The Growth Now Movement With Justin Schenck

When Spencer Schneider was a twenty-nine-year-old Manhattan corporate lawyer, an acquaintance invited him to a secret meeting of an “esoteric school for inner development,” known to its students simply as “School.” Suspicious yet curious, he went. At first, he found support, community, and meaning. But soon, he found himself trapped in one of the nation’s most secretive and abusive cults. In the name of personal development, hundreds endured decades of sexual and physical abuse, forced labor, arranged marriages, swindled savings and inheritances, and systematic terrorizing. Some of them broke the law. All for their charismatic and demented leader Sharon Gans, a washed-up actress who claimed to be on a spiritual par with Buddha. This is Schneider’s story of how he got entangled in School, why he stayed, and how–– impossibly––he got out after twenty-three years. It’s a cautionary tale about the power of group psychology and how anyone can be radicalized. It’s also a story of surviving traumatic abuse and ultima