A few more strange connections:
From Wikipedia:
Looking a bit further, there is this history written by an anonymous commentator here:
_http://defenseagainstevil.wordpress.com/2008/01/13/ten-warning-signs-of-a-potentially-unsafe-group-or-leader/
Then, we find this:
_http://thealexhornpages.blogspot.com/
It really looks like all is not well in "authentic" Fourth Way Groups land.
From Wikipedia:
Alexander Francis Horn (1933–2007), known more often as Alex Horn, was a playwright and actor and the leader of a series of controversial groups which claimed a linkage to the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff.
His groups have been classed by some as cults, although others believe he was attempting to promote the Fourth Way, which can involve a degree of intense confrontation on a personal level. Alex was married to Anne Burrage (later Anne Haas) in the 1960s during which time he was running Red Mountain Ranch, a part time commune located on Sonoma Mountain in northern California. The order of events is unclear, but Anne left this group in 1969 around the time that Alex became involved with and eventually married Sharon Gans. Anne took many of the members from the ranch and started The Group, amid claims that Red Mountain Ranch had become violent and dangerous, and that Alex was becoming a cult figure. Alex and Sharon ran the Theatre of All Possibilities until 1978 when it received unfavorable press from the San Francisco Chronicle in the wake of the Jim Jones tragedy in November 1978. Alex and Sharon both left San Francisco in 1978 and reportedly continued to run various groups in New York and Boston.[citation needed]
Alex Horn had five children with Anne Burrage, Maurice, Elaine, Matthew, Mary Ellen and Benjamin. He died on September 30, 2007.
Looking a bit further, there is this history written by an anonymous commentator here:
_http://defenseagainstevil.wordpress.com/2008/01/13/ten-warning-signs-of-a-potentially-unsafe-group-or-leader/
Alex Horn and protegés David Daniels and Robert Burton
By the time David Daniels obtained a high school diploma at 20 years of age in Chicago (1953) he had been Horn’s frequent companion for four years; Horn and Daniels came across Ouspensky’s “In Search of the Miraculous” (ISM) at this time. After a year at the Art Student’s League NYC, Daniels went back to Chicago. Horn was leading an ‘acting class’ there which included Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Ed Asner, David Daniels and Robert Burton. The group took an “esoteric” trip to Mexico, on account of Horn’s interest in Ouspensky biographer Rodney Collin, who had settled there.
In December 2007, Daniels posted the following about his relationship with Horn: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3225379245169244270&postID=2945426880804067124.
Collin had also been at Ouspensky’s Farm in Mendham, New Jersey. Daniels claimed to have been given authority at Mendham and The Gurdjieff Foundation, however Foundation head (Lord) John Pentland wrote that while Daniels had had nothing to do with the Foundation, he remembered seeing him and his wife Sally at Mendham sometime during the years 1959 to 1961, after which Daniels was institutionalized in Hillside Hospital Queens NY for year, where he learned about the structure of therapy groups and ’supervision’.
In 1966, Horn introduced Daniels to his NYC group, including Robert Burton, as “someone who knew about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and would show and teach them about their work.” According to a member “In the fall of 1966, Horn disappeared for a month; returned confused, contradictory, and incoherent; then, In 1967, under threat from members, Horn disappeared for good, handing over the group to Daniels and moved to London, then Berkeley/Oakland. When Daniels took over, he moved the group from a loft on Bleeker Street to meetings in people’s apartments.” Said a member, “Horn’s NYC meetings focused on Ouspensky’s “In Search of the Miraculous.” He picked ideas from this book and “harangued on subjects.” Horn was cruel and oppressive at times; so was Daniels. Neither gave straight answers. Horn had a number of ‘wives’ and ’screwed around’ with members of his group.” While Daniels continued his role as ‘teacher’, Robert Burton left this scene and by January 1970, he was in California, where he founded the Fellowship of Friends with ISM as a prop.
In 1971, Horn visited Daniels at the Elizabeth Street building in NYC. Shortly, Daniels had shaved his head and was requiring his temperature and pulse to be checked frequently. He later described having been visited by NY police who suggested that members of his group were extremely angry with him and that he might do well to leave town as quickly as possible. He persuaded teenager Sue Liebowitz, to travel with him and immediately left by train with her for Boston, where he quickly gained a following by repeating his Village Voice ad in the Boston Phoenix: “Ideas of Gurdjieff, Shah and their source.”
Daniels established himself at 69 Walker Street, near Harvard and Leslie colleges, where he set up a network of naive group members as paid ‘psychotherapists’ who reported intimate details of group members lives to him and he began to conduct meetings running long into the AM hours. He had minor painting talent with which he decorated the Walker Street basement that he had directed group members to excavate with spoons. Seekers enticed by a promise of working in a group with powerful ideas, got nothing legitimate of Gurdjieff, but were ultimately held by the entertainment value of Daniels’ outrageous appeals to their base instincts, phony ‘psychotherapy’ and typical cult pressures; approximately 500 individuals during this Boston phase alone had most of their wish for spiritual development burned out of them. In the fall of 1972, Alex Horn visited Daniels in Cambridge. Back in NYC, David McClellan committed suicide by jumping from a window during a ‘group therapy session’ run by a Daniels follower.
In Cambridge, as with Horn in NYC and Burton in CA, Daniels continued to pick ideas from ISM and “harangued on subjects for hours.” Daniels’ earlier meetings focused on Ouspensky’s “In Search of the Miraculous, supplemented by Idries Shah’s teaching stories but later degenerated into quasi-sexual themes and so-called ‘therapy’, a la Milton Ericson, with whose hypnotic techniques Daniels had a natural affinity, a connection later made by cult specialists Margaret Singer, Jack Clark and Michael Langone. In 1976, he published a thin porn novel, “Sinfan the Savor” and snared a prominent member of the Transpersonal Psychology movement to endorse it. Horn and Burton’s penchant for writing has been chronicled elsewhere.
In the latter 1970s, his ‘talent’ for writing exhausted, Daniels collected just under $200,000 from his Boston group of up to 100 members and set up a complicated land trust on 160 acres of farmland in Western MA, in which he directed the deeding of a choice section to himself and had the group build him a cabin, tower and pond. Pam Mitchell, reportedly distracted by methods she learned from Daniels, was hit by a car and killed crossing a Boston street.
In 1978, Alex Horn was forced out of the Bay Area by a District Attorney and group pressure, as reported in the SF Bay Guardian. Horn’s 200 person SF area group had purchased a farm and bought a house in SF. Charges were made concerning Horn’s group regarding beatings, sexual misconduct, ordered pregnancies in which the father’s identity was not known, news articles, threats of lawsuits, etc. Horn left town. “He was run out of New York and now he’s been run out of San Francisco.” -Dr. Lee Sannella
After the news articles, and before Horn left town, Daniels had told a formerc NYC group member, who was a frequent visitor to Berkeley from NYC, “Be friendly to Alex Horn because he’s a teacher. Look him up. See if you can help him.” Sensing an opportunity to again take over a territory abandoned by Horn, he began talking about moving to California and convinced most group members to sell their posessions so they could “start over” with cash in Berkeley. In 1979, Daniels avidly watched a dramatization of the Jonestown cult massacre in Uganda and told his lieutenants, “You see what happens when you think big?”
Soon after, in 1980, Daniels left Cambridge and moved himself and 50 group members to the Bay Area, within 24 hours of receiving two lawsuits from ex-members; the first being a class action by 13 individuals for land fraud and the second a civil suit for the “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” as reported in the Boston Globe.
Henry Wilhite, a black sometime dog-groomer, was in Horn’s NYC group, Daniels’ NYC group, Daniels’ Cambridge group, and attended Daniels’ meetings in Berkeley. Wilhite and Daniels’ daughter Rita died of aids in the 1980s.
A very large percentage of ex-members of all the above groups sought psychotherapy as a means of recovery; several have PhDs and are practicing psychotherapists. Some have recovered and others have not fared as well.
Then, we find this:
_http://thealexhornpages.blogspot.com/
I knew Alex Horn in College at the U of Chicago from 1949 when I was 16 to 1952 and then until 1969. I was never in a group of Alex and/or Ann's.
I was in a group at the Gurdjieff foundation in NYC from 1956 until 1963. I could say many things about the absurd cruelty of some of the teachers there. Lord Pentland only knew Gurdjieff for one week.
Jeanne de Salzman answered questions of mine at meetings and she was VERY kind and helpful to me. She was the real thing.
Alex was almost always friendly to me. In the 50's we would go to ball games at the polo grounds. We once saw Stan Musial hit a 505 foot line drive to center field. We would have long discussions about Alex's favorite books, Paidea: Ideals of Greek Culture, and Stanislavsky and Tolstoy's What do men live for. He would ask me to attend his play rehearsals and comment.
Alex was put in an orphanage in Chicago when his father died when Alex was 11. He loved his father very much. I believe much of his human kindness to me was an attempt to treat me like his father had treated him.
Alex was very talented, energetic, and had the psychological condition where HE COULD NOT BE AFRAID OF ANYTHING. I am not bragging. Almost everything Alex learned about the real Gurdjeff Work I told him at his request.
But please try to understand that almost everything Alex and Ann and Sharon and the Rennaisance guy taught was nothing like what was taught by Gurdjieff or Mme de Salzman.
I don't want to hurt your feelings any more than you have been hurt. You people were truly led down a sad path and I hope you recover. What happened to Alex in the 60's was what happens to many poor orphans: He discovered he loved money. We argued sometimes about this. Me - Money is nothing. Alex - Money is eveything. I have not seen Alex since 1969-70. As we were jolly friends in our younger days I hope he is OK.
It really looks like all is not well in "authentic" Fourth Way Groups land.
and that is exactly related to this thread, I think).
