LEFTY POLITICS AND SEXUAL ABUSE GO TOGETHER: The Upper West Side Cult That Hid in Plain Sight: In the sixties and seventies, the Sullivanian Institute had a winning sales pitch for young New Yorkers: parties, sex, low rent, and affordable therapy.

The Sullivanians’ bête noire was the nuclear family, which they identified as the wellspring of all human pathology. To shake off bourgeois norms, Sullivanian patients lived with same-sex roommates and cultivated close platonic friendships, replete with tween-style sleepovers. They had lots of (hetero)sexual partners—in fact, turning down most any sexual proposition from a group member was frowned upon. But they were not allowed to form steady romantic relationships. To a Sullivanian, Stille explains, sexual jealousy was “a by-product of a capitalist mentality that saw marriage and monogamy as a form of ownership.” (Jackson Pollock, an early Sullivanian patient, was a fan of the method in part because he could cheat on his wife.) Higher-ups prodded Sullivanians to renounce their parents and other blood relatives; one member ceased contact with her twelve-year-old sister because the girl stopped going to therapy. Women had to seek permission to get pregnant. While trying to conceive, they would have sex with multiple men, in order to create ambiguity about their child’s biological father.

So, early “cucks,” then. Also, if you’re taking relationship advice from kooks like Shulamith Firestone, things will end badly. As they did.