Write About Now

Inside the Rise and Fall of an Upper West Side Cult


Listen Later

Alexander Stille talks about his fascinating new book, The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune. Led by a charismatic psychoanalyst, the Sullivanians flourished in Manhattan's tony neighborhood in the 1970s and 80s, attracting many brilliant, creative people as patients, including Jackson Pollack and Judy Collins. But what started as a utopian experiment in psychoanalysis devolved into a paranoid sex cult in which therapists controlled their patients' lives, instructing them who to sleep with and where they could work. The real tragedy is the story of the children, who were shipped off to boarding schools so that their parents could be free to sleep around and jettison the constraints of the nuclear family. Stille is an accomplished journalists and a professor at Columbia Journalism School.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Write About NowBy Jonathan Small

  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9

4.9

163 ratings


More shows like Write About Now

View all
Radiolab by WNYC Studios

Radiolab

43,981 Listeners

Freakonomics Radio by Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Freakonomics Radio

32,084 Listeners

Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,504 Listeners

Hidden Brain by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain

43,657 Listeners

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! by NPR

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

38,757 Listeners

The Tim Ferriss Show by Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

The Tim Ferriss Show

16,184 Listeners

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by QuickAndDirtyTips.com

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

2,842 Listeners

20/20 by ABC News

20/20

11,857 Listeners

Thanks For Asking by Feelings & Co.

Thanks For Asking

13,238 Listeners

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum by Dan Carlin

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum

8,352 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

8,603 Listeners

The Rest Is History by Goalhanger

The Rest Is History

15,634 Listeners

We Can Do Hard Things by Treat Media and Glennon Doyle

We Can Do Hard Things

41,516 Listeners

The Mel Robbins Podcast by Mel Robbins

The Mel Robbins Podcast

20,620 Listeners

How I Write by David Perell

How I Write

88 Listeners