bray against Alice Dobosh — bring its child-rearing practices and Newton's violence into open court.
- 1988 A New York family court hears Sprecher's petition for sole custody of his five-year-old son, arguing that the group's control of parenting harmed the child.
- 21 DECEMBER 1991 Saul Newton dies of sepsis, having developed Alzheimer's disease. The institute ends.
- 2023 ALEXANDER STILLE publishes The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy and the Wild Life of an American Commune.
- JUNE 2023 THE FOURTH WALL, a four-part docuseries made by KEITH NEWTON — Saul Newton's own son, raised in the community — with the filmmaker Luke Meyer, premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival.
### Its people
### Saul Newton
—
Co-founder, the Sullivan Institute · 1906 – 21 December 1991 · active 1957–1991
Before the law. Never criminally charged. Multiple civil custody actions.
Where things stand. Deceased 1991.
- 1957 Co-founds the Sullivan Institute with Jane Pearce.
- 1960s–70s Grows to several hundred patients and therapists by the late 1970s, heavily drawn from New York's artistic and academic class.
- 1979 After Three Mile Island, the community decamps en masse to Orlando, Florida.
- late 1980s Custody lawsuits by parents who had left produce devastating testimony.
- 21 DECEMBER 1991 Dies of sepsis, having developed Alzheimer's disease; the institute ends.
Checked 2026-09-17
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