How Did a Smart Guy Like Me ...:: My 21 Years in Sullivanian Therapy and the Fourth Wall Theater Company

by Artie Honan

In 1969, Artie Honan, a young banker, was in a personal crisis. Most of his friends had married, but he balked at settling down with his current girlfriend. Unsatisfied with his life and career, Artie moved from suburban Long Island to Manhattan and began seeing a therapist from the Sullivan Institute for Psychoanalysis. He soon discovered that many people in Sullivanian therapy were part of a community that promoted free love and communal living, popular ideas in the 1960s. His world expanded as he became part of the community; he gained insights about himself, found friendships and lovers, and went back to school to become a social worker. But those halcyon years did not last. The community increasingly became an autocratic, high-demand organization where everyone was in therapy and a dues-paying member of the Fourth Wall Political Theater Company. Artie found himself doing things that he wouldn't normally do to win the approval of Saul Newton, the group's charismatic leader. Yet, his devotion to friends and the supportive community kept him from leaving. It wasn't until he had two children that he realized that he and his family needed to leave this isolating community. This emotional memoir is about the author's life struggles and his 21 years in the secretive Sullivanian group. It also provides a detailed history of the community that thrived on Manhattan's Upper West Side from the 1960s until the early 1990s.

382 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 14, 2020