
Shaved Heads, Snipped Tubes, Imperial Marines and Dope Fiends: On Synanon (2013) - lermontov
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/48/pendle.php
======
OldFatCactus
I would like to use this post to draw attention to the Toubled Teen Industry.
Its foundations are rooted in the Synanon.

Former Synanon members founded an organization called CEDU
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEDU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEDU)

CEDU created therapeutic boarding schools and wilderness retreats marketed for
"troubled teens." These schools and programs used behavioral modification and
therapy created by Synanon to control and brainwash the students. These
schools still exist today as members of CEDU branched off and founded their
own organizations.

The best site dedicated to compiling this knowledge isn't even available right
now
[http://wiki.fornits.com/index.php/Main_Page](http://wiki.fornits.com/index.php/Main_Page)

~~~
coffeebean
Came to see if the troubled teen industry or Fornits was mentioned. Amazed to
find out how far this cult has spread and how many it's affected.

------
oldmancoyote
David and Kathy Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their
exposes in their newspaper The Point Reys Light. They wrote a book on their
experience: The Light On Synanon, and they were the subject of a made-for-TV
movie.

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moretai
That was an incredible read. Power corrupts I guess. The whole point was that
he was his own savior, and he became other's saviors and that was the
beginning of the end. Be very watchful of yourself.

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sizzzzlerz
I wonder how many readers of HN have ever heard of this. I grew up in the area
at that time but hadn't thought about this in decades. It was big news in the
San Joaquin valley towns near Badger. The family of my sister's BF at the time
had a cabin in Badger, which, after Dedirich moved in to the area, they were
terrified to visit.

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sverige
The Orange Papers are a good source for why AA is a great breeding ground for
this sort of insanity.

[http://aorange1.tripod.com](http://aorange1.tripod.com)

~~~
coleifer
Christianity has bred all sorts of craziness, too. Westboro Baptist church,
the inquisition, etc.

There are very extreme/fringe elements in christianity and elsewhere. Because
they are so extreme they are necessarily more "visible". Synanon is to AA what
the Westboro Baptist church is to christianity. Hardly even the same thing.

AA members are supposed to be anonymous. This is quite the opposite: a cult of
personality.

~~~
sverige
You've misunderstood me. I'm saying AA itself is very extreme / fringe. I
consider it to be a cult (and Orange makes a convincing argument for that
position).

AA doesn't always manifest as obviously as Synanon, but that's partly because
it has a legacy of very effective propaganda normalizing it for the past 80
years, and partly because the local manifestations that are nearly as extreme
as Synanon are swept under the rug of "well, OK, but on the whole it's doing
so much good for society!" There are many examples of AA meetings that have
perpetuated a culture of exploiting people for sex, money, and power. Orange
has some well-documented examples.

As an aside, I have met some former Synanon members in AA rooms. Most of them
miss Synanon and consider AA to be weak tea. My point is that it still has
enough of the tea that they go there rather than somewhere else.

~~~
coleifer
I'd say being a junkie or alcoholic is pretty fringe and extreme. I don't get
your point.

In any movement with a spiritual basis you're going to find zealots,
fundamentalists, cult leader megalomaniac, etc. That's all I was saying. Your
comment that synanon folks think "mainstream" aa is weak is in agreement with
the point I was attempting to make.

~~~
sverige
I was unclear, I guess. I do agree that Synanon is more extreme than AA, on
the whole. But AA is still extreme and fringe, all by itself.

I disagree that AA is a "movement with a spiritual basis." It's not. To quote
Orange, AA began as a branch of a cult religion invented by an evil fascist
renegade Lutheran minister named Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, who actually
admired Adolf Hitler and praised the Gestapo leader Heinrich Himmler as a
"wonderful lad." It's not at all "mainstream."

So I guess the comparison for me is, AA is the Nazi party, Synanon is the SS.
Neither is acceptable, though one is perhaps more obviously unacceptable on
its face. So the Synanon members who hang out at AA meetings are like SS
members hanging out at boring party meetings since they can't any longer go
out and do the 'more exciting' things they used to do.

~~~
coleifer
It sounds like orange has a small axe to grind... that's a very uncharitable
description. Like saying christianity was started by a Jewish criminal who was
condemned and executed at the insistence of his own community.

I don't argue with fanatics. You're arguing the and hominem fallacy, at any
rate. Whatever the case may be you seem to have very strong feelings about aa
and let's not waste any more time on it.

~~~
sverige
It's not uncharitable. It's documented fact.

For example, Dr. Frank N.D. Buchman in fact did praise Adolf Hitler in a
published interview [0], and did in fact meet with Himmler in Germany at the
1936 Olympics [1], and was close friends with Putzi Hanfstaengl, who
personally helped Hitler into a car to escape after Hitler fell and dislocated
his shoulder during the Beer Hall Putsch and was later his foreign press
secretary. [2]

After Buchman was roundly criticized in the U.S. for his support of Hitler, he
changed the name of the Oxford Group to Moral Re-Armament. The Oxford Group
was, of course, the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Bill Wilson
attended its meetings for four or five years before breaking off to form AA.

I'm not a fanatic. I'm simply someone who was exposed to AA and discovered
what a toxic dump of bad ideas it is. Which is what prompted my original
comment that it is no surprise that Synanon was incubated in AA meetings.

[0]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20160508021611/http://www.orange-...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160508021611/http://www.orange-
papers.org/orange-rroot840.html#World_Telegram)

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20160417033412/http://www.orange-...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160417033412/http://www.orange-
papers.org:80/orange-rroot240.html#Hitler)

[2]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20160319224125/http://www.orange-...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160319224125/http://www.orange-
papers.org/orange-rroot480.html)

~~~
coleifer
I'd like to talk more and hear about your experience, and perhaps share my
own. If you're interested hit me up. My email is on my profile page.

~~~
sverige
I've sent you an email.

------
saagarjha
Interestingly, the movie poster halfway through the article seems to have
filtered out the needle the man is using.

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taneq
Wow, that escalated rapidly at the end. :S

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incadenza
Personalities like this are incredibly common in that whole industry.

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pessimizer
Synanon was just one insane phase of a weird American self-
help/productivity/management religion which seems to have started with José
Silva and his UltraMind ESP System, almost immediately reached its final form
through William Penn Partick and Leadership Dynamics/Holiday Magic, then after
Synanon becoming basically the entire 70s with est etc., next during the 80s
the self-help book boom and the rise of pop management theory then lasting
throughout the 90s, and the TED talk culture now.

If Synanon hadn't tanked, they'd be controlling half of the country by now.
Jordan Peterson looks like a Synanon revival from what I hear about him.

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ggm
Anyone else think "a scanner darkly" was about some experience PKD or a close
friend had in synanon?

~~~
fjsolwmv
It's well known. The book is about X-Kalay canadian synanon.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly)

~~~
ggm
Thanks for the pointer! It's been years since i read the book, well before
Internet days. I should have done my homework before posting.

