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For other uses see Fred Newman (disambiguation)

Template:Totally disputed Fred Newman is a controversial philosopher, psychotherapist, playwright and political activist. He received his Ph.D. in analytic philosophy and foundations of mathematics from Stanford University in 1962. For over 30 years he has had a private psychotherapy practice in New York City, although lacking conventional credentials and licensing in the field. Along with developmental psychologist Lois Holzman, who has written a number of books with and about Newman, 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 live more creative and growthful lives.]

Critics, unversed in psychology, social science or Vygotskian theory, largely within the popular media, have raised concens about his therapeutic approach. According to the New York Times, lay-critics argue that Newman uses his "psychotherapy centers as recruiting tools for his political activities. And they charge that the reverse is also true: People who enter his world through his political activities are channeled into his therapeutic practice." Some articles in left publications have also raised concerns that Newman's Social Therapy merges political activism, therapy, and personal relationships in ways that cross standard ethical boundaries, and that social therapy was "consciously used as a recruitment tool" for Newman's various political organizations.] However, these speculations have not been substantiated by social scientists, social psychologists, or counseling psychologists.

Newman taught at several colleges and universities in the 1960s around the country, including New York City’s City College, Knox College, Case Western Reserve, and Antioch College and was fired from a number of them, which he attributed to his policy of giving all students an "A" grade to avoid their chances of flunking out and possibly be drafted during the Viet Nam War. He also worked briefly after his academic career as a counselor at the New York State Drug Rehabilitation Program.

Early years: Marxist psychology and politics

Newman considers himself a Marxist,] which he has used as a foundation to develop a therapeutic approach that the alienating effects of the societal institutions have on human personality development. In more recent years, he (along with his primary collaborator Holzman) have incorporated the work of a range of other influences, including early Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a variety of postmodern theorists. In his earliest statement of his attempt to develop a Marxist approach to emotional problems, Newman writes

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)).

In his work on childhood learning development in the 1930s, Vygotsky described what he termed the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as the location in which learning and development take place, i.e., the range between a child's abilities without assistance, and the child's abilities with assistance. Newman and Holzman, a Vygotsky scholar and developmental psychologist, began to incorporate 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 Holzman co-authored Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist.

Vygotsky himself was a harsh critic of the psychological and therapeutic approaches of his day, including psychoanalysis, which he described as limiting mental life "to primitive, primordial, essentially prehistorical, prehuman roots, leaving no room for history."] Vygotsky devoted the bulk of his efforts to experimental work in the underdeveloped far reaches of the Soviet Union, doing extensive experimental work in literacy and learning development among young children. His work was suppressed under Stalin, and wasn't widely disseminated until the early 1960s. His research and theoretical work on early childhood development and language formation has been embraced by mainstream psychologists and educators at Harvard and other leading universities independently of the work of Newman and Holzman, and a growing "Vygotskian" movement has taken foot internationally.] This trend has included the establishment of experimental schools employing Vygotsky's approach; Holzman has written that she, Newman and their supporters introduced this approach at the former Barbara Taylor School.] Holzman and Newman's publication of their work has had an influence especially on the way in which some postmodern psychologists view Vygotsky's theories and research. In the mid-2000s, Holzman and Newman began to also emphasize activity theory, an approach founded by Soviet era psychologists Aleksey Leontyev and Sergei Rubinshtein which was based on Vygotsky's work but took it in very original directions. In a series of books, Newman and Holzman have challenged and analyzed what they describe as the "hoax/myth of psychology" whose various component myths are "destructive pieces of pseudoscience," and offer the anti-epistomological approach of social therapy and the use of performance as an alternative to traditional modalities that are heavily reliant on interpretive, classificatory, and explanatory (knowing) foundations.

In his 1991 book The Myth of Psychology, Newman had argued that "psychology as well as terms like "addiction" are a myth," sparking a debate in 1993 in the pages of the journal Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books following a critical review by Benjamin Harris in February of that year.]

The Debate in Psychology

One of the few venues where Newman (along with Holzman) responded to their critics was in a 2003 with interview John Söderlund, editor of New Therapist, in a special issue devoted to mind control.

Söderlund asked about the recent focus of the American Psychological Association on the “potential dangers of mind control.” Newman replied that he didn’t quite know what was meant by the term, noting

The closest association I have to it is what happens between parents and their young children. When children are very young, parents create a very controlled environment where there’s a great level of dependency on the parents. Gradually, as children come to experience other kinds of institutions (day care, school, etc.) their lived environment becomes less controlled and their dependency lessens.

Newman explained that didn’t think this sort of “totally controlled environment” can be imposed on an adult relationship, “outside of the extraordinary circumstances of say, the Manchurian candidate. I don’t see how mind control has any applicability to therapy—therapy of any kind—as it’s a relationship where the clients have control...They pay, they can not show up, etc.” Newman acknowledged that he believed there were authoritarian and coercive therapists who were likely doing bad therapy, but did not consider this to be mind control.

Söderlund asked Newman to respond to an anonymous former social therapist’s statement that the practice has “the criteria of groups which are considered cults: an authoritarian, charismatic leader, black-and-white thinking, repression of individuality, constant drive for fundraising, control of information, lack of tolerance for opposition within the group, etc.” Newman claimed he didn’t know what a cult was, or even if there was such a thing, and that the use of use of the cult charge is “hostile, mean-spirited, and destructive.” He denied being “authoritarian,” acknowledged the perception that he was “charismatic,” and considered the claim of “black-and-white thinking” to be “antithetical to everything we do,” citing social therapy’s interactions “with practitioners and theorists across a very wide spectrum of traditions and worldviews.” Newman also countered the charge by insisting “We don’t repress individuality; we critique it. There is a difference!”

Newman commented as well on charges that he “held in contempt” ethical guidelines of professional associations such as the APA: “We don’t look to the APA, CPA or any other institution for ethical standards, he replied. “We’re critical (not contemptuous) of them for being hypocritical and think that depending on them for an ethical standard is ethically unsound.”

Social and political activism

Progressive Politics on Manhattan’s Upper West Side

Newman founded the collective Centers for Change (CFC) in the late 1960s after the student strikes at Columbia University. CFC was dedicated to 60s-style radical community organizing and the practice of an evolving form of psychotherapy which Newman would refer to circa 1974 as "proletarian" therapy, subsequently adopting the name Social Therapy. CFC set up clinics and briefly ran a small alternative high school. Under Newman's leadership, CFC briefly merged with Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) in 1974. NCLC was one of a number of left-wing organizations heatedly, and occasionally violently, vying for control of the remnants of post- campus radicalism. LaRouche's NCLC had launched a series of violent attacks against other leftist groups in 1973. Within a few months, the brief alliance fell apart, which Newman attributed to LaRouche's increasingly "paranoid" and "authoritarian" direction])and the NCLC's "capacity to produce psychosis and to opportunistically manipulate it in the name of socialist politics."] In August 1974, the Newman/CFC group went on to found the International Workers Party, (IWP) as an explicitly Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party.

Newman’s IWP briefly attempted to maintain fraternal ties to LaRouche’s NCLC, but soon broke all ties as mutual hostilities reached a breaking point. Newman and the IWP went on to pursue a number of the organizing tactics that he says first attracted him to the NCLC, specifically, an attempt to create a range of community organizations under the direction of a Marxist-Leninist party, much in the manner that had not been done in the U.S. Since the 1930s, in the heyday of the ’s creation of “mass organizations” involved in unemployed, Southern sharecropper, urban tenant, and civil rights issues. ]

In the wake of yet another bitter factional fight in 1976, Newman and the IWP disbanded as a public party, continuing to function non-publicly and ending its short-lived involvement in the decades-long internecine battles within the American communist movement. Throughout the latter part of the 70s, Newman and his core of organizers spearheaded the launching of a number of grassroots organizations, including Union W.A.G.E., the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council, School for Progress, the Lake County Coalition for Survival in Illinois , and a local branch of the national People’s Party known as the New York Working People's Party] In a part of Manhattan that, like California’s Berkeley, had long been a stronghold for a range of liberal and left wing activism, Newman’s political activities began to yield some modest successes. As Tourish and Wohlforth describe it in their unsympathetic account of Newman’s controversial history (On the Edge: Political Cults of the Left and Right--Lenin as Therapist), Newman “caused a stir when he ran a key follower, Nancy Ross, for local school board and actually won. The startled liberal politicos decided to look a bit deeper at Newman, his past, and his current practices.” ]

With the NCLC’s abandonment of left wing politics and its descent into the murky world of the right-wing conspiratorial fringe, Newman’s political and therapeutic collective, along with the Upper West Side-based Columbia Tenant’s Union (CTU) emerged as two of the most active left wing groups involved in local community organizing. The CTU had been formed a few years earlier by the late tenant activist Bruce Bailey and journalist Dennis King, both of whom had split off from the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor Party in the early 1970s. Both groups maintained a cordial relationship until 1977.

Ross’ campaign became the target of a smear campaign against her (including charges that she was linked to LaRouche’s‘ NCLC and the CIA), in large part by the Communist Party-linked activists on the west side. In May of that year, the Colombia Tenants Union came strongly to Ross’ defense. Writing in the CTU newspaper Heights & Valleys News, King charged:

“I am quite familiar with the history of the various radical groups on the West Side, and can tell you categorically that the statement in the Daily World (and the whispers) concerning Nancy Ross are nothing but a smear. They have both the intent and the effect of denying and indeed suppressing Nancy Ross’s freedom of speech and association. Since the old left-types lack the power in our community to directly suppress Nancy, they suppress her through the indirect method of a smear campaign. If it is shameful for them to adopt such tactics, it is doubly shameful for the various liberals and closet anarchists to sit back and allow it to happen, and in fact to join in the action just to get they’re thing off through a little old-fashioned sorority-style trashing.”

King vehemently denied the rumors that Ross and the Newman group had any ties to the NCLC, noting the brief two-month relationship and pointing out they had “publicly rejected everything it stood for.” King concluded that a vote for Nancy Ross was “the best way to stand up for moral decency in our community’s political life.” .

Ross went on to win a surprising upset victory, and was once again lauded by King in Heights & Valleys, where he noted that their readers “who believe in fair play will be happy to know that Nancy Ross, President of the PS 75 Parents Association, was elected by a solid margin to the nine member District 3 School Board in the May 3 election.” The article lauded the victory of an independent in the midst of union dominated slates, and noted “Nancy Ross will have a difficult task if she wishes to breathe any life into this decrepit, patronage-ridden institution.”

Origins of the “Cult“ Controversy

In the midst of the Newman group's success in Ross‘ school board run, King began a romantic relationship with Joyce Dattner a political colleague of Newman. At the time, Ms. Dattner was president of the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council as well as a promising community organizer. Her independent run for State Assembly on the Working People's Party line garnered an impressive 6% of the vote, rocking the local Democratic Party liberal establishment. Eventually the Dattner-King romantic relationship ended; both parties attribute the break-up to Dattner’s refusal to disassociate from Newman’s political group. In the wake of the tumultuous split, King’s Heights and Valleys reporting took a 180 degree turn. The paper delivered a series of scathing broadsides accusing Newman of deceiving the community by announcing the disbanding of the IWP, being the de facto leader of a “therapy cult”, and per Dennis King having “deep-set Rasputin-type eyes”. These articles mark the first use of the term, "cult" as applied to organizations Newman would found in the coming decades. King's attacks further accused Newman of keeping “groupies cut off from the outside world and with almost every waking hour spent either in 'busywork' or interminable meetings (so that independent thought could be kept at a minimum), had no feedback from reality" who “in return for their total obedience...would receive certain gratifications: the diffuse sense of love and warmth within the cult (as long as you didn't show any independence of mind) and also a sense of status and position.” (“West Side "Therapy Cult" Conceals Its True Aims,” (Heights & Valleys News, November 1977). Although never mentioning Ms. Dattner by name, King alluded to their breakup in the course of his attacks, writing, "Cult members are fond of saying how "we really love each other" and "I really love my comrades," but this does not translate into stable ties. In the past six months, for instance, almost half the members of the cult have split up with the person they were involved with at the beginning of that time span. Such debacles, of course--and especially when happening to people who have reached an age when they need stability--create a devastating sense of guilt, which Newman is able to use to tie each member of the group closer to him, since only he can dissipate the anxiety." A few months after his vigorous support of the Newman group in the same paper, King was now charging Newman with “the creation of a pseudo-family in which these desperately insecure people could escape taking responsibility for their own lives, in which he "would make all decisions for them....In return for their total obedience, they would receive certain gratifications: the diffuse sense of love and warmth within the cult (as long as you didn't show any independence of mind) and also a sense of status and position. . Ms. Dattner responded to the attacks with her own “Open Letter to the Friends and Supporters of the New York City Welfare Council,” lashing back that the intense, full circle attack on Newman was rooted in her refusal to obey King’s demand that she choose between him and her political colleague, which she characterized as “sexism carried to insanity and violent destructiveness.” (November 1977).

Soon after, (in the midst of another bitter fight, this time with the CTU’s Bailey, King would leave West Side politics and and move to the conservative East Side Our Town weekly, and subsequently a researcher for the CIA-founded League for Industrial Democracy (LID), although three decades later still closely follows Newman’s career, currently working closely alongside the leader of the violent, anti-Newman Jewish Defense Organization’s leader Mordecai Levy. Newman and his political colleagues continued organizing the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council, and soon after the Labor Community Alliance for Change. The start of the 1980s would mark Newman’s first real impact in both the world of progressive politics and the psychology establishment with the birth of the New York Institute for Social Therapy and the New Alliance Party.

Into the Mainstream

In 1979 Newman became one of the founders of the independent New Alliance Party (NAP). The party, whose first chairperson was then New York City Councilman , advocated positions less radical than those of the IWP, which continued to operate as a non-public Marxist organization. The Party's first candidate that year was a Democratic Party machine politician, Joe Galiber, who ran on the line as an independent candidate for Bronx borough president, following a defeat in the Democratic primary, ultimately finishing second ahead of the Republicans. Within a few months of its founding, NAP was proclaiming itself in the pages of the affiliated New York [later, National) Alliance newspaper as the Bronx' second party. It would continue to grow as a force in Bronx politics in coming years. The NAP also brought Newman's ideas to a much broader audience and ran election campaigns all over the country. By the mid-1980s, African American psychologist and activist Lenora Fulani had become the NAP's chief public spokesperson, while Newman served primarily as the party's tactician, campaign manager, and sometimes candidate.

In 1985, Newman ran for Mayor of New York. In 1986 he ran for United States Senator from New York and in 1990 for New York State Attorney General.

With each further step into mainstream politics, the New Alliance Party, and it's chief strategist Newman, would stir up controversy mirroring the seminal tempest in a teapot that first ruffled the progressive Manhattan neighborhood in 1977. The first citywide controversy was sparked within a few years, as Ross once again was making a strong showing in a Manhattan-wide race as an independent (the seat was dissolved before the election took place), and while NAP involved itself in a citywide independent coalitinal run for Mayor. As Ross and Fulani were beginning their first statewide campaign, the "cult" charges surfaced again, this time in the pages of the liberal Village Voice, focusing again (and quoting heavily from) King's earler charges.

NAP entered the national political scene in 1984, running African American trade union activist Dennis Serrette for President, with Ross as his running mate, acheiving ballot status in 33 states. By 1987, as Fulani and her campaign manager newman were preparing for her historic independent Presidential run (becoming the first African American and first woman to achieve ballot status in all 50 states), the controversies emerged again in full swing, with a number of establishment left wing, lesbian and gay, African American and feminist organization leaders turning to the original decade-old King charges to lash out at the African American newcomer to the progressive scene and her self-described Black-led, pro-gay entry into national politics.]. In an issue that featured a series of essays denouncing NAP, the New Left magazine Radical America wrote "We have become convinced that ..are not just other legitimate groups with whom we must coexist" adding that the New Alliance Party is not "a legitimate political organization", that it fails the journal's "basic test" for one, that NAP threatens to "discredit the left" and urges its readers to do what is necessary to dissuade "anyone" who might be attracted to them, noting "we can't be liberal about this one, comrades." (Radical America, 1987; Vol. 21, No. 5).

Significant among the authors was 1984 NAP Presidential candidate Serrette, who had cut his ties to Newman and his associates in the wake of the breakup of his personal relationship with Fulani. Serrette described in the Radical America article the workings of the still existent Marxist organization he had joined a few years earlier:

Most members join "the organization" via politics or therapy. Once an individual has been drawn close, s/he is met by two lieutenants and told that there is a secret underground organization, the International Working Party (IWP), allegedly a left party organization. Membership in the organization requires that you reveal all your resources, and that you turn over everything to the organization. (Even personal relationships are said to belong to the organization, so it is common for a member to report on his/her partner.) Mandatory bi­monthly dues are assessed, and anything may be demanded at any time.

The IWP has been chaired by Newman since its inception. As far as I know, no one else has ever been considered as an alternative. The Central Committee members are all chosen by Newman. During the entire 2½ years I sat on the Central Committee, there was never a single policy debate by the CC once Newman made his position known.

In the 2003 New Therapist interview, Newman was asked about charges that former participants in social therapy—both clients and therapists—“were forcefully encouraged to engage in performing the role of recruiters of others to the political causes to which the institute is linked.” Newman responded that “if they performed the role of recruiters, this was because they were voluntarily part of a Marxist group and recruiting is an activity of Marxist groups. So, yes, they were encouraged to recruit, but not by virtue of being in therapy.”

An example of the overlapping network described by Serrette was the 1992 Presidential campagn of Lenora Fulani,which was run by Newman. According to Bruce Shapiro, writing in the Nation magazine, the FEC:

...ordered Fulani to repay a total of $612,000--more than 25 percent of all the matching funds she had received. Fulani appealed and eventually the FEC--still laboring without the benefit of cooperation from Newman or the campaign treasurer--agreed to lower the repayment to $117,000, including more than $43,000 used to "purchase" bulk orders of the National Alliance newspaper at more than twice the bulk rate and $73,000 in paychecks to individuals "that cannot be traced." Fulani petitioned to block the FEC, but in June 1998 her petition was dismissed by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with Judge Charles Silberman slamming Newman and company for working to "frustrate and delay" the FEC's inquiries. No wonder Newman decided it was time to retire the New Alliance Party brand name.

The New Alliance Party was dissolved in 1994, and many of its members and supporters, including Newman and Fulani, immersed themselves in the national, and more centrist, independent political movement that had arisen in the wake of Ross Perot's 1992 Presidential bid on the Reform Party. Newman, Fulani and a number of former NAP activists eventually became leaders in the Independence Party of New York (IPNY), and local offshoot of the Perot movement, and were frequently at the center of factional quarrels that have characterized the party from the time of its founding, and which continue. In September 2005, the New York State Executive Committee of the Independence Party--under the leadership of IPNY State Chairman Frank MacKay, a one-time Newman and Fulani ally, cited the earlier charges as the basis for a vote to remove several Newman associates, including Fulani, from the party's Excecutive Committee. Notably, the majority of the Newman-affiliated Executive Committee members who were targeted were themselves either African American or Jewish.

In the following months, MacKay initiated proceedings to have close to 200 Independence Party members in New York City whom he identified as being sympathetic to Fulani disenrolled from the party. This attempt was dismissed in each effort MacKay brought before the New York State Supreme Court. Despite the claims of MacKay that charges of anti-Semitism underlied his attempts at mass disenrollment of party members he claimed were affiliated with Newman, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman in dismissing the case wrote that the charges were "more political than philosophical."] Albany Times-Union reporter Elizabeth Benjamin noted that the failed attempt by MacKay likely had the "at least tacit support" of Senator Clinton and New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, who had both accepted nomination to the IPNY ballot line. ]

Playwriting and theatre

Newman was also the Artistic Director of the Castillo Theatre, which since the mid 1980s has produced over 100 plays written by him and other "postmodern" dramatists. Some of Newman's plays -- those with an alleged anti-Jewish slant -- have been sharply criticized by the media and by groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In his play "No Room for Zion" (1989), Newman recounts the transition in his own Bronx Jewish community from a primarily working class one that is increasingly middle-classized and upwardly mobile and rapidly losing its identity of an immigrant community tied to traditional ideals (represented by the Rabbi Zion of the play's title). In the play, Newman goes on to present his view of the post-war shifts in Jewish political alignments, both domestically and internationally:

From the West Bank to the West Side of Manhattan, international Jewry was being forced to face its written-in-blood deal with the capitalist devil. In exchange for an unstable assimilation, Jews under the leadership of Zionism would "do-unto-others-what-others-had-done-unto-them." The others to be done unto? People of color. The doing? Ghettoization and genocide. The Jew, the dirty Jew, once the ultimate victim of capitalism's soul, fascism, would become a victimizer on behalf of capitalism, a self-righteous dehumanizer and murderer of people of color, a racist bigot whom in the language of Zionism changed the meaning of "Never Again" from "Never Again for anyone" to "Never again for us--and let the devil take everyone else."

Newman's Castillo Theatre plays on other topics have received some positive reviews. His musical "Sally and Tom: The American Way" about the slave-master relationship of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson (with music by Grammy Award nominee Annie Roboff)was described in 1999 as "a diamond in the off-off-Broadway rough" by Christian Science Monitor critic Ward Moorehouse III. Several of his plays, including "The Myth of Psychology" (also the title of a book of Newman essays), have been performed at American Psychological Association conventions.

On December 6, 2005 Newman announced his retirement as Castillo's Artistic Director in the wake of a controversy over a six-part investigative series the previous month on NY1 News (a cable TV news channel). The programs contained segments of an interview with Newman whom the interviewer characterized as defending the right of psychotherapists to have sex with their patients. Castillo and its parent charity, the All Stars Project, Inc., incorporate Newman's therapeutic approach in their work. While Castillo produces mainly plays geared towards an older audience, the various youth programs work with young people from ages 5-25.]

The All Stars Project, which in addition to the Castillo Theatre includes a host of performance-based youth development programs, continues to be run by its current President, Newman's longtime partner Gabrielle Kurlander. It's board and staff includes long-time associates of Newman and supporters from the corporate and entertainment world who have donated financially and committed time and expertise to serve as mentors to the predominantly inner-city youth who participate in the programs. ]

Evaluations and investigations of the All Stars Project: the ongoing record

The All Stars Project has been the subject of a number of evaluations and investigations over the years brought on as a result of complaints filed by critics, as well as due diligence examinations. An outline of those investigations and their results is outlined below:

In 1994, All Stars (then the Community Literacy Research Project, Inc.) was listed as one of several entities in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission regarding the finances of the 1992 Lenora Fulani Presidential campaign. It was alleged that CLRP and other Newman-related organizations had received money improperly from the Fulani campaign and that Newman was guilty of "embezzlement." After a lengthy FEC investigation, Fulani was ordered to repay a portion of her matching funds to the U.S. Treasury. No wrongdoing was found on the part of the CLRP, which by the time of the final decision had changed its name to the All Stars Project.

In 2000-2002, due diligence was performed by the NYC Industrial Development Agency regarding an application by All Stars for a municipal bond. As revealed by the record of this process (see http://ex-iwp.org) it was mostly concerned with whether or not All Stars could meet its financial obligations pursuant to the bond. No financial reason was uncovered for not approving the bond.

Beginning in 2002, All Stars's finances were probed by the New York State Attorney General's Charities Bureau but no cause for action was found.

In 2003, the Institute for Minority Education of Columbia University's Teachers College undertook an evaluation of All Stars programs. The 124-page report was based on extensive on-site observation of two of the the All Stars programs, which were described as "as an exemplary effort in a field that is bursting with creative activity."] The report made a single brief reference to controversies regarding All Stars staff and volunteers being "involved in various political movements, most centrally Independent Party politics," noting that "while sometimes used as a point of attack by unfriendly media, the political networking has given the All Stars Project access to some halls of power that would have otherwise been closed."

The Columbia researchers noted the political character of the All Stars program: "Although political activism is not an explicit part of the All Stars and the DSY curriculum, it is an outcome of the programs. Young people who are empowered to get what they want are also likely to fight for what they think is right." The report further added "The participants and staff of the ASTSN/DSY have developed policy approaches to working with youth that are practical, efficient, and successful. That they have also worked to develop some influence in the halls of power is a tremendous asset to the development of the programs—as well as to the political process, which needs all the direction it can get in developing and implementing policy." The report also extensively discussed the employment of social therapy and other approaches in the programs, noting "The guiding theories, which include social therapy, activity theory, identity play, and performance theory, are palpably present in the strategies and goals of the project. The All Stars Project benefits greatly from the compass provided by the strong theoretical and philosophical grounding, both explicit in the vocabulary and implicit in the personalities, of the organization’s founders and directors. Its rich and fertile environment provides the stage on which new organizational ideas can be tested."

After the report was issued, one of it's co-authors, Dr. Edmond Gordon, the Institute's chair, joined with Lenora Fulani and Lois Holzman to found "The Research Center at All Stars." ]

In 2004-2005, complaints were reportedly filed with city, state and federal authorities regarding a health clinic in Los Angeles headed by a member of the All Stars board which had entered into contracts with All Stars and two social therapy clinics to operate All Stars programs. The complaints were brought by a former All Stars employee, Los Angeles-based theatre producer Molly Hardy, whose employment with the All Stars had recently been terminated. Hardy charged that the clinic had improperly diverted government funds to the All Stars. ] No disposition of these complaints has been reported.

In 2005, the Village Voice the Georgia Secretary of State's Office confirmed that the director of the Atlanta Center for Social Therapy was part of an ongoing investigation. ]

In 2005, the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development's legal office undertook inquiries into All Stars after it applied (at the invitation of a top aide to Newman's ally Mayor Bloomberg) for a contract to run an after-school program for middle-school and high-school students. According to Tom Robbins of the Village Voice, the probe was briefly halted by the Mayor's office but started up again after a NY1 News series on All Stars and Newman raised further questions. All Stars withdrew its bid for the contract, with All Stars President Gabrielle Kurlander citing what she decribed as the McCarthyistic and "intrusive and abusive" nature of the DYCD's questions, which included probing All Stars staff members private and personal therapeutic lives.]

Also in 2005, the New York State Attorney General's Office launched a second probe of All Stars, based on a complaint of emotional abuse of All Stars youth brought once again by fired All Stars employee Molly Hardy. The probe was undertaken over one year after the visting young people had returned to Oakland. In February 2006, NY1 News reported that "a spokesperson for Attorney General Eliot Spitzer says the complaint brought by former All Stars employee Molly Hardy 'does not raise any issues that warrant actions by our office.'"]

In 2006, the IDA again performed due diligence regarding All Stars, this time pursuant to an All Stars application for a second bond. Several Democratic Party officials expressed strong opposition. Critics of the IDA bond, including New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, charged that the All Stars were connected to "leaders who have taken positions that are misogynistic and Anti-Semitic," and questioned whether Newman and Fulani still ran All Stars, despite their having stepped down from official positions.] Despite the harsh public criticisms, the IDA board voted 6 to 4 in favor of approving the bond, with all those in favor being mayoral appointees or representatives of ex officio members who were mayoral appointees, and those opposed all representatives of local Democratic Party officials.]. After the vote, IDA chairman Joshua J. Sirefman told reporters that, based on the IDA's review of the All Stars Project, "we have determined that the organization is in good standing, we found no evidence of misconduct of any kind by the organization, and we established that the project would benefit New York City," adding, "We are aware that allegations of wrongdoing by individuals associated with the organization existed a number of years ago.”]]

In subsequent news coverage, Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the Agency's vote to approve the bonds, noting "“I don't think I heard one argument made that there was something wrong with the All Stars Project and that's what we look at.” ]

Endnotes

1. Michael Slackman, "In New York, Fringe Politics in Mainstream," New York Times, May 28, 2005
2. Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (1997). The end of knowing: A new developmental way of learning. London: Routledge.
3. Holzman L. Activating Postmodernism. Theory & Psychology, Vol. 16, No. 1, 109-123 (2006)
4. Holzman, L. and Newman, F. (1979). The practice of method: An introduction to the foundations of social therapy. New York: New York Institute for Social Therapy and Research.
5. Nissen M, Axel E, Bechmann Jensen T. The Abstract Zone of Proximal Conditioning. Theory & Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 3, 417-426 (1999).
6. Newman, F. The myth of psychology. New York: Castillo International (1991).
7. "Culture shock." New Therapist 24 (March/April 2003)
8. "Culture shock." New Therapist 24 (March/April 2003)
9. Dennis L. Serrette, "Inside the New Alliance Party: (aka Rainbow Alliance aka Rainbow Lobby aka the Organization a/k/a)," Radical America, Vol. 21, No. 5, http://www.publiceye.org/newman/critics/Serrette.html
10. "Culture shock." New Therapist 24 (March/April 2003)
11. Bruce Shapiro, "Buchanan-Fulani: New Team?" The Nation, November 1, 1999,

Publications

• Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (in press). All Power to the Developing. To appear in the Annual Review of Critical Psychology.

• Holzman, L. and Newman, F. (2004). Power, authority and pointless activity (The developmental discourse of social therapy.) In T. Strong and D. Paré (Eds.), Furthering talk: Advances in the discursive therapies . Kluwer Academic/Plenum, pp. 73-86.

• Newman, F. (2003). Undecidable emotions (What is social therapy? And how is it revolutionary?). Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 16: 215-232.

• Power, authority and pointless activity (The developmental discourse of social therapy).*Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (2001). La relevancia de Marx en la Terapeutica del siglo XXI. Revista Venezolana de Psicologia Clinica Comunitaria, No. 2, 47-55.

• Newman, F. (2001). Therapists of the world, unite. New Therapist. No. 16.

• Newman, F. (2001). Rehaciendo el pasado: Unas cuantas historias exitosas en materia de Terapia Social y sus moralejas. Revista Venezolana de Psicologia Clinica Comunitaria, No. 2, 57-70.

• Newman, F. (2000) Does a story need a theory? (understanding the methodology of narrative therapy). In D. Fee (Ed.) Pathology and the postmodern: mental illness as discourse and experience. London: Sage.

• Newman F. and Holzman, L. (2000). Against Against-ism. Theory & Psychology, 10(2), 265-270.

• Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (2000). Engaging the alienation. New Therapist, 10(4).

• Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (2000). The relevance of Marx to therapeutics in the 21st century. New Therapist, 5, 24-27.

• Newman, F. (1999). One dogma of dialectical materialism. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 1. 83-99.

• Newman, F. and L. Holzman. (1999). Beyond narrative to performed conversation (in the beginning comes much later). Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 12, 1, 23-40.

• Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (1997). The end of knowing: A new developmental way of learning. London: Routledge.

• Newman, F. (1996). Performance of a lifetime: A practical-philosophical guide to the joyous life. New York: Castillo.

• Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (1996). Unscientific psychology: A cultural-performatory approach to understanding human life. Westport, CT: Praeger.

• Newman, F. (1994). Let's develop! A guide to continuous personal growth. New York: Castillo International.

• Newman, F. and Holzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist. London: Routledge.

• Newman, F. (1992). Surely Castillo is left but is it right or wrong? Nobody knows. The Drama Review. Fall (T135), pp. 24- 27.

• Newman, F. (1991). The myth of psychology. New York: Castillo International.

• Holzman, L. and Newman, F. (1979). The practice of method: An introduction to the foundations of social therapy. New York: New York Institute for Social Therapy and Research.

• Newman, F. (1977). Practical-critical activities. New York: Institute for Social Therapy.

• Newman, F. (1974). Power and authority: The inside view of the class struggle. New York: Centers for Change.

• Newman, F. (1968). Explanation by description: An essay on historical methodology. The Hague: Mouton.

External links

Websites

• Eastside Institute for Group and Short-term Psychotherapy
• The Social Therapy Group
• West Coast Center for Social Therapy
• Atlanta Center for Social Therapy
• DC Center for Social Therapy
• Castillo Theatre
• All Stars Project
• Committee for a Unified Independent Party
• Performing the World

Lois Holzman's Website

• Lois Holzman, PhD

Critics

• Ex-IWP.org
• Journalist Dennis King

• American dramatists and playwrights
• Living people
• Marxist theorists
• American psychologists
• 20th century philosophers