User:Eroberer/GanasHist

The group that would become Ganas got its start in 1973 when founder Mildred Gordon left New York City for San Francisco's Haight Ashbury. In New York City, Gordon (and others involved in the growing unlicensed mental health field) were the subjects of state Attorney General and city fraud investigations into "fraudulent use of Ph.D.'s from unaccredited universities", due to Gordon's founding of GROW,  an unaccredited school of group therapy that "turned out unlicensed group psychotherapists." The investigations resulted in a tough licensing regulatory bill that would impose stronger standards for all mental health workers, a bill that was lobbied against by Gordon, among others.

In San Francisco Gordon studied biofeedback which became the basis of what she termed "Feedback Learning". Gordon's own literature on Feedback Learning defines it as a simultaneously psychological and political method to help neurotic individuals make self-directed behavior changes that lead to cooperative government. Gordon met the six people who would become the original core-group of the Ganas community and incorporated the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization Foundation for Feedback Learning (FFL) in 1974. The new community went by the name FFL until changing their name to Ganas in the early 1990s. In the late 1970's they returned to New York and moved into a Lower East Side apartment, finally settling in Tompkinsville, Staten Island in 1979. On Staten Island the core-group shares ownership of eight houses and three commercial buildings that house their retail stores. There are about 65 non-core group residents who live in Ganas houses and cover expenses by either paying rent or working in the stores.