The Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall Community: The Relationship of Radical Individualism and Authoritarianism

Rating:
Summary: Scholarly, Remarkable and Compelling
Review: Although this is an academic monograph, one in a series on the sociology and social psychology of religion, it is an extraordinary and compelling book.
On one level, it is a study of the remarkable evolution of a cult-like group (the Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall), initially a small and not wildly out-of-mainstream therapeutic community on Manhattan's Upper West Side, through a series of seemingly disjunct phases: a phase of hedonistic self-actualization; a phase of regimented self-sacrifice in the name of a higher social good; and eventual implosive dissolution in a wave of scandal, partisanship and mutual recrimination.
On another level, it could be described as an object lesson in the old and well-worn dictum that absolute power - in this case, the power exercised by the SI/FW leadership, who evidently lifted a page or two from Stalin - corrupts absolutely. Another, more modish moral might be summarized thus: beneath any therapy (and, arguably, behind many religious movements) professing unique insight into, and unique ability to resolve, "problems of living," there probably lurks a hefty dose of megalomania, cynicism, greed, or some combination of these.
On yet another level, it as an attempt to situate the SI/FW phenomenon - and, by extension, other therapeutic/religious/political groups and movements - in the broader American social, cultural and political context of the times.
Finally, the book represents the author's personal account of her own involvement with the SI/FW. Although she is clearly out of sympathy with many aspects of what the group stood for, her treatment is generally dispassionate and thoughtful. Her prose tends to be terse - one gets the impression of reading the highly condensed version of some 1000-page tome. Nonetheless, Siskind has done a brilliant job of describing and analyzing an extremely complex, subtle and troubling phenomenon.