Aesthetic Realism is a cult

  Who they are, how they operate • Written by former members

Aesthetic Realism’s attempts to “cure” gays

“Eli Siegel [AR's founder] does not approve of homosexuality."

    One of the more interesting facets of AR is its claim that homosexuality is a form of insanity caused by one's contempt for the world -- and that one could be "cured" of their gayness by studying Aesthetic Realism and learning to purge contempt. AR promoted the cure aggressively in the 70's and 80's, but abandoned it by the 90's, because so many of the "cured" decided they were really gay after all and left the group. The AR people couldn't talk about their cure with a straight face any more because it clearly wasn't working.

However, although they don't try to "fix" gays any more, they don't think their earlier attempts to do so were wrong. They've never said it was a mistake, and they've certainly never apologized for it. And in fact, one AR leader now claims that AR never professed to have a gay cure, and that I'm a liar for saying that they did! Here's what the executive director of AR says on Countering the Lies, a website they set up for the express purpose of combating my critique of AR.

Michael Bluejay writes: "AR says that homosexuality is a mental illness" and "AR professed to have the 'cure' for homosexuality." This is completely untrue.... Similarly, Aesthetic Realism never saw homosexuality as something to "cure," and--whether through Mr. Siegel or any Aesthetic Realism consultant, whether in writing or in speech--Aesthetic Realism never presented itself as having a "cure."

Is that so? Well, the evidence says otherwise:

• There's the group's 1971 book, The H Persuasion: How Persons Have Permanently Changed From Homosexuality Through the Study of Aesthetic Realism With Eli Siegel
• There are the two 1971 television interviews they did on the subject. (Entire half-hour program on NYC's Channel 13 on Feb. 19, and the David Susskind program on April 4.)
• There's the group's 1982 film, Yes, We Have Changed
• There's the group's 1986 book, The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel and the Change from Homosexuality
• There's the ad shown at right boasting of the gay cure, which AR students purchased in the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post
• There's the double-page ad they bought in the New York Times, which says, "We say what history will say: the American press has blood on its hands, has caused misery and death, because for years it has withheld the news that men and women have changed from homosexuality through study of Aesthetic Realism."
• There are the thousands counseling sessions they held to try to help gays change. I have a transcript of one such session here.
• There's the inquest of an AR student supposedly cured of his gayness and quickly married off to a female AR member, but who was then found to still be cruising for gay sex. As the transcript shows, the group was furious at him.

Here's a telling quote from the preface of the 1986 book written by Ellen Reiss, the current "Class Chairman" of the group:

"It is a beautiful fact that through study of Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by the American poet and critic Eli Siegel, men have changed from homosexuality. ... Eli Siegel's statement of the cause of homosexuality [contempt for the world]... is scientific law."

But supposedly I'm a liar for saying that AR claimed to have a gay cure. Yeah, I'm just irresponsible like that.

Aesthetic Realism says homosexuality is wrong

     Aesthetic Realists didn't merely tell someone that they could change if they didn't want to be homosexual any more (which is their current spin). Beyond that, they firmly feel that homosexuality is wrong. An entire chapter of their 1986 book is devoted to that subject, titled "How Ethical is Homosexuality"? They answer that question on the very first page:

"Eli Siegel stated the main reason homosexuality is not ethical, and [he] related homosexuality to all other ways that a man has been against the outside world. He explained, 'There is only one thing that is immoral in the world: liking oneself too much and the outside world too little'.... Eli Siegel's understanding of the cause of homosexuality as an insufficient care for what is not oneself, makes it possible for homosexual persons to change."

This is followed by a chapter entitled, "Homosexuality: A Form of Selfishness". And in The H Persuasion, Eli Siegel wrote:

All homosexuality arises from contempt of the world, not liking it sufficiently.

This changes into a contempt for women....

Homosexuality, like biting one's nails, depression, excessive gambling, arises out of a disproportionate way of seeing the world.

There are other ways a person has of not liking himself, but homosexuality is one.

Okay, so we see that AR believes that homosexuality comes from contempt. And how do they view contempt?"

"According to Aesthetic Realism, the greatest sin that a person can have is the desire for contempt." (source; emphasis added)

So Aesthetic Realists believe that homosexuality is tremendously sinful. But it doesn't stop there. They also think gays are crazy. The AR motto itself is "Contempt causes insanity." It was the title of the preface to their founder's book Self and World (which is basically their Bible), and they've used it as a headline of their monthly newsletter. And as we saw above, AR thinks that homosexuality is caused by one's contempt for the world. So if homosexuality is a form of contempt, and contempt causes insanity, then homosexuals are....insane.

In fact, AR doesn't think that contempt is one cause of insanity. They think it's the only cause of insanity. As one of the AR teachers writes:

One of the greatest humanitarian and intellectual achievements of all time was the discovery by Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, that contempt causes insanity; in fact, that it causes all mental trouble. [emphasis added]

The only way that the AR people could plausibly say that they don't view homosexuality as a mental illness, is if they say that they don't view insanity as a mental illness. That would be a pretty bold claim, but they're welcome to try.

AR members still retain their antigay prejudice privately even though it's not part of their current rhetoric. Indeed, some of the people on Countering the Lies who say I'm a liar were contributors to the 1986 book about the gay cure, denouncing homosexuality throughout its pages, and led therapy sessions trying to help people not be gay. This is important, because whenever someone brings up the gay cure, the AR people shriek, "That was in the past! That was a long time ago!" But what they're not admitting is that while they no longer offer their program for change, their opinions about homosexuality haven't changed at all. Here's what one of the AR teachers said on Wikipedia quite recently:

The Aesthetic Realism Foundation formally discontinued this single aspect of study because it was being sucked into the culture wars--with the far Right trying to use it to promote their bigoted agenda against homosexuality and the far Left furious at anything that even remotely suggested homosexuality was not biological. In such an atmosphere Aesthetic Realism's sensible, philosophic approach to the subject didn't stand a chance of being considered reasonably. (emphasis mine; source)

Part of AR's current spin is that they simply helped people who wanted to change, and never said anyone should change. Reality says otherwise. They blew a third of a million dollars on a center-spread ad in the New York Times to tell the world things like this:

"We say what history will say: the American press has blood on its hands, has caused misery and death, because for years it has withheld the news that men and women have changed from homosexuality through study of Aesthetic Realism." (emphasis added)

That gives you some idea of how important they thought it was for people to stop being gay.

AR is trying to backtrack on that now by cherry-picking a quote from Eli Siegel where he says "If the homosexual likes himself then the matter has come to a just and triumphant end." Of course he said this years after the first book on the cure went to press, when AR was getting a lot of flak and felt a need to do some damage control. For this reason, any Siegel quotes on the subject after 1971 should be treated with suspicion.

But more importantly, it's what the AR people are not saying that's important. Siegel's new gay-friendly quote is that *if* a gay person likes himself then there's no problem, but AR believes that a gay person cannot like himself. Their whole idea about the cause of homosexuality as that it's the result of one's not liking the world and not liking him/herself. So it's pretty disingenuous for them to try to now claim that they see nothing wrong with being gay. To them, being gay is an unaesthetic difference of opposites, and a result of one's contempt for the world, and it's impossible for someone to like himself and be gay at the same time. Here's a telling quote from their first book, that shows how little respect AR has for people who are happily gay:

"So, when we are told--and it is more often belligerently told than not--that someone likes being gay and wouldn't change for anything, we listen, but with an attitude of benevolent semi-conviction. This is not meant to be patronizing. It's just that we are helplessly unconvinced." (p. xi)

In a televised interview, when the interviewer asks, "Can you conceive of any homosexual as having a good, healthy, noncontemptuous relation with a homosexual?", AR changeling Sheldon Kranz answers, "I would say no." (The H Persuasion, p. 14)

 

The basis of the cure? Worship Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism!

The main teaching af Aesthetic Realism is that we have a tendency to see other people and things as inferior, as a way of building ourselves up. They call this "contempt", they consider it the sole source of all mental illness. They view homosexuality as one such mental problem caused by a person's contempt for the world. So the "cure" involves studying Aesthetic Realism to purge contempt, because once a person sees the beauty of the world accurately then s/he won't feel like being gay any more. Here's Eli Siegel saying so in AR's first book on the subject:

"Get rid of your contempt and you will get rid of one of the chief ingredients in homosexuality." (p. 19, 38)

Whatever. But there's also a more insidious part of this. The way you're supposed to purge your contempt is by expressing absolute devotion to Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism. In fact, I have a transcript of a therapy session where the AR people tried to cure the subject of his gayness, and you can see plainly how they expect him to show this kind of fanatical devotion, saying things like:

So do you think that you are tremendously, tremendously grateful that you met the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel? ...

So why do you think, Mr. Carson, you didn't begin this consultation saying this, something like this: "Gentlemen, before you begin the consultation I want to tell you how grateful I am to Aesthetic Realism and to Mr. Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, that I'm hearing the questions and the principles, and that you're teaching me this knowledge, because I'm seeing it -- there's a lot more for me to see, I don't want to pretend that I see everything, hardly, gentlemen! But I'm seeing how Aesthetic Realism is true, and I'm grateful! I've never been happier in my life! I've never had this much hope in my life! So I want to say that as I begin."

For completeness, I'll mention that another part the AR philosophy is that homosexuality is unaesthetic because two men together are not beautiful opposites the way a man and a woman are. From their first gay cure book:

"Aesthetics, according to Aesthetic Realism, is primarily concerned with the making one of opposites.... A person of the opposite sex obviously represents the world as different more than a person of the same sex." (p. 48)

 

The "permanent" change was anything but

     Unfortunately for the the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, their poster children for the cure inconveniently kept deciding they were really gay after all and leaving the group. After most of the original success stories profiled in The H Persuasion had fallen off the wagon and/or left the group, the AR people had to come up with a completely different book, profiling completely different people. Ironically, the back cover of The H Persuasion says that Aesthetic Realism "changed the way [these men] see themselves and women permanently." Inside, the book says:

"We have all changed permanently. We have not 'accepted' homosexuality, nor 'adjusted' to it; we are not bisexual; we have not 'repressed' homosexuality. None of these. We have changed, permanently." (p. xi)

In truth, the change wasn't permanent at all -- if it ever really happened in the first place.

     There were four contributors to The H Persuasion. Three of them left AR and the fourth is dead. One of those who left was actually kicked out because they discovered he was still having gax sex. I contacted one of the others in January 2005 to inquire about his experience and he told me that he hasn't studied AR or had anything to do with those who do for 23 years, and that he no longer wanted his name used in conjunction with it. (Incidentally, the three who left AR attended my lesson with Eli Siegel when I was two years old.)

     At one point the AR people made a video about the cure called "Yes We Have Changed". But after production one of the subjects was found to still be having gay sex, so they hurriedly edited him out of it.

     Of course, there are many former AR students who decided they really were gay and left the group even though they weren't profiled in any of the books or videos. Some of them have shared their stories on this website:

• Ron Schmidt tells how he was kicked out after he was unable to stop being gay.
  
  
• Wayne Smith described AR's failure to fix his gayness, and concludes with: "Their disapproval means nothing to me now. I felt bad all the time I was there as nothing I did could please these people. If I disappointed them, then I now consider that a badge of honor."
  
  
• A former member says he got some good things out of the experience, but that they "most certainly did not change [his] sexuality", and that they're definitely a cult.
  
  
• A former member who undertook study to be cured of being bisexual now writes: "I consider my 'study' of Aesthetic Realism to be one of the factors that led to the eventual breakup of my marriage, to my eternal sorrow."

Of course, they were others whom AR failed to "cure" who haven't written in to this website. Here's one I read about elsewhere:

Consider "Shalom," a gay Jewish physician in his early 40s who was in conversion therapy for 11 years....[After various other approaches] failed, he entered Aesthetic Realism, a New York-based group that works with gay people to change their sexual orientation.....[One day] he broke down in the cab and began crying. "I felt emotionally raped," he says. "I couldn't keep acting. I decided to accept it. At 31, I came out to myself." Conversion therapy, Shalom says, is emotionally destructive. He says a friend of his who was "cured" of gayness later tried to take his own life. "You don't change," he says. "You only end up hating yourself even more." (source)

Earlier I mentioned that eventually AR had to come out with a second gay cure book because most of the original subjects either resumed their gay life and/or left the group. About that, the Aesthetic Realists protest, "It was not that some men 'fell off the wagon' so a new book with completely different names had to be rushed into print. That is ludicrous!" (source) Yeah, well reality begs to differ.

 

The "Press Boycott" of the cure

The Aesthetic Realists loudly trumpeted their gay cure loudly throughout the 1970's and 80's, and insisted that the popular press announce the wonderful news about it. When the press ignored them like they ignore all weird cults, AR decided that the press was actively boycotting them. (A typical characteristic of cults is paranoid feelings of persecution.) Here's what AR said about this in a double-page ad they bought in the New York Times:

"We say what history will say: the American press has blood on its hands, has caused misery and death, because for years it has withheld the news that men and women have changed from homosexuality through study of Aesthetic Realism."

Wow.

To protest this imagined press conspiracy, AR devotees wore buttons that said "Victim of the Press". Here's a photo of my aunt Alice Bernstein, a friend, me, and another friend, every last one of us dutifully wearing our Victim of the Press buttons:

And here's one of me with my aunt Alice, both wearing buttons, and showing the detail of my button:

Incidentally, in trying to discredit me, the AR people say that I stopped being involved with AR when I was two years old. But how old do I look in these pictures to you? (Hint: I was 12.)

In response to the "active press boycott" of AR in general and the gay cure specifically, AR students took to buying big advertisements in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. One such ad appears at the top of this page, on the right. I have blotted the names since some of the signers no longer wish to be associated with Aesthetic Realism. I leave one name unblotted because it is that of my late grandmother, May Musicant, mother of Alice Bernstein and my own mother.

Not everyone who signed the ad did so willingly. A former member recently sent me this:

One of the men who signed the "We Have Changed" ad along with me was to tell me some 15 years later that, at the time the ad was being prepared for publication, he hadn't wanted his name to be included, because he really didn't believe that he had changed from homosexuality and therefore it wouldn't be honest to sign a statement claiming that he had. He was battered with criticism for withholding his name and was told that he definitely had changed, but that was too cheap to see it or acknowledge it. They told him the reason was that he couldn't stand the size of his gratitude and respect for Eli Siegel. Eventually, the pressure tactics succeeded and he reluctantly added his name to the list.

AR students also held vigils in front of the New York Times building in protest of the supposed boycott of AR. I'm embarrassed to say that I was a vigil participant.

After being publicly ridiculed for wearing these buttons in a 1998 NY Post article exploring the cult aspects of Aesthetic Realism, the AR people stopped wearing these buttons around 1999 or 2000.

There's more about AR's belief that they were being actively boycotted by the press on the Cult Aspects page.

The H Persuasion

When AR's first book about its gay cure, The H Persuasion, was published the New York Times said:

"This is less a book than a collection of pietistic snippets by Believers. There is no reason to believe or disbelieve these ex-homosexuals who claim that Eli Siegel put them on the straight and narrow by showing that homosexuality was unaesthetic and therefore contemptuous of life. By the aesthetic realization that Beauty lies in Opposites, they were cured. Nor is there reason to believe that anyone reading this volume would be moved, intrigued, or piqued enough to try the cure."

This resulted in an angry letter to the Times by Aesthetic Realists:

To the Editor:

   Your recent Et Al. column devoted one short paragraph to "The H Persuasion.".... The undersigned feel your brief dismissal was outrageous -- and that your comment on the book ("a collection of pietistic snippets by Believers") was ugly, narrow and dishonest.

     You owe it to suffering families, and to men who want to change from homosexuality, to print an article by the four contributors [names], allowing them to present the basis of their change through their study with Siegel.

     For your readers' information, we are (respectively) a medical photographer at the St. Albans Naval Hospital, a member of the Phoenix School of Design, a lumber industry executive, a literary agent, a grandmother -- and a student of aesthetic realism. . . . Which (we may add) has contributed honest hope to peoples' lives, and to the beauty of the world.

David Bernstein [my uncle]
Nancy Starrels
Jack Musicant [my grandfather]
Alice Bernstein [my aunt]
May Musicant [my grandmother]
Rachel Jane Bernstein [my cousin]
New York City

I note with amusement how they authors spread out the three Bernsteins' names and two Musicants' names to try to make it look like a bunch of unrelated people were writing in, rather than two families plus one other person. Who did they think they were fooling?

Oh, and those four contributors to the gay cure book whom the AR people wanted to get into the Times? Um, they didn't all exactly stay cured, or at least didn't remain faithful to their belief in Aesthetic Realism. That's our next topic...

AR tries to sweep the whole mess under the rug

In the 1990's AR realized they couldn't really promote their cure with a straight face any more after so many of the changelings decided they were really still gay after all and left. It also became harder to promote the cure as society had become more tolerant of homosexuality. By 1990 there were a lot less people desperate to change. The gay cure isn't part of AR's current rhetoric and there is no mention of it anywhere on their website. In fact, they've been going around the Internet trying to remove all references to their position. On Freedoms Ring, for example, they convinced a webmaster to remove an article about the AR gay cure and replace it with some PR spin instead. Here's what the webmaster says about this:

This article has been removed because of a request from the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Their statement is reproduced below.

And here's that statement:

STATEMENT

Aesthetic Realism is about how a person sees the whole world--not about homosexuality. The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel is education in the largest sense possible--more comprehensive than has ever been before. It is a true description of the world.

As is well known, there is now intense anger on the subject of homosexuality and how it is seen. The Aesthetic Realism Foundation does not want to be involved in this atmosphere of anger. Therefore, the Foundation has discontinued its public presentation of the fact that through Aesthetic Realism people have changed from homosexuality. And consultations to change from homosexuality are not being given. We do not want this matter, which is not central to Aesthetic Realism, to be used to obscure what Aesthetic Realism, in its largeness and beauty, truly is.

Let's translate that back into English:

Aesthetic Realism still believes that homosexuality is unethical and a form of selfishness but since holding that idea makes us unpopular we're no longer admitting that we feel that way.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire?

On the website that the Aesthetic Realism Foundation put up (Countering the Lies) to defend themselves against the one you're reading, the executive director of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation says:

Michael Bluejay writes: "AR says that homosexuality is a mental illness" and "AR professed to have the 'cure' for homosexuality." This is completely untrue.... Similarly, Aesthetic Realism never saw homosexuality as something to "cure," and--whether through Mr. Siegel or any Aesthetic Realism consultant, whether in writing or in speech--Aesthetic Realism never presented itself as having a "cure."

Have a look at the big advertisement at right that the Aesthetic Realism Foundation purchased in three major national newspapers, the letter to the editor listed above, and the excerpts from the two gay cure books they group published and see if you agree. Who's the one saying things that are not true?

She goes on to say:

Not only does Bluejay misrepresent Aesthetic Realism on the subject, but he actually puts the word "cure" in quotation marks to make readers think he's directly quoting some statement of Aesthetic Realism, when he is not.

I'm sorry that Margot Carpenter misunderstands my use of the quotation marks. I use it not to quote AR rhetoric, but to point out the silliness of their position, as though homosexuality can or should be "cured". For the record, I've never heard Aesthetic Realists using the actual word "cure" in relation to their efforts to fix gayness. They're not that dumb.

Note that I'm not the only one to characterize their position as a "cure": In its review of AR's first book on the subject (see above), the New York Times used the same term. And Harold Norse, a contemporary of AR founder Eli Siegel, phrased it the same way in his memoirs.

Carpenter also says:

Aesthetic Realism most certainly does not consider homosexuality a mental illness; in fact, Eli Siegel always objected to homosexuality's being seen that way.

With all the books and lectures and big newspaper ads, they could have fooled us. For decades they said that "homosexuality is a form of contempt". And the AR motto itself is "Contempt causes insanity." It was the title of the preface to their founder's book Self and World (which is basically their Bible), and they've used it as a headline of their monthly newsletter. So if homosexuality is a form of contempt, and contempt causes insanity, then homosexuality is....a form of insanity.

See, AR doesn't think that contempt is one cause of insanity. They think it's the only cause of insanity. As one of their members writes:

One of the greatest humanitarian and intellectual achievements of all time was the discovery by Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, that contempt causes insanity; in fact, that it causes all mental trouble.

So when Margot Carpenter says AR never saw gayness as a mental illness, what she's really doing is playing with words. What she means is that AR carefully and cleverly never used the terms "illness" or "cure" to describe their prejudice.

It's like a racist website I visited recently when it was in the news, and their FAQ had something like this, which I paraphrase:

Q: Are you racist?

A: No, we're not racist! We simply believe that all races should be carefully segregated for purposes of ethnic purity. But we're not racist or anything.

The Aesthetic Realists are playing the same game:

Q: Didn't you say that homosexuality was an illness and that you had a cure?

A: No, we never said that, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. We simply said that was homosexuality is selfish and unethical and a result of one's contempt for the world, and that by studying Aesthetic Realism it's a beautiful fact that people could stop being gay. But we never said that it was an illness or that we had a cure for it or anything.

Perhaps the Aesthetic Realists could add some clarity to this issue by answering these questions:

1. Is homosexuality selfish, as was written in AR's book The H Persuasion?
2. Is homosexuality unethical, as was written in AR's book The H Persuasion?
3. Is homosexuality a result of one's contempt for the world?
4. Does contempt cause insanity?
5. If contempt causes insanity, and homosexuality is a form of contempt, are homosexuals insane?
6. Can a person cease to be gay as a result of studying the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel?
7. If that were to happen, would it be a good thing?
8. If the answers to any of the above questions is "no", does that mean that Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel were wrong for all those years when they said the exact opposite?

We're waiting.

 Original: January 2005 | Updated: September 2009.

A scientific challenge... A former AR student wrote to suggest that we challenge the AR Foundation to provide scientific proof that its gay cure really works. But how much more proof do we need? We already know that many of the "success stories" decided they were really gay after all and left AR. Heck, even three of the four success stories profiled in AR's first book on the subject left the group. (The fourth is dead.) When I contacted one of these subjects he told me in no uncertain terms that he didn't want his name used to support AR's efforts. So why do we need to re-prove what's already been proven? Maybe because even many of those who haven't left and continue to claim that they changed, haven't really changed at all. Here's the challenge our reader laid down to the AR Foundation: "AR Foundation, if you are truly interested in providing evidence [of the change from homosexuality], then let it be quantifiable, scientific evidence. Let your body provide the evidence. Scientists can measure all sorts of bodily reactions to certain stimuli. For instance, they can measure dilation of the pupil when something pleasurable is gazed upon. They can also measure such things as blood flow to the genitals, a faster heartbeat, and changes in breathing in response to sexual stimuli. I propose that the ARists who claim to have changed from homosexuality submit to an experiment in which they are shown sexually explicit images of men and women (separately) while having their bodily reactions monitored. If they are truly confident of their change, and if they truly want to provide "evidence" of this change, they should be happy to participate. Of course, I'm sure they'll have all sorts of reasons for not participating. Either that, or they simply won't respond to my challenge." The reader is right: the AR Foundation won't respond to the challenge. I made repeated offers to debate AR publicly but they never even acknowledged my offers, much less accepted. Still, for what it's worth, I'm willing to fund up to $2000 of these experiments, if the AR Foundation accepts. But they won't.