Fred Newman.09-04-95 Original air date

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• published: 05 Mar 2010
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Fred Newman . Born in 1935 in the Bronx, New York, Newman grew up in a working-class neighborhood. He served in the Army, including a stint in Korea. Later he attended the City College of New York under the G.I. Bill. Newman earned a Ph.D. in analytic philosophy and foundations of mathematics from Stanford University in 1962. Following his graduate work at Stanford, Newman taught at several colleges and universities in the 1960s, including the City College of New York, Knox College, Case Western Reserve University, and Antioch College. Newman considers himself a Marxist,[3] a philosophy which he incorporated into his therapeutic approach in an attempt to address the alienating effects of societal institutions on human development. In his earliest statement of his attempt to develop a Marxist approach to emotional problems, Newman wrote in 1974: 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.[4] In more recent years, Newman (along with his primary collaborator, Lois Holzman) has incorporated other influences, including the 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Aleksey Leontyev's and Sergei Rubinshtein's activity theory, and the work of early Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky.[5][6] Newman and Holzman have challenged what they describe as the "hoax/myth of psychology", the various components of which are "destructive pieces of pseudoscience."[7] Newman founded the collective Centers for Change (CFC) in the late 1960s after the student strikes at Columbia University.[8] CFC was dedicated to 60s-style, radical community organizing and the practice of Newman's evolving form of psychotherapy which he would term (circa 1974) "proletarian therapy", later "Social Therapy".[9] CFC briefly merged with Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) in 1974. Within a few months, however, the alliance fell apart, an event which Newman attributed to LaRouche's increasingly "paranoid", "authoritarian" direction[10] and the NCLC's "capacity to produce psychosis and to opportunistically manipulate it in the name of socialist politics."[11] In August 1974, the CFC went on to found the International Workers Party (IWP), an explicitly Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party. In the wake of another factional fight in 1976, the IWP publicly disbanded. In 2005, Newman told The New York Times that the IWP had transformed into a "core collective" that continues to function.[12] This claim appears to be consistent with critics who had alleged several years earlier that the organization had never actually disbanded and remained secretly active.[13][14] Throughout the latter part of the 1970s, Newman and his core of organizers founded, or assumed control of, a number of small grassroots organizations, including a local branch of the People's Party known as the New York Working People's Party; the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council; and the Labor Community Alliance for Change.[15][16][17] In 1979, Newman became one of the founders of the New Alliance Party (NAP), most notable for getting African American psychologist and activist Lenora Fulani on the ballot in all 50 states during her 1988 presidential campaign (making her the first African American and first woman to do so). Newman served primarily as the party's tactician and campaign manager.[citation needed] In 1985, Newman ran for Mayor of New York. He also ran for United States Senator in 1985 and for New York State Attorney General in 1990.