The origins of social therapy
The roots of social therapy are in the social upheaval, anti-authoritarianism, creativity and radical humanism of the 1960s. Social therapy was created by Fred Newman, who received his Ph.D. in analytic philosophy and foundations of mathematics from Stanford University in 1962. A passionate and respected teacher, Newman left academia in 1968 after deciding that his protest of the Vietnam War — giving A’s to all his students so that young men could avoid the draft — was not enough to make a serious difference. He became a community organizer, looking to create something — he did not yet know what — that could be of value to people/society as a whole.
In 1970, Newman was working as a counselor in a drug rehabilitation center where his clients were related to as prisoners who had committed a crime — not as people in pain who could help to create their own growth. He wanted to translate the most progressive ideals of this turbulent era — including the contributions of British psychiatrist R.D. Laing (Sanity, Madness and the Family), American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (The Myth of Mental Illness), Martiniquan psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth) and others — into effective instruments of social and personal transformation. It was in this context that Newman began a therapy practice. He joined a handful of other therapists, activists, educators and therapy patients, to create a new psychology practice/theory — one that wouldn’t seek to “adapt” people to the painful conditions of their lives, but would focus instead on helping them to develop, and to change those conditions.
Later in the decade, Newman met developmental psychologist Lois Holzman, who introduced him to the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky had been a contemporary of Jean Piaget, but his very different views (and historical circumstances) informed his revolutionary work as a psychologist. To Vygotsky, human activities such as learning and development are fundamentally social rather than, as traditional psychology insists, individual. He said that through performing when we are very young — that is, doing things before we know how to — we learn to do new things. He vividly described how babies learn to speak through this kind of play and pretending — they imitate others creatively, and simultaneously perform as (become) themselves.
Social therapy is also influenced by the work of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and his views on language as social activity — a creative process of “making meaning” with others. In Wittgenstein’s view, how we talk and the words we choose has an important impact on what we see and are able to create with other people — it can reinforce our alienation and emotional pain, or free us to develop and grow.
In the 1980s, Newman began working in theater and, together with other artists and activists, started the Castillo Theatre, an experimental theatre currently headquartered on 42nd Street in New York City. Over the following two decades, he wrote dozens of plays, directed most of them, and performed as an improvisational comedian. This experience deepened Newman’s understanding of Vygotsky’s discoveries about learning and development, and underscored the vital importance of performance (both onstage and off) to our emotional, social and intellectual lives. He saw how the social therapy group, in which people come together every week to create a therapeutic conversation, was a kind of “emotional performance,” in which the group provides an environment for people to express their emotionality in new ways.
After four decades, social therapy has emerged as a creative, revolutionary approach to human development that is helping people the world over to find new ways of healing, helping, learning and transforming — for themselves, their families and communities.
