Review of The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy and the Wild Life of an American Commune by Alexander Stile.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.  432 pp.

Alexander Stile’s book, The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy and the Wild Life of an American Commune (2023) is a fascinating book. It is a well-written and researched account of the so-called Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis (the Sullivanians), a group that formed in 1957 and dissolved 34 years later, in 1991.1 Stile interviewed over 60 former adherents to the Sullivan Institute and their family members. Was it a utopian community or a cult? Stile’s research suggests that the Sullivanians were both. At its height, in the 1970s, there were between 400 and 600 people involved, many of whom were famous artists and celebrities. They lived together, in large group apartments on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They participated together in study groups, art and dance classes, a theater company, deep friendships, and non-monogamous sexual relationships.

The Sullivanian Institute was a social experiment whose leaders sought to embody or enact central principles of Harry Stack Sullivan; in particular, the importance of “chumship” and belief that family relationships can inhibit and mystify a person. In addition, it involved a kind of quasi-psychoanalytic training program which mirrored the training structure of a traditional psychoanalytic institute, i.e., every member of the group was in psychoanalytic treatment and there

were individuals designated as Training Analysts and Faculty. Some members were tapped to become Training Analysts and were involved in the training program. But unlike traditional institutes, there was no recognition of the importance of confidentiality between patient and analyst, and analysts took charge of the patients’ lif