Self-described psychotherapist and leader of the controversial communal collective, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis. Founded in the early 1950's, the group was also known as the Sullivanians and were a Manhattan left-wing free-thinking collective whose members lived together with their children communally in three buildings on the Upper West Side. In the 1970's, playwright Joan Harvey, a former film actress, became one of Newton's six wives. She and Newton took control of the Fourth Wall Repertory Company, a political theater group in the East Village. All productions made between 1978 and 1985 were based on plays written by Harvey, and the members of the community were required to support the production. Many began to leave due to the lifestyle and requirements within the Sullivanian social structure and those who had spouses and children who remained with the collective filed many divorce and custody suits in the 1980's, during which the Sullivanians were exposed to much publicity, with claims that the group had become a psychotherapy cult whose leaders had control over every aspect of the members' lives, separating parents from children and encouraging polyamorous relationships. The publicity and the revealing of the practices of sexual freedom in the group led to their eventual dissolution, along with the repertory company.
