The beginning, links with Synanon

[cleveland]

From looking over this site and other links, it appears that Art took a lot of his ideas from Synanon - but how and why? Someone who is involved in AA and apparently works at Bellview suddenly cooks up this whole business?

Art was a shrewd guy, but no intellectual. He didn't appear to be widely read, didn't talk to people outside of his trusted inner circle. How did he get the ideas to build this?

Where did he get the terminology - newcomer, oldcomer, guys & chicks, raps, "honesty is the first and most important rule," etc. (and didn't it feel weird calling girls chicks in the 1970s? That was so 60s!) What about Moral Inventories?

And what about his links with actors like Art Carney and Jackie Gleason? Where they actual friends, hanging around like the Rat Pack?

And what about Art's childhood. I've seen assertions of petty crime. What was his family like?

And what makes a guy want to have hundreds of kids scream "we love you" to him? Did he really believe he was changing the world?

[Anonymous]

Some of this stuff we just don't know, Cleveland. Art denies any connection to the Synanon and just claimed kids came from many places and brought ideas with them. At first I thought he had to be there but over the years I have become convinced there is zero connection other than a commonality of thechniques.

Maybe some of the earlier staff members had been in synanon based treatment? Early reports of the Seed were far different than the cultic mind control I went thru. Did this stuff develop independently of the Synanon? I think yes. I can find no evidence of Art ever being in the Synanon, and I did remember he said he worked somewhere in New York. You just revived my memory, and that was Bellvue mental hospital. (he probably was a staffer of sorts, one of the guys that control the patients, and that could explain some of his control techniques he used on us).

 Art was definity a rabid AA guy, and Cults all over the world have sprung out of AA dogma, including the synanon (sins anonymous, get it?)

[Antigen]

I've seen some pretty compelling arguments for the idea that they were all shriners; the same crowd my dad used to call "professional alcoholics".

Was Art really shrewd? Or was he just buying into someone else's bullshit?

Just prior to Art's founding of The Seed, Bobby DuPont, Nixon's head of NIDA, granted The Seed; Matrix in NYC and Phoenix house (among others) great sacks of cash to establish the Synanon method throughout the nation at federal expense.

Art condemned us all as conformists and followers. Do you think maybe he was projecting?

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins; all of them imaginary.
Anonymity Anonymous
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

[Antigen]

On 2004-09-11 18:19:00, Anonymous wrote:

Maybe some of the earlier staff members had been in synanon based treatment

John fucking Underwood springs to mind.

Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
-- John Muir

[GregFL]

Yes, he really walked the walk and talked the talk.

Maybe dupont put him there to "help" Art, along with that whopping unheard of federal grant? I mean, here we were, a bunch of children, and then there was John a suppossed seedling but in his Mid twenties, ex heroin addict, deep into the synanon style...he didn't seem to fit and It really makes me think. Wherever and however the synanon techniques made their way into the seed, there is no doubt they were there in spades.

Who knows...it is speculation at this point. I sure would love to put the puzzle pieces together.[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2004-09-11 20:43 ]

[cleveland]

I seem to remember John Underwood referred to with reverence. Maybe he was the sourse of some if this. I never met him.

It's hard for me to believe this was started in 1970, pretty much over as a 'legit' program (except for a small number of true believers) by 1977, straggling on as a tiny inner circle until about 2002.

But the offshoots of this program live on in treatment techniques and public policy to this day!

Also ironic is that the techniques of the 1960s counterculture (Synanon) were picked up by Republicans in the War on Drugs! Reading about the Semblers and others is really scary. If anything, Striaght aqd some other offshoots were far worse than the Seed.

Even today, I wonder, how do you help people transoform their lives without stepping all over their rights? I live in an inner city neighborhood and there is so much pathology here. When I was at the Seed I did believe we were going to change the world, and the Seed picked up on my idealism and turned me into an automaton, trampling my free will.

So, what will the alternative turn out to be? Now that community, culture and politics are failing us?

More questions than answers.

[FueLaw]

When looking back I always thought Underwood was the brains and backbone of the Seed. He was very clever and could be very mean. He had a very confrontive approach and method. I believe this was from other rehabs.  It seemed like his role was to deal with (break down) the real hard asses. He was legendary in his day.

I always felt alot of the methods used by the Seed were from either Pete ( a cross eyed Ialian dude) or Underwood.

[dragonfly]