“There isn't any question: [Eli Siegel] killed himself.”
written by a former member of Aesthetic Realism, August 2008<
I
haven't thought about these people in years until I received some of
their literature out of the blue. I did an Internet search in a
moment of morbid curiosity and I found all this fuss over Eli Siegel's
death. There isn't any question: He killed himself. I heard
this directly from Ellen Reiss, the person who became Aesthetic
Realism's "class chairman" because (as Siegel said), "There's no one
better." (I heard Reiss say this, too.)
In the
early 70s, I was young and gay. This was still a difficult time
to come out of the closet, though many brave pioneers were doing
it. I wasn't one of them. I was clinically depressed but
didn't know it at the time. I was a shame-based person who had
internalized all of the negative stereotypes about gay people. In
other words, I was a perfect target for Aesthetic Realism.
In an
Aesthetic Realism acting class, Anne Fielding, the instructor,
referenced her claim to fame. Was it her Obie Award?
No. Was it her work with Kate Hepburn? No? Anne
Fielding was the wife of Sheldon Kranz, the "first man to change from
homosexuality through the study of Aesthetic Realism with Eli
Siegel." Kranz was often billed this way in his seminars about
"changing from homosexuality." In those days, the Aesthetic
Realism Foundation took number counts. Kranz was the first man to
change, so and so the twenty-fifth, whoosis was number seventy-one, and
so forth.
I thought
that maybe I could be "normal" and learn to like myself. Years
later after some therapy and a bit of living I finally realized that
I'm okay just as I am. Life has gone on--and very well. But
at the time, my pain drove me into a cult that did a nasty job on my
already damaged sense of self. I joined and started taking
"consultations."
There was much
talk of my so-called "contempt team" with my mother. I supposedly
"used her" to have contempt for all women. This, the consultants
said, was why I was gay. After months of consultations I
complained that I wasn't changing. The consutants said that this
was because I didn't want to be "grateful" to Eli Siegel. This
was always the pat answer (read excuse) when Aesthetic Realism didn't
work.
I was
badgered into "admitting" that I really had changed. I was so
desperate for acceptance, that I began claiming that I had "changed
from homosexualty."
Next thing I
knew I was signing a statemet for publication in the New York Times and
I was accepted into the inner circle of "consultants-in-training."
Eli Siegel had
already had his operation by this time and had resumed a partial
teaching schedule. When attending a class with Siegel, it was
almost like a day in court. You were expected to rise to your feet when
he entered the room. He talked about the operation claiming that
"something went wrong." There was no actual medical evidence that
the operation was botched; at least none that was mentioned in any of
the classes I attended. I do know that the Aesthetic Realism Foundation
received a letter from the hospital saying that they had conducted an
investigation and found no evidence of a mistake.
To the best of
my knoweldge no other medical doctors were called in to challenge the
hospital's claim. Simply, a depressed Siegel said that something had
gone wrong,so you were expected to believe it. Every week,
Siegel's followers wrote letters to his surgeon demanding that he come
clean. Later, we were pressured to send letters to other doctors
(not necessarily anyone who was associated with the case) to demand
that they ask the doctor to come clean.
The question
remains: Was Siegel the best judge of his own medical condition?
Talking of his life, Siegel said at the time, "What used to have color
is now coated with gray." I said to a psychologist once, "Doesn't
this sound like clinical depression?" "Yep," he said, "That's
clinical depression." So Siegel's loving followers agreed to
allow a depressed man to take his own life.
Aesthetic
Realists' claims to the contrary, this is not what experts mean when
they talk of dying with dignity. If you believe in assisted
suicide (as this probably was) ethics require that you make damned sure
that the individual can't be relieved of their pain in any other way.
And you make damned sure that the individual is a rational judge of his
own needs. If Siegel was indeed clinically depressed, then
treatment for depression was called for, NOT suicide.
So now, let's
get down to brass tacks. How do I know that Eli Siegel killed
himself? His widow, Martha Baird began reading a letter she had written
to the consultants and consultants-in-training. She began weeping
and passed the letter to Reiss, to read the bulk of it aloud. The
letter said, in no uncertain terms that Siegel had taken his life
through "pills designed for sleep." (Followers, even Siegel's own
wife, often imitated his peculiar writing style. Heaven forbid
she would just say "sleeping pills".)
The question
remains: Who gave Eli Siegel the pills? He couldn't walk, and he
was living in the home of one of his students. It's not likely
that he popped down to the drug store for a bottle of Sominex under his
own power. It's not likely that he even took delivery of
the pills without somebody knowing about it.
So despite his
follwers claims that the operation killed him, Eli Siegel was probably
helped out of this world by one or more of them. Who gave Eli
Siegel the pills? I have no idea but of this I'm sure: The Grim
Reaper had help, and it wasn't from the doctor.
Editor's Note: I'm always happy when another former member decides to share their story, and I'm grateful for this contribution. It's a valuable addition to our library of ex-member testimonies. About where Siegel got the pills, there's not really any mystery there: His students supplied them. Other former members have confirmed this.
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