Fred Newman
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- For other uses see Fred Newman (disambiguation)
Dr. Fred Newman is a controversial philosopher, playwright, political activist, and psychotherapist. He is the creator of "Social Therapy," a type of group therapy involving theatre, improvisation, and political activism, which he advocates as helping clients learn how to develop beyond their self- and societally-imposed limitations and improve their mental health. Newman considers himself a Marxist, and has utilized the terminology of dialectical materialism to explain the faults of the capitalist system.
- Proletarian or revolutionary psychotherapy is a journey which begins with the rejection of our inadequacy and ends in the acceptance of our smallness; it is the overthrow of the rulers of the mind. (Preface to Newman's Power and Authority: the Inside View of the Class Struggle (1974)).
Newman's use of left-wing language has been criticized by some on the left who see it as a way to draw unsuspecting, idealistic youth into Newman's unusual organizations. Newman, an independent political activist, has consistently criticized the Democratic Party.
He is a influenced by Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who wrote on the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD, existing in a social-cultural context, identifies the range between a child's abilities without assistance, and the child's abilities with assistance. Newman expanded on and incorporated this idea into Social Therapy as a way of understanding the mechanism of emotional growth and development in a group context. In 1993 Newman and Lois Holzman co-authored Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist, an introductory volume on Vygotsky's work.
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Social activism
Newman founded a Social Therapy collective called Centers for Change (CFC) in the late 1960s after the student strikes at Columbia University. This group was dedicated to alternative education and raising political consciousness. They also set up clinics and community centers. He brought many of its members to Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) in 1974. LaRouche was also using psychotherapy in his political theories and had distinguished himself as an outsider on the sectarian Left. This alliance did not last long and Newman left the NCLC with his followers to found the International Workers Party, a revolutionary organization.
In 1979 Newman founded the New Alliance Party (NAP) with Lenora Fulani. This group was less radical than the IWP, which continued to operate in secret. The NAP brought Newman's ideas to a much broader audience and ran several election campaigns all over the country.
Community work
Newman is also the Artistic Director of the Castillo Theatre, which since the mid 1980s has been producing plays written by him and other progressive dramatists. Some of Newman's plays -- those with a decidedly anti-Zionist slant -- have been met with negative criticism from groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
External links
Newman's organizations
- Eastside Institute for Group and Short-term Psychotherapy (http://www.eastsideinstitute.org/)
- Castillo Theatre (http://www.castillo.org/)
- All Stars Project (http://www.allstars.org/)
Anti-newman
- Ex-IWP.org (http://www.ex-iwp.org/)