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What former members
say...
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They reeled me in like a brook trout... Guilt was
introduced into the experience. They told me I was "not showing respect
for this great education I was receiving" by continuing to avoid having
consultations.
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They flatter you to death and tell you that you're so
wonderful, and you have all these qualities that others have never
seen. And then there's this horrible criticizing.
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My new AR friends were starting to apply the hard
sell a bit more so the word "cult" did come to mind, but I naïvely
believed that it couldn't be a cult because it wasn't religious in
nature.
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They get you to actually control yourself. A lot of
people's lives have been hurt -- ruined.
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So, there was Eli Siegel, who came up with all these
rules, but to whom none of the rules applied, and there was everybody
else.
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[Eli Siegel] was a hurtful person. He was a
sociopath. He was a control freak, and he was a cult leader.
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Poor John then would be the subject of an onslaught
of criticism to help him see his own contempt for Eli Siegel.... This
is merely one example of the way people were controlled and humiliated
if they stepped out of line or didn't conform to accepted behavior.
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We all had to present ourselves as essentially
miserable failures whose lives were in shambles until we found the
glorious "answers to all our questions" in AR.
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It was very difficult for me to surrender to AR in
the total fashion they seemed to want.
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I received a call from one of the AR bigwigs asking
me to donate money to the foundation. When I told him I was low
on cash I received a considerable verbal drubbing.
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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.
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I felt a bit raped psychologically.... If you are
thinking of getting into the AR consultation process, realize that they
could end it all suddenly, and that you could find your most intimate
thoughts on tape in someone else's possession.
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If there is anything the Aesthetic Realists are good
at, it is convincing people that if they think they see anything wrong
with Siegel, AR, Reiss or how the organization is run, there is really
something wrong with them. Any time I began to question things
or think I saw something amiss, I had been programmed to think that
what it really meant was that something was terribly wrong with me.
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That's when I finally knew for sure: AESTHETIC
REALISM IS A CULT. I swore on that moment that if I was ever
given the opportunity to tell the world what these people did to me, I
would.
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When I left I was definitely shunned by other
students. I would meet people in the NYC streets - as I still do to
this day - and they would turn the other way to avoid me, or some even
made derogatory comments about me.
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[New AR students] would be shocked if they knew that
the lives of the people they are supposed to learn from are very
different from the principles they are taught in consultations. Even
though publicly the AR foundation preaches respect for people and like
of the world, inside the organization the message is very different.
The underlying feeling is, "People who do not study AR are inferior to
us, and the world is our enemy, out to get us." We had contempt for
outsiders and were scared of the world. We huddled together for safety,
secure in our sense of superiority.
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When I was studying, we were allowed to associate
with our families only if they continuously demonstrated that they were
grateful to and respectful of Eli Siegel and AR. This did not include
going to visit them if they lived far away because then we would have
had to miss classes, and that would have meant we were "making our
family more important than AR."
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Some of the students I remember going at most
intensely and viciously to stop them from associating with their
families, (and whom we succeeded in stopping for many, many years), are
people who are now bragging on the AR website about how great their
relationships with their families are and writing as though that was
always the case.
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There were even instances of students refusing to
visit their parents when one of them was dying because the parents did
not "express regret" and renounce their unfairness to Eli Siegel and
AR. There were parents who literally begged their son or daughter to
relent so they could see them one more time, but the child refused. The
parent died without ever seeing their child again. Far from being
criticized for such behavior, students who went this far were seen as
heroes in AR. They received public praise from Ellen Reiss.
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While I was in AR, I did believe that Eli Siegel was
greater than Christ.... It would have been accurate to say I worshipped
him.
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People were told that if their families did not
support aesthetic realism, they were not their families.
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Some of the people with statements on the Countering
the Lies website claiming that AR students do not shun former
students have actually passed me on the street, looked straight at me,
and pretended they were seeing right through me. This includes people
in the highest positions in the organization.
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More and more the AR zombies demanded that I express
gratitude to ES and AR. Every paper that a student wrote had to end
with the obligatory "I am so grateful to ES and AR for..." along with
"I deeply regret that I have met this great knowledge with contempt..."
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Eli Siegel was an evil person. And I don't use the
word evil lightly.
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See former members'
statements in their entirety
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What's all this about?
Aesthetic Realism is a small psychological cult in New York City. I was
a member, as was my mother, my first father, and my maternal
grandparents. These days I'm telling the truth about how they operate
-- along with several other former members.
Aesthetic Realists believe their founder was the greatest
person ever to live, and that his writings are greater than the
Bible. They think AR is the one and only universal truth. The biggest
sin one can commit in the group is to show insufficient "gratitude" for
the founder or Aesthetic Realism itself. Members are expected to
recruit family and friends, and generally have to cut off relations
with family members whom they can't get to join. The group effectively
controls every significant aspect of their members' lives -- right down
to whom they can marry. But what AR is best known for is its alleged cure for homosexuality that it
promoted in the 70's and 80's. (Naturally, the cure involves professing
undying devotion to the founder and his teachings.) And like most
cults, they also have delusions of grandeur, obsessive paranoia, and
wildly hysterical reaction to any criticism.
It's not the teachings of Aesthetic Realism that make it a
cult, and most former members aren't critical of the AR philosophy
itself. What makes it a cult is the fact that the members are
fanatically devoted to those teachings (to the point that they renounce
their relationships with their families), and that the members are
brainwashed, which means they've lost the ability to realize certain
things which are obvious to everyone else.
It's not just me saying Aesthetic Realism is a cult.
It's also dozens of other former members whose stories are published
here, well-known professional psychologists and cult experts (like
Steve Hassan), and the media. New York Magazine called them "a cult of
messianic nothingness" and Harper's referred to them as "the Moonies of
poetry". You can read what all these sources say about AR on this site.
But my best evidence against the Aesthetic Realists is what
they say themselves. From their books, their letters, their
newspaper ads, their private therapy sessions, and their secret
meetings (which they blunderingly recorded to tape), the world can see
how mean-spirited, dishonest, and psycho they really are.
None of this would be an issue of the Aesthetic Realists
were just a harmless group of eccentrics, but they're not harmless:
They hurt people. They hurt the families who have lost a loved one
to the group (and have thus lost meaningful contact with them), and
they hurt the members themselves, many of whom say they needed a
considerable amount of therapy to recover from their experience after
they left.
There's lots of stuff on this site, but perhaps the most
relevant are:
If you're a former member, I hope you'll share your story.
If you're a current member, I hope you'll consider leaving.
If you're a journalist or blogger, I hope you'll write about this scandalous group.
Thanks for stopping by. -- Michael
Bluejay, editor
The newest additions and
news:
- "There isn't any question: Eli Siegel killed himself."
A former member who had sought AR's "gay cure" explains how the group's
leaders admitted that the founder took his own life. (May 2010)
(more...)
- Village Voice ad from 1962. The
Aesthetic Realists deny that they're a cult in this ancient ad they
bought in the Village Voice. This shows that people were saying they
were a cult as far back as 1962! There are some more juicy bits, too. (May 2010)
(more...)
- The Hypocrisy of the Aesthetic Realists.
Continuing my new series of calling a spade a spade, I list several
examples of how the AR people are guilty of what they complain about in
others -- such as being full of hate, writing anonymously, and
proffering falsehoods as though they were true. (May 2010)
(more...)
- Directed Origination -- AR's
favorite mind control trick. How does a group actually get
its hooks into someone's mind? Here's an exposé about AR's favorite
trick. (Feb. 2010)
(more...)
- Five Reasons You Can't Trust an
Aesthetic Realist. For starters, most of them eventually
leave. Today's zealot is tomorrow's ex-member. See this and four
other reasons (Feb. 2010)
(more...)
- Lies Aesthetic Realists tell. For
the first six years I ran this site, I avoided using the "L" word
(lie), preferring to just describe their dishonesty without using that
particular pejorative. But their dishonesty is just so pervasive and
extreme that the gloves are finally off. (Feb. 2010)
(more...)
- "The Moonies of poetry". I
just found an old article from Harper's (1982) with some choice words
about the Aesthetic Realists. Of course, whenever the media looks at
AR, their conclusion is rarely favorable. (April 2009)
(more...)
- AR's double-page ad in the NY
Times. The Aesthetic Realists probably blew close to a third
of a million dollars on a double-page ad in the NY Times in 1990.
They used that opportunity to tell the world that their founder, Eli
Siegel, was "the greatest man in the history of the world". (April 2009) (more...)
- Aesthetic Realism glossary. We
explain the real meanings behind AR's loaded language. (April
2009) (more...)
- Updated the "Cult Aspects of AR
page". Added lots more examples and sources. (April 2009) (more...)
- Transcript of a secret AR meeting.
This might be the ultimate AR scandal, a
transcript of an inquest of a person who didn't stay "cured" of his
homosexuality. (March 2009) (more...)
- Help for journalists - Media FAQ. After
answering a lot of the same questions for reporters -- and seeing how
the AR people are trying to mislead them -- I put together a page to
help reporters covering AR stories (more...)
- AR gets public funding -- and we
get it canceled. AR was able to finagle a grant from the NY
state budget. After we alerted the media it looks like the funding has
been pulled. (more...)
- Current AR member finally admits
AR founder Eli Siegel killed himself! Do you suppose
they'll now stop calling me a liar for saying that's what happened?
Somehow I doubt it. (more...)
- Who's afraid to debate? Here's
a video of me challenging AR devotee Arnold Perey to debate, while he
ignores me. (more...)
See the rest of the updates.
What's on this site
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Cult Aspects
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What is Aesthetic Realism?
An explanation about both the AR philosophy and the group that promotes it.
Cult aspects of Aesthetic Realism
Fanatical devotion to the leader, cutting off relations with families who aren't also believers -- it's all here.
AR and Homosexuality
The AR group used to try to "cure" people of being gay. They stopped that in 1990 because high-profile success cases kept deciding they were gay after all and leaving. AR has never said their gay-changing attempts were wrong.
AR's founder killed himself
AR's founder Eli Siegel killed himself, but the AR people have been trying to hide that fact. They can't hide any more, since enough former students have come forward to confirm the truth.
Attempts to recruit schoolchildren
Some AR members are public schoolteachers, and yep, they do try to recruit in the classroom.
Five reasons you can't trust an Aesthetic Realist
One reason is that most people who were in AR eventually woke up and got out. See more about this, plus four other reasons.
Lies Aesthetic Realists tell
They say they never saw homosexuality as something to cure. They say the leader didn't kill himself. They say my family left the group when I was an infant. These and more are debunked here.
Hypocrisy of the Aesthetic Realists
It takes some serious brainwashing for the members to not realize that they're guilty of what they accuse others of.
Aesthetic Realism glossary
We explain the real meanings behind the loaded language that AR people use.
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Other goodies
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Thinking of leaving AR?
If you're thinking of leaving the group, you're not alone. Let's face it: Most people who have ever studied AR have left -- and not come back. There's got to be a reason for that. Curious about what they figured out? Worried about the fallout if you do decide to leave? Here's everything you need to know.
Media Reports
NY Mag called AR "a cult of messianic nothingness" and Harper's referred to them as "the Moonies of poetry". We've got reprints of articles, plus some help for journalists researching AR. (And here are shortcuts to the landmark articles in the NY Post and Jewish Times.)
Site News / Blog
Here's some news and commentary that I add from time to time.
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AR in their own words
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Actual AR
advertisment
The AR people spent a third of a million dollars
for a double-page ad in the NY Times to tell the world that the
press' refusal to cover AR is just as wrong as letting hungry people
starve to death.
Ad for the gay
cure
AR bought huge ads in major newspapers to trumpet
their ability to "fix" gays.
Actual
letters from AR people
When a theater critic casually dissed Aesthetic
Realism in New York magazine, the AR people responded with hundreds
of angry letters, calling the article "a crime against humanity".
Actual internal
meeting
The AR people blunderingly made a tape recording
of a secret meeting they had, where they lambasted a member who had
supposedly been "cured" of his gayness, but then found to still be
cruising for gay sex. Their screeching hostility towards him is matched
only by their fear that the secret will get out.
Actual AR
consultation
For the first time the public can see what really
happens in an Aesthetic Realism "consultation" (thanks to a former
member sharing his tape with us). In the session the AR counselors
tried to help the member not be gay, explaining that the path to
ex-gayness was to express deep gratitude to AR and its founder.
Actual AR lesson
I had a lesson with the cult leader, Eli Siegel, when I was two years
old, which, like everything else, they made a tape of. The highlight is
Siegel taunting me with "Cry some more, Michael, cry some more!"
Ad in the Village Voice from 1962
The AR folks try to deny that they're a cult in this ancient ad -- showing that people were calling them a cult as far back as 1962!
AR
responds to this website
The AR people have tried to rebut this website
with their own site called Countering the Lies, whose title
ought to win some kind of award for irony. Here we explain the story
behind that site.
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What former members say
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Aesthetic Realism
exposed
The ultimate statement by a former member, who
was involved for well over a decade.
A tale
of getting sucked in.
This former member describes exactly how he
initially got drawn in, and how he then kept getting more and more
involved.
Aesthetic
Realism ruined his marriage. "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."
On
having all the answers. A former member explains how AR
members think they have all the answers, and feel qualified to lecture
others about how they should view personal tragedy.
Kicked
out for remaining gay. A former student describes how he
was kicked out of AR because he couldn't change from homosexuality.
"If I
disappointed them, then I now consider that a badge of honor."
A former member tells how AR try to change him from being gay, and
convinced him not to spend Christmas with his family.
"...people
were controlled and humiliated if they stepped out of line...".
The experiences shared with us by a member from 1974-80, now a Fortune
100 executive.
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"I want
Ellen Reiss questioned!" This former member wonders why there
hasn't been a class-action lawsuit against the foundation yet.
They
took his consultation tape. Describes how the AR people
kept his consultation tape with his most intimate thoughts on it, and
told him he couldn't study any more unless he incorporated AR more
radically into his life.
"There isn't any question: Eli Siegel killed himself."
A former member who had sought AR's "gay cure" explains how the group's leaders admitted that the founder took his own life.
Confirms
all the criticism. A former member from 1971-80,
confirms that AR students don't see their families, are discouraged
from attending college, and shun other members. He also offers that he
was mistaken when he was involved about thinking that AR had changed
him from homosexuality.
Michael Bluejay's
description. Your webmaster describes his own family's
involvement.
Members
interviewed in Jewish Times. This lengthy article in
Jewish Times quotes former students of Aesthetic Realism extensively.
NY Post article.
A series of articles in the NY Post quotes many former members who are
now critical of the group.
Aesthetic
Realism debunked. A former student explains the cult
aspects of AR. Posted on Steve Hassan's Freedom of Mind website.
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"Words
can't do justice to describe how excellent your site is in both purpose
and content....Your site really can do enormous good on the level of
human happiness. Just think of the countless people who
will NOT get messed up in AR because they viewed your site before ever
getting sucked-in. And then there are those who are in the thick
of it and just needed a little more courage or reality-based
perspective to break free and quit. You are doing a great service
to people. Your site has the power to spare a lot of people a lot of
anguish from a group of misdirected souls."
"There
is a very interesting and rather warped dynamic among the students who
left. To varying degrees, we're all wounded and in varying stages of
recovery."
"Your
site is a great source of comfort and excitement to all of us, probably
more than you can tell from the silence of most."
-- former AR
students
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Aesthetic Realism at a Glance |
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Name |
The
Aesthetic Realism Foundation |
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Founded |
1941 |
|
Founder |
Eli Siegel, poet and art/literary critic.
Committed suicide in 1978 |
|
Purpose |
To get the world to realize that Eli Siegel was the greatest person who ever lived, and that Aesthetic Realism is the most important knowledge, ever. |
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Philosophy
|
The key to all social ills is for people to learn to like the world. Having contempt for the world leads to unhappiness and even insanity. (Their slogan is "Contempt causes insanity".) For example, homosexuality is a form of insanity caused by not liking the world sufficiently.
Also teaches that "beauty is the making one of
opposites". |
|
Location |
New York City (SoHo) |
|
Membership
|
About 106 (33 teachers, 44 training to be teachers, and 29 regular students). Has failed to grow appreciably even after 70 years of existence, and is currently shrinking.
All members call themselves "students", even the leaders/teachers. Advanced members who teach others are called "consultants". |
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Method of study |
Public seminars/lectures at their headquarters (in lower Manhattan), group classes, and
individual consultations (three consultants vs. one student). |
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Cult aspects
|
- Fanatical devotion to their leader/founder
- Belief that they have the one true answer to universal happiness
- Ultimate purpose is to recruit new members
- Feeling that they are being persecuted
- Wild, paranoid reactions to criticism
- Non-communication (or at least very limited communication) with those who have left
the group
- Odd, specialized language.
More about cult aspects...
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Open offer to debate
How do you decide which side is telling the truth? I think that would be the side willing to stand behind what he says. Since 2005 I've had an open offer to debate the Aesthetic Realists publicly in a formal format at any time to defend what I've said on this site, and to answer their own charges against me. But the AR people won't do it. Their excuse is, "He's not worth debating." But if that's true, then why did they put up a ninety-six page website to try to snipe at me and to try to rebut what I'm saying? I think the answer is that they're content to hide behind the cover of the Internet, but they know how bad they'd look in a live format where anyone actually got to ask any pointed questions.
You know what's really funny? Someone went to one of their public presentations, said he'd seen this site, and asked about the cult allegations. The AR person said, "It's very easy to say crap like that on the Internet and never have to be challenged." Oh, the irony is killing me!
Anyway, Aesthetic Realists, as for a public debate, I'm ready when you are. And to everyone else, when the AR people won't stand behind what they're saying, why should anyone take what they say seriously?
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Other sites about
Aesthetic Realism
The
Aesthetic Realism Foundation. The official website of
the group. Read about AR in their own words.
Aesthetic Realism in the News. A
sister site to the official AR site. AR in the News catalogs media
articles mentioning Aesthetic Realism, usually editorials or
online-only articles written by AR students. One gets the impression
from reading some of these articles that they were written solely as an
excuse to mention Aesthetic Realism. Fun game: see how many times Eli
Siegel is identified with identical gushing praise across multiple
articles (e.g., "the great American poet and critic Eli Siegel").
Countering the Lies. When
I originally put up my site it was just a single page without too much
information. When the AR people saw it -- and the statement by former
member Adam Mali which I linked to -- they started an entire site to
combat what Mali and I said, called Countering the Lies. I don't have
time to respond to every allegation they make (this isn't my day job!:)
), so I'll let the reader explore my site and theirs and see whom they
believe. I do, however, provide proof to back my assertion that AR claimed to have the cure for
homosexuality, which they now deny.
The controversial legacy of Eli Siegel. Lengthy
article from the Baltimore Jewish Times which extensively
quotes former members critical of Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism.
Freedom of Mind. I'll use their
description: "Steven Alan Hassan, cult counselor and mind control
expert is a Nationally Certified Counselor and licensed Mental Health
Counselor and has developed a breakthrough approach to help loved ones
rescue cult mind control victims. He is a former member of the Moon
cult. Ex-cult members and others seek him out for specialized
counseling to help them recover from symptoms other mental health
professionals are not trained to address. Hassan has been at the
forefront of cult awareness activism since 1976 and is the author of
two critically acclaimed books -- Combatting Cult Mind Control: The #1
Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive
Cults (1988) and Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for
Themselves (2000). Hassan has 27 years of frontline activism exposing
destructive cults, providing counseling and training, and appearing in
major media including 60 Minutes, Nightline, Dateline, Larry King Live,
and The O'Reilly Factor." Hassan's site features statements
by former members of Aesthetic Realism.
Aesthetic Unrealistic Answer to Racism.
A civil rights activist slams AR's new book against racism, saying
that: "I have learned how important it is for analytical and critical
thinkers to bring to light any organizations, doctrines or philosophies
that would seek to 'pimp' Black peoples' struggle for racial justice
and reparations. It is the moral duty of conscious individuals to
expose anyone that would prey upon people's desperate hopes for an end
to their oppression. In keeping with that, I would like to discuss a
recent book that disturbs me greatly because the authors are guilty of
the above."
Blondie's Deborah Harry mentions Aesthetic Realism.
Deborah Harry of Blondie makes a passing reference to Aesthetic Realism
in a review of the art of H. R. Giger. It's very brief so we'll just
reproduce it here: "Giger also plays the opposites; that is the essence
of his work. In a philosophy called aesthetic realism, the use of
opposites makes things in art and life challenging. What is beautiful
and horrible, appealing and frightening, whatever draws you and repels,
biological and organic in Giger's own vision is all related."
Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online
encyclopedia in which anyone can edit the articles, even you.
The premise is that input from a large number of people results in a
more comprehensive, accurate, and bias-free article than an
encyclopedia written by only a handful of editors whose work isn't
subject to review by the world. This actually works better than you
might expect, but of course there are exceptions, and the
Wikipedia article on Aesthetic Realism is one such example. For a
while every time anyone put in any criticism of AR, or a link back to
this AR is a Cult site, the Aesthetic Realists would immediately remove
it. After some outcry from the Wikipedia community the
ARists now allow some slight criticism or AR in the article, but
counter it with a ridiculous amount of their own rebuttal. Particularly
amusing is how they compare their critics to the people who criticized
Louis Pasteur, Gallileo, and Einstein. The fact that the AR people
don't realize how silly this makes them look is typical. One
Wikipedian removed some of the AR cheerleading, writing, "...this
paragraph seems unjustifiable and foolish (partly because it reflects
poorly on the topic and its adherents)."
But that's my philosophy: Give 'em enough rope. Let the
Aesthetic Realists speak, and normal people will run the other way.
Incidentally, one of the edits the AR people keep making
is to repeat AR cultist (and my aunt) Alice Bernstein's assertion that
my family hasn't studied Aesthetic Realism since I was five. This is
not true, the study actually lasted into my teens, as I explain
elsewhere on this site, and that fact remains true no matter how many
times the AR people try to say otherwise.
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What former members
say...
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I had to go through a lot of therapy getting out of
this group.
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Most people who formerly were in AR have wished to
keep quiet about it, forget the miserable experience, and get on with
their lives.
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It was also the first glimmer in my mind that I let
sprout in which I realized there was something terribly wrong with the
AR foundation and I should get out. I am making an understatement of
massive proportion when I say, I am very happy I did.
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"He told me that he studied with Eli Siegel for
around 6 years and that it's taken even more to get over it. His eyes
started filling up."
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When I left I immediately felt as though a 200 lb.
weight was taken from my shoulders. Two years of tension between my
family and myself rapidly eased. My father was thrilled that I "got
that spark back".
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When I left Aesthetic Realism and began to speak
regularly with my older sister, she said with tears in her eyes, "I
feel like you're finally back."
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See former members'
statements in their entirety
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