The Victims of Aesthetic Realism

by Paul R. Grossman • Originally published in New York Native

Editor's note:  This article provides fantastic insight into Aesthetic Realism's mind-control methods.  With an expert, laser-like focus, the author nails down exactly how the group gets its hooks into its members' heads.  This is valuable not just for researchers and the general public, but also for former members who are still trying to figure out how they got sucked into the group in first place, and are trying to make sense of their experience.  And while the piece is written in the context of AR's supposed gay cure, its lessons are important about Aesthetic Realism in general.  The article is long, but invaluable.  I can't recommend it enough.

From the back of the room two men and two women begin a brisk single-file march up the center aisle.  Upon reaching the podium in the front, they do an about-face and quickly take seats: one behind a speaker's stand, three behind a long wooden table.  Their faces are stern and uncompromising.  Their dress is strikingly similar.  Each one wears a blazer, trim and tailored, with a small black-and-white button pinned to the left lapel near the heart.  The buttons bear a terse slogan: "Victim of the Press."

In a haunting mechanical voice, the master of ceremonies welcomes the crowd.  Tonight's feature presentation, he announces, is an Aesthetic Realism lesson created by the founder of the movement—the late poet and critic Eli Siegel—entitled, "Do You Trust Women?"  It will be followed, after a brief intermission, by another reading: "Fourteen Things About Homosexuality: Particularly in its Relation to Good Will."

In my lap is a pamphlet handed out by someone at the door.  It is a periodical of "Hope and Information" entitled "The Right of Aesthetic Realism to be Known."  Its banner headline reads simply: Contempt Causes Insanity.

"Dear Unknown Friends," the pamphlet begins.  "When Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism said, 'The World, Art and Self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites,' he gave to man what the centuries have searched for: an explanation true about our lives, true about art, and true about the puzzling, contradictory, often painful world we are in.  That is why we believe Aesthetic Realism ensures the future sanity of man."

The emcee's bland voice drones on.  After proclaiming that he is "one of the more than 150 men who have, through the study of Aesthetic Realism, changed from homosexuality," he introduces Devorah Tarrow to read the weekly press and media report.

Miss Tarrow slides forward in her chair.  She smiles somewhat.  Tonight she has good news to report.  Finally, after nearly forty years of silence and "contempt," the press has begun to pay attention to the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel, to give it the "respect" it so rightly deserves.

She refers to an article printed in the City section of the March 15 Daily News: "Gays Who Have Gone Straight."  In it, reporter John Lewis at long last reveals news of the unique "educational program" being offered to homosexuals by Aesthetic Realism.  The audience becomes excited as Miss Tarrow recites a list of results already evident from this "major breakthrough."  ABC television has called, interested in a story.  Tom Snyder has called.  WPLJ radio has called.  A woman has even called from Wichita, seeking help for her son.  A hearty round of applause breaks out.  A sigh of relief—of ecstasy, almost.  At last, someone has written something honest about the "bigness" of Aesthetic Realism.

When her report is finally over, Miss Tarrow slides back into her chair.  Instantly, her face becomes expressionless, as if someone has pulled a plug.  At the same moment, the man sitting next to her suddenly springs to life.  Now it is his turn to recite.

In the Village, one can hardly avoid noticing these stern-faced, primly dressed individuals marching up and down the streets with their Victim of the Press buttons.  Or, for that matter, the cardboard placards taped to streetlights and letter boxes with names and faces proclaiming the "truth" about their change from homosexuality.

My first encounter with the Aesthetic Realists, however, came only a few weeks ago when I walked into the door of their gallery and announced at the desk that I was interested in doing a story about just how it was that they turned gays straight.  A pair of oval glasses and tightly pursed lips informed me quite brusquely that I would first have to speak to someone from the Press Committee.

Several minutes later, not one but two members of the committee arrived from their offices upstairs and flanked me on either side.  One was Anne Fielding Kranz—wife of Sheldon Kranz, the man who, back in 1941, was the first one to "make the change."  My other escort was Devorah Tarrow.

For nearly twenty minutes I was subjected to a stereophonic interrogation about the "nature" of my intentions.  Besides asking me if I was a "Moonie," they insisted on knowing: was I going to be "fair" to Aesthetic Realism?  Would I give this philosophy the "respect" it deserved?  Would I be open and realize that maybe I had something to learn from Eli Siegel?  And finally, if they did permit me to write an article, would I be willing to submit it before publishing to ensure that it was "fair" and "accurate"?

I told them quite bluntly that rather than being victims of the press, they seemed to me to be the victimizers.  I had every intention, I said, of being open and honest—but also fully critical.  The next day Miss Tarrow informed me that my request had been rejected.

After some time, I obtained a copy of a book by Eli Siegel.  I studied it diligently, paying close attention not so much to the ideas themselves but to the way in which he chose to express them—and, in particular, to the way his students responded to them.  It was at that point that I began to see what Aesthetic Realism was, in fact, about.  The dogmatism, the loaded phraseology, the Godlike reverence his students demonstrated—these spelled out one thing: that this was no philosophy.  This was a cult, genuine and bona fide, employing all the subtle and manipulative techniques of mind-control used by such masters of the genre as the Moonies, the Scientologists, and, yes, even the evangelical Christians.

It was then and there that I decided if I wanted to learn more about these people, infiltration was the only approach possible.


The following Thursday night at one of their twice-weekly public meetings, I ran into Miss Tarrow once again.  In as solicitous a manner as I could manage, I told her that I had read Mr. Siegel's book and had liked it very much.  I felt, I said, a kind of "inner attraction" to it.  She studied me with suspicion in her eyes.  She did notice, so she said, that a change had occurred in me.  I seemed to her less "malevolent."  I nodded my head.  She looked at me again.  If I wanted to, she said, I could come upstairs during the intermission.  She would introduce me to one of the evening's keynote speakers, Reg Houser*—a man who had "made the change."  [*In keeping with my practice, names of those who left the group (and presumably no longer wish to be associated with it) have been changed.]

The program that night was "Homosexuality, Love and Education."  Once again, the speakers—each with a Victim of the Press button—marched up the center aisle in paramilitary formation.  They sat behind the podium reading papers for up to twenty minutes at a time in voices so monotonously automatic, I found myself being lulled toward the edge of sleep.  Or, perhaps, hypnosis.

Reg Houser struck me instantly with the pallid color of his cheeks and the mincing—if I may be so bold—manner of his carriage.  Presenting a lengthy biography of the Russian poet Serge Essenin, one-time husband of Isadora Duncan, he detailed how, according to the "aesthetic theory," Essenin's homosexuality had driven him insane.  The audience groaned aloud with each account of his slip into the hell of "contempt."  They seemed genuinely sorry for Essenin.  If only Eli Siegel had been around at that time....

During the intermission I went upstairs, where Miss Tarrow was waiting to introduce me to Mr. Houser.  He looked into my eyes and smiled.  "I think," he said, "there is something inside you that likes Aesthetic Realism, Mr. Grossman."  I smiled in return.  His eyes widened.  He understood.  Despite my pro-gay attitude, he knew that, secretly, in my heart, I longed to make the change from what, in their lingo, they simply refer to as "H."  The bait had been swallowed.

I was granted an interview for the following week.  At first, I expected it to be with Mr. Houser alone.  I soon learned, however, one of the chief modi operandi of Aesthetic Realism: never meet one-on-one.  When I arrived for my appointment, I found myself sitting across a desk from three (count 'em, three!) Victims of the Press—all of whom had "made the change."  They were anxious, unbearably anxious, to make me understand that Aesthetic Realism was not just about changing from homosexuality.  It is an entire "mode" for seeing the world.

My hour with them was a grueling experience.

"As we see it, Mr. Grossman, Aesthetic Realism is true in a way that nothing else is.  And I can tell you, as I'm sitting here talking to you, that we are trained in a certain way.  After a while, I begin to see things, Mr. Grossman.  A look in the eye, something present in the face...."

A man who has been introduced as Mr. van Gelder* speaks to me in a soft, sing-song voice—like Daddy reading a bedtime story to his little boy, except that the tales he's telling aren't very benign.  He never takes his eyes off me, letting me know, in his own absolute way, that he understands me.  All of me.

"At our first meeting," I say, "Miss Tarrow told me she thought Aesthetic Realism was the best friend the gay community had.  How do you explain that?"

Mr. Houser responds.  His voice is also Daddy's.

"You know something, Mr. Grossman, in 1971, the first time we had trouble with what I guess you'd call the gay community—after our appearance on the David Susskind Show—I was very surprised that people wouldn't like Aesthetic Realism.  Even gay people.  It might look as if we're against gay rights, but Lord knows—we're not!  I was once a homosexual.  I know what it feels like to have someone look at me in a funny way.  We want gay people to have all their rights: live where they want to live, have the jobs they want to have, so that the main question can be asked: 'Is the way I see the world good enough for me?'  We don't call homosexuality 'ugly, ugly.'  We do criticize it.  But if homosexuality represents incompleteness in a person, then in questioning that, we would be being friendly, wouldn't we?"

In Aesthetic Realism, this technique is called "Criticism as Kindness."

About halfway through the interview I finally ask something I have been wanting to all along:

"Why do you call me Mr. Grossman every other sentence?  All of you do that—address each other constantly in the impersonal."

Mr. van Gelder:  "Why are you asking that question, Mr. Grossman?  In the midst of what I was saying?"

"For whatever the reason, I'm asking."

"Look, you may not like this, but we don't get anywhere if we're not direct.  You have a tendency—if I might say so—-especially after an important answer, to switch the subject and ask a less important question."

"Yes.  But can you answer the question anyway?"

"I can.  But what I'm trying to tell you is this—this tendency of yours has to do with the fight that's going on inside you between contempt and respect."

"Oh," I say.

Now, more clearly, I'm beginning to understand.


The belief system taught by Aethetic Realism can, at best, be termed reductional; at worst, convoluted fascism.  Still, like all "modes of seeing the world," its logic rings of a certain small truth that, in the end, can be applied to absolutely everything.

The gospel according to Eli Siegel can roughly be said to go as follows:

Man is born with innate and natural dichotomy:  the desire to "like" the world—to "respect" it on an "honest basis"—and, opposing this, the desire to have "contempt" for the world, to make it look "ugly" so that you, by comparison, seem more important than it.  Aesthetic "Reality," therefore—that which every person longs to attain—is the making one of these opposites.  This can be accomplished scientifically by "knowing" the world—i.e., recognizing your contempt for it and then consciously accepting that what you really want is to respect it.  Since Eli Siegel was the first and only human being ever to recognize this, it follows that only by incorporating his teachings can that oneness ever be attained.

The Aesthetic Realists themselves are, needless to say, the last to recognize that a catch-all system such as the above is the perfect tool for mind-control.

"Good Christ, Mr. Grossman," exclaims Mr. van Gelder.  "I do not see myself as any kind of cultist.  I dislike them very much.  I happen to be listed in Who's Who in the Theater.  I was educated quite impressively."

That much is for sure.


Aesthetic Realism is taught by several different methods.  There are the weekly public meetings.  There are seminars offered in art, poetry, literature, even science.  But most effective are what they call "consultations."  Here, a "student" is put into a room with an Aesthetic Realism trio—as I was—whose single-minded purpose it is to make him see that he has been poisoned by that ugly thing called contempt.

"What I'm trying to tell you, Mr. Grossman, is that this tendency you have has to do with the fight inside you between respect and contempt."

In actuality, "consultations" are slyly packaged sessions for mind-control—what Yale psychiatry professor Robert Lifton describes in a classic study on the subject, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, as "thought-reform" or "re-education."  More bluntly stated, it's brainwashing.

In the case of Aesthetic Realism, the student is subjected to a tightly organized barrage of accusations—veiled by layers of politeness—from three separate but clearly unified voices.  Lifton calls this Identity Assault.  The message they deliver is both existential ("You have contempt!") and psychologically demanding ("If you want to be whole, you must learn to see your contempt.")  After some time, the "consultee" has little choice but to accept this syllogism and begin to feel—unconsciously at first—that, yes, his life is permeated by contempt.  Thus begins, to use Lifton's term, the Establishment of Guilt.

As the consultations continue, any feelings of resistance on the part of the student can be labeled as further evidence of contempt.  If what the student wants is "respect," he begins to see the criticism as wholly necessary—in fact, begins to welcome it as an integral part of his "cure."  At this point, the thought-reform process has been internalized, and the work of the consultation trio is lessened as the student adopts the belief system and takes it as his own.  The new Victim of the Press dons a button and goes out into the world to espouse the teachings of Eli Siegel—which one of them called, "The summation of all human knowledge."

                    

The Aesthetic Realists are not interested merely in homosexuals.  They want anyone who is seeking to perceive the world "as it really is."  However, one need only observe the audience at any given Aesthetic Realism meeting to deduce why the "Case of H" has been so heavily accented.  Aside from the location of their headquarters on the edge of the largest homosexual community in the world, those who are attracted to them—particularly the men—are, nearly without exception, gay.  Excuse me—formerly gay.

According to Eli Siegel, homosexuality is, simply, "bad aesthetics."  Like "biting one's nails, depression, excessive gambling," it arises out of a "disproportionate way of seeing the world," Siegel wrote.

"Homosexuality has arisen often from a son's contempt for the way a mother showed 'love' to him.  This contempt, based on an easy conquest of the mother, changed to a contempt for, and a deep indifference to, women."

Sound familiar?  It's early Freud all over again, only couched in Eli Siegel-isms.  (Siegel, understandably, had great "contempt" for any form of psychotherapy.  "It doesn't work" is the usual logic.)

"That love was had on such easy terms," continues Siegel's revolutionary concept, "encouraged likewise a contempt for that which was different from oneself—that is, the world."

Siegel reveals the patriarchal side of himself when he muses that while lesbians too can change, same-gender love between females is "somewhat more justifiable" because of the "sense of mystery" women have.  Such mystery apparently does not exist inside of men.  "After all," I was told, "there is no male equivalent to the Mona Lisa."

So men who wish to "make the change"—but for a few instances, it is always men—can accomplish through Aesthetic Realism what no amount of psychotherapy ever will:  by admitting they have contempt for their mothers, they can turn that contempt into respect and live a normal life.  Excerpts from Aesthetic Realism's manual on homosexuality, entitled The H Persuasion, illustrate how a student is made to see how deep his contempt really is.

Q.  When don't I trust myself the most?
A.  When I am in the presence of H people or in an H relationship.  Also, when I am in the presence of my mother.

Q. Do I have contempt for women?
A. I don't have contempt for all women.  Only my mother.  She encourages the weakness in me.

Q. Aside from the fact that I know H isn't good for me, what about it do I dislke most?
A. The slickness, the insincerity, the cultness, the sex act, and the fact that it takes two to tango.

Q. Am I frightened of being alone?
A. Yes

Q. Is being alone and death synonymous?
A. Yes.

Q. Does H encourage a feeling of aloneness, thus encouraging a feeling of death?
A. Yes.  After sex I have the desire to be by myself, to feel sorry for myself.  It certainly doesn't help me like the world more.

Eli Siegel:  What do you think is your greatest conflict?
Reg Houser:  My greatest conflict?
Siegel:  Which would you rather do, fool the world, or know it?
Houser: I think I'd rather know it.
Siegel:  Are you sure?
Houser: I'm not positive.
Siegel:  That's what we're talking about—where you're not positive.  So how do you fool the world?

. . . I have hated myself since I was sixteen years old and first realized I had questions.  BUT I DON'T HATE MYSELF ANYMORE!!!  Eli Siegel and the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism see changing the way I are changing the way I see the world.  Mr. Siegel has shown me that I have contempt for women, and that when I was young, it was so easy for me to please Mother that I now do not see it as a challenge to try for a woman.  The lesson was kind, and at the same time critical.  This is the basis of how you change the way you see the world—criticism with kindness.  I am grateful to Eli Siegel for this and I want more and more to show that gratitude.  Aesthetic Realism must be known by everyone in America and the world!

"At various times since I began to study Aesthetic Realism," he confesses, "I found that I wanted to have an H experience again.  As I see it now, this is because I thought Eli Siegel was taking something away from me.  I felt that I had to show that I hadn't lost power."

"The desire for contempt that is in every person was strong in me.  I sadly enough wanted revenge for having to respect something more than I wanted.  Fortunately, the desire for contempt is well understood by Siegel.  He not only made it possible for me to change from H, he also understood and criticized the resentment I had about changing, so that the change could be complete."

"I used to think I was born a homosexual and that it would never change.  It has changed.  I am no longer a homosexual and I am more myself, the way I was meant to be, truly want to be.  I belong in this world and I like being here more than ever.  I like the world more, and as I was promised, I also respect myself more.  I got what I came for and I am rejoicing."