Fred Newman (philosopher)

Fred Newman
Born
Fredrick Delano Newman

June 17, 1935 (1935-06-17)
The Bronx, New York City
DiedJuly 3, 2011 (2011-07-04) (aged 76)
Manhattan
Education
  • Stuyvesant High School
  • City College of New York (BA)
  • Stanford University (Ph.D.)
Era19th and 20th century philosophy
RegionWestern Philosophy
Main interests
Notable ideas
  • practice of method
  • social therapeutics
  • transitional institutions
  • creative completion
Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox philosopher with unknown parameter "influences"

Frederick Delano Newman (June 17, 1935 – July 3, 2011)[1] was an American psychotherapist and left-wing political activist.

Newman and Lois Holzman created a therapeutic modality, Social Therapy.[2][3] Newman insisted "that there was nothing wrong with psychotherapists having sex with patients".[1]

Along with Lenora Fulani, Newman controlled several socialist and progressive political, therapy, and dramatic collective groups across the USA. These groups promoted "friendosexuality", which encouraged members to sleep with each other.[1][4] Newman strongly objected to the classification of these groups as a "cult", and argued that "there is no such thing as a cult".[5]

Because Newman's organizations frequently changed names,[4] followers of Newman have been called Newmanites[5] or the Newman Tendency.[4]

  1. ^ a b c Martin, Douglas (July 9, 2011). "Fred Newman, Writer and Political Figure, Dies at 76". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 4, 2023.
  2. ^ Social Therapy Group website Archived 2006-08-10 at the Wayback Machine; retrieved October 2006
  3. ^ Holzman, L. (2004) Psychological Investigations: An Introduction to Social Therapy, a talk given at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of the UC system-wide Education for Sustainable Living Program.
  4. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference Stein2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ a b Tourish, Dennis; Wohlforth, Tim (2000). On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 9780765636409. It should come as no surprise that Fred Newman, Lenora Fulani, and other spokespeople for the group do not share our assessment that they run a cult. In fact in 1993 they took legal action against the FBI for characterizing them as a "political/cult organization." 71 Lenora Fulani stated that "the word 'cult' is a weapon, a murderously vicious, anti-democratic weapon used to attack people who are different in any way: religiously, politically, culturally or otherwise.... There is no such thing as a cult [emphasis in original]." 72 At the time Fulani and Newman's lobbying arm, Ross and Green, was running a campaign in defense of the Branch Davidians after the Waco disaster.