Talk:William S. Sadler

message: Something about this strikes me as vaguely POV, but I don't know enough about the history of American psychology to say. It would be nice though if it had some kind of, preferrably non-Urantian, source for statements like "regarded by his colleagues as a professional researcher of considerable integrity", "considered one of the world's foremost authorities", etc. I did find a site on the chautauqua scene that stated he was known for exposing medical quackery and one on Adventism that said he was known as a physician. So it might all be legitimate, but it would just be nice to know where these accolades came from.--T. Anthony 08:51, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: (untitled)

message: A few months ago I made some minor edits to this article to lessen POV.  It was the first article on Wikipedia I edited.  Current article is a great improvement, day and night type of change. Should it still be considered a stub?--Edivorce 16:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Improvements

message: In the text:
“Sadler did not adhere to purely mechanistic or materialistic views of psychology and psychiatry and was a consistent advocate of broad and rational principles of psychiatry”
Then, later:
“[He] held the life-long opinion that all psychic phenomena was explainable within the confines of the laws of nature.”
There is a blatant contradiction here. Moreover, I don’t see why adhering to “purely” mechanistic or materialistic views wouldn’t be consistent with broad and rational principles of psychiatry.
Also, the text is somewhat glorifying but improperly referenced. For example: “He was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject [...]” – by who/what organization? The only way to know him seems to be through an organization that is directly linked to him and that would benefit from his glorification. I strongly feel this as unacceptable for an encyclopaedic project.
ScienceStorm (talk) 04:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: More improvements needed

message: This article serious misrepresents the man and his life work. The coverage of the Urantia Book is especially deplorable. A few matters that are missing from the article include:
Sadler received his initial medical training at Battle Creek Clinic and graduated in 1894 as a qualified Medical Evangelist.
Sadler initially sided with John Harvey Kellogg in the disputes with the Adventist General Conference and Ellen White over control of the clinic.
Sadler initiated a dispute with Ellen White over the authenticity of some of her organizational visions for the future of the Adventist medical enterprise, eventually leading to a complete break with the church. Yet Sadler totally missed the rebellion of the young doctors (Battle Creek early graduates) against Kellogg that led directly the formation of the College of Medical Evangelists within the church organization and eventually gave birth to the adoption by Adventist physicians of modern medical practice. Refer to background on how Adventist medical school at Loma Linda California came into being.
Sadler recognized early that he was in no way qualified to practice medicine, even after his subsequent education and chose to make his way in the emerging field of "mind cures" (for psychosomatic illness).
Sadler is known to have visited Freud and rejected the foundations of emerging psychoanalysis on moral and ethical grounds.
Sadler was a significant figure in the popularization of mind cures in the Chicago area and used his lecturing skills as the basis for building his practice in the Chicago area (office eventually located at 533 Diversey Parkway, now occupied by Urantia Foundation).
Sadler is known to have experimented with "radium emanation" (now recognized as the element Radon) in his practice. He kept a lead-lined box mounted to a wall in the laboratory in his office at 533 for the storage of Radium. When Urantia Foundation redecorated and upgraded the first floor of the building at 533 Diversey, the walls and floor of this room (then being used as a kitchen by Urantia Foundation) were found to be covered with sheets of lead. As far as I know, no formal effort was taken to decontaminate the facility. Perhaps, after 50+ years, it was no longer necessary.
Sadler authored a vast number of books, mostly of a popular nature, some of a dogmatic and semi-political nature (e.g., the popular Longheads and Roundheads and the more obscure academic treatise Racial Degeneracy), and at least one well-known textbook (Theory and Practice of Psychiatry).
Sadler abandoned the use of hydrotherapy, a mainstay of Battle Creek, and eventually settled on electroconvulsive therapy as the basis for his practice (aside from the more benign and better informed talk therapy).  
Sadler was far more deeply involved in the activities that led to the publication of the Urantia Book than this article suggests. The Appendix to his semi-professional book debunking psychic phenomena (The Mind at Mischief) contains his description of two cases of psychic phenomena which he found inexplicable. The first of these is clearly the case of Ellen Gould White (the prophetess of the Adventist movement who picked up the cult where William Miller left off). The second and more extensively discussed is the case of the contact personality through whom the supernatural contact that led to the creation of the Urantia papers was facilitated.
Sadler created a group, known as "the forum", comprised of selected patients and family members, that met regularly at 533 on Sundays to discuss the content of the Urantia Papers, which were allegedly being actively edited by the supernatural beings with which he had initially established contact around 1906. This group was entirely Sadler's enterprise, and he ran it with an unchallengeable authoritarian manner.
The Forum included William M. Hales, prominent member of the Board of Trade, who made the market in malt. While Hales was enormously wealthy, Sadler refused to allow him to fund publication of the Urantia Papers as the Urantia Book, insisting that all the interested Forum members contribute according to their ability and no one dominating the enterprise. Hales created a family trust, which was one of the financial mainstays of Urantia Foundation (publisher of the Urantia Book) and the Urantia Brotherhood, an affinity group for persons interested in the Urantia Book (now named The Fellowship for Readers of The Urantia Book) especially in the early years after publication in 1955.
It is not known how many of the early Forum members were selected from Sadler's ECT patients, but William M. Hales is known to have been one.
At his death, Sadler had bequeathed ownership of the clinic building at 533 Diversey to Urantia Foundation, with a proviso that certain individuals (Emma Christensen and Leone Sadler, the first wife of his son, Bill Sadler, Jr.) be given lifetime residence in apartments within the building.
There is much more that could be added to flesh out this article; however, this is already enough for an entire book. 
In his final opus How to Know What to Believe (ca. 1976), Harold Sherman provided a concise and negative portrayal of much of the Forum activity during the years he was initimately involved (and lived in an apartment building across the street from 533). Square Circles Press (http://www.squarecircles.com) has recently published Harold Sherman's collected papers from an archive at the University of Arkansas in six volumes. The papers provide a much less negative but much more detailed picture of the Forum and its associated members than contained in How to Know What to Believe.
On very limited evidence it appears possible that the Urantia "contact" person was brought to Sadler's attention by Harry Loose, a retired and slightly disabled Chicago police officer, who lectured on the Chautauqua circuit with the Sadler troupe (not as a member of the troupe, just another Chautaquan). There is some slight evidence for Loose having been at the time a member of an occult initiatory order in the Chicago area--possibly the Chicago chapter of the Astrum Agentinium or the Ordo Templi Orientis--but this borders on pure speculation.
Since the bulk of this information is based on personal experience and accounts of the period from friends whose families were variously involved in the Forum, it probably would not meet Wikipedia standards. I have presented it here as an archivable addendum, which may inspire others to write more fully on the subject. Or perhaps I will find time and motivation to convert some of it (for which published documents exist) into the main article someday. Ldmjr (talk) 08:15, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Inadequate Article

message: I visited the lede for a little bit this afternoon. The first thing that I noticed was 2 sentences in a row beginning with, "After...".  So I started there. Unfortunately, I ended with one of the sentences containing the word "patient" twice. It's tough to get a handle on how to say that Sadler heard an extraterrestial speaking through the patient. The word 'subject' threw me a little (is the subject the same as the patient? etc). So, there it is.  :) Probably more muddled... 
Minor edit on the meetings at Sadler's home.
The last sentence I had a little trouble with and it's subjective, I think. To me, a 'book' can't become an organized religion.  The 'study'/'belief in'/'following of' the book can. It's semantics and I'm not sure I'm on the right track. So I made that little change. 
Accept or reject - won't hurt my feelings at all!  :)  Nice article! Wikipelli Talk 19:32, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, thanks. Those edits look fine to me. Good catch about the book there! Mark Arsten (talk) 20:24, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  a couple of edits 

message: I added him to this page, you may want to change the text or something, but I thought he should be there, since I was looking him up, couldn't remember his first name, found Sadler, and he wasn't there. --Despayre (talk) 18:53, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  disambig page 

message: I changed the "Bibliography" section to a subsection of "References". We use subsections for related content and as presented this appeared to be an out-of-place "Works" or "Publications" section. MOS:NOTES:  and not "works cited". It is relatively minor, inline with MOS, and does not change the citation styling. Otr500 (talk) 10:49, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography