Atlas›Domain V · Systemic, relational, group & community›Guide 097
Guide V-097

Social therapy (Newman)

Fred Newman, Lois Holzman1975New York, USA
A 42 · L 36 · M 2218 interventions in the Trinity explorer
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[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: "classical" group social therapy as described by its founders, Fred Newman (1935–2011) and Lois Holzman, in their draft chapter "Activity and Performance (and their Discourses) in Social Therapeutic Method" (for Strong & Lock, eds., Discursive Perspectives in Therapeutic Practice, OUP, 2011); Holzman's later accounts ("How Much of a Loss is the Loss of Self"; "Constructing Social Therapeutics", 2020; Thessaloniki keynote, 2019); and the East Side Institute's current pages. The Institute's clinician manual, Holzman & Mendez (2003) Psychological Investigations: A Clinician's Guide to Social Therapy, and Newman's books (e.g. Let's Develop!, 1994) are not drawn on here [uncertain]. Where this guide goes beyond the texts named above it is marked [uncertain] or [synthesis]. Harm account: its allegations are cited to the following journalism, research and responses (The Nation 2004, Salon 1999, Aeon 2017, Jewish Currents 2016, Brown University's Hall-Hoag Collection, Cultic Studies Review 2003, Holzman 2011). The 1977–1993 originals (King, the Village Voice, Berlet's report, Radical America, NYT 1989 and 1991, the 1993 FBI suit), the 2011 NYT obituary itself and Newman's 2003 New Therapist interview are not drawn on directly; claims resting on them stay marked [uncertain].

What it is. Social therapy is a group-based, non-diagnostic psychotherapy that Fred Newman developed in New York from the mid-1970s. It is taught by the East Side Institute (New York), which Newman and Holzman co-founded. The Institute calls it "non-diagnostic and non-problem-oriented" and more philosophical and cultural than psychological. It is better understood as a method and community practice tradition ("social therapeutics") than as a manualised treatment. Its authors draw on Vygotsky (the zone of proximal development, "tool-and-result" method, "completion" of thought in speech), on Wittgenstein's philosophy as therapy, on a Marxist account of revolutionary activity, and on theatre and performance. [source: ESI social therapy page; Holzman 2020; Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]

How change is thought to happen. The unit of therapy is the group, not the individual. Members are not helped to solve their problems, interpret their past or find a truer story. Instead the group's task is to build itself into an environment in which everyone can get help. Doing that joint, creative activity together is what produces emotional development. People are supported to perform "a head taller" than they are, as Vygotsky said of children at play, in a collectively created zone of proximal development. Members are related to as who they are becoming, not as fixed identities with diagnoses. The authors put it as "we perform, therefore we become" (Holzman 2020). [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; Holzman 2013; Holzman 2020]

Status and controversy. The method is widely contested. Social therapy grew up alongside Newman's political organisations: the International Workers Party (mid-1970s) and the New Alliance Party (co-founded 1979; wound up in the 1990s, with sources giving 1992, 1994 or 1995), and later a faction of the Independence Party of New York; Holzman herself records the tie between the therapy, welfare-rights organising and the NAP. From 1977 onwards political investigators (Dennis King; Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates), the editors of Radical America, journalists (Joe Conason, Doug Ireland) and a researcher who interviewed former members (Alexandra Stein) alleged that therapy fed political recruitment, unpaid labour, fundraising and control; the 2011 New York Times obituary described "a sexually charged brand of psychotherapy". Newman called the criticism "absurd" and "sectarian" and Fulani called Berlet's report "a lie" (as reported; originals [uncertain]); the Institute's published material does not address the allegations. Details, attributed and with the status of each claim, are in the Harm account at the end of this tab, and the risks are flagged where the relevant techniques appear. Today the East Side Institute presents social therapy as a non-partisan training and community-practice organisation. [source: Holzman 2020; Hall-Hoag Collection 2013; Bush, Jewish Currents 2016; Conason, Salon 1999; Ireland, The Nation 2004; Stein, Aeon 2017; NYT obituary as quoted by Radosh 2011]

2. Framework

Social therapy has no published phase model, session protocol, fixed number of sessions or criteria for moving between phases, and it rejects diagnosis and treatment goals as organising tools. What the sources do describe is the structure below. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; Holzman 2020; ESI pages]

Format

  • Ongoing, open, heterogeneous groups. Optimally 10–20 members (the founders also describe groups of about 25). Members are deliberately mixed in age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, background and presenting problem, because diversity is treated as material for building. Members join and leave when they choose. [source: Holzman 2020; Holzman 2013; Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Weekly, about 90 minutes. [source: Holzman 2013; Holzman 2020]
  • Leader plus assistant. One therapist (leader or facilitator) works with an assistant. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Individual therapy alongside the group. Most group members have been, or still are, in individual therapy, sometimes at a social therapy centre. How individual social therapy sessions are conducted is not described in the sources. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft] [uncertain]
  • Other formats. Family, teen and children's groups are mentioned. So are short-term groups (for example for patients and caregivers affected by dementia and illness), virtual international groups ("Developing Across Borders") and community groups ("Creating Our Mental Health"). Their structure is not specified. [source: Holzman 2020; ESI study program]
  • Setting. Classical social therapy took place inside a "self-consciously organized" community of loosely connected projects: clinics, the Barbara Taylor School, the Castillo Theatre and the All Stars Project youth programmes. This embedding is central both to the method and to the harm concerns. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; Holzman 2020]
  • Fees. Historically on a sliding scale; early clients were asked to pay "as much as you can". [source: Holzman 2020]

Working trajectory (descriptive, not a protocol)

These stages are drawn from the founders' descriptions; their arrangement as a sequence is [synthesis].

  1. Joining. New members typically arrive wanting individual help with a problem, as in any group therapy. The therapist frames the work: the group is not there to fix problems or make people feel better, but to help members develop by building the group together. [source: Holzman 2020; Holzman 2013]
  2. Learning the group task. Members repeatedly hear the invitation to build the group as an invitation to get individual help. The therapist keeps reconvening the group to its collective task. The founders say understanding this difference can take years. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  3. Ensemble performance. The group increasingly works as an ensemble that "stages" a new therapy play each session. Members use their stories and pain as material to build with, not as problems to be solved. [source: Holzman 2013; Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  4. Ending. There are no stated discharge criteria; members leave at will. A sign of development is that members ask what they can give to the group, not what they can get. [source: Holzman 2020] Using the latter as a progress marker is [synthesis].

Training and "certification" The Institute offers several programmes:

  • Historically, a two-year therapist training. After New York licensing changes in 2003 it had very few enrolments.
  • The International Class: ten months, virtual study plus three residencies, from 2003.
  • A year-long Social Therapy Study Program: weekly observation of a social therapy group, biweekly discussion and study groups, then co-leading a virtual group.

The Institute's pages state no licence, credential or fidelity requirement for calling oneself a social therapist. Social therapy confers no professional licence. Clinicians must practise within their own licence and their own profession's ethics code. [source: Holzman 2020; ESI study program; ESI social therapy page] [uncertain: no formal certification rules are published]

3. Guiding principles

[source for this section: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; Holzman 2013; Holzman 2020; Holzman 2019 keynote; ESI social therapy page. The "practical meaning" lines are [synthesis] unless cited.]

  • The group is the therapeutic unit. Attend to how the group is doing its work, not to fixing one member's problem at a time.
  • Build the environment, don't deliver treatment. The therapist's job is to help the group create an environment "in which everyone can get help" (ESI). You support and organise; you don't diagnose and treat.
  • Development, not problem-solving or symptom relief. Don't set symptom targets. Ask what members are creating and becoming.
  • Non-diagnostic, anti-interpretive. Don't explain or interpret people's inner lives, or probe for a hidden self. Treat explanations, including psychological ones, as more material for the conversation.
  • Performance over narrative. Invite members to do something new with their stories, not to retell them better. Speaking as performance comes before speaking as narrative.
  • Perform "a head taller". Relate to people as able to do what they cannot yet do alone, the way adults relate to children at play (Vygotsky).
  • Completion. Others can complete a person's thought and speech, as carers do with an infant's babbling. Let members add to and build on each other's utterances instead of each speaking only for themselves.
  • Tool-and-result. The group makes the tool (how it talks) and the result (development) at the same time. The work is "more methodological than psychological" (Holzman 2013). Spend group time on how to talk about what members want to talk about.
  • Conversation is the activity; topic matters less. The founders say "pointless conversation is recommended". What counts is how the group talks, not finding the right content.
  • Relational activity. Meaning and emotion are made between people. Shift talk from "my feelings" to what we are doing together right now.
  • Diversity is material. Compose groups to be heterogeneous and use differences as things to build with, not obstacles.
  • Deconstruct fixed identity. Gently loosen fixed senses of self and identity ("I'm just someone who…") and rebuild them as social relationships. Do not attack them. (See the harm risk in Section 4: the same principle, used coercively, is linked by former members to control.)
  • Philosophising and play. The Institute calls the approach "playfully philosophical". Questioning ordinary categories (problem, solution, self, cause) is part of the work.
  • "Yes, and". Respond to whatever members and communities bring by building on it (keynote).
  • Ethics and transparency (added by this guide). This is not a founders' principle. Given the documented history, a clinician adapting the method must keep group building separate from any political, fundraising or organisational agenda, and must uphold ordinary professional boundaries. [synthesis]

4. Intervention inventory

The founders describe a method, not a technique list. They deliberately avoid scripts, and the sources used contain no session transcripts. The items below are the concrete therapist activities named in the founders' texts. The step-by-step breakdowns turn the founders' descriptions into operational form and are therefore partly [synthesis]; the source for each activity is cited. All example language is illustrative unless quoted. Interventions described only in the clinician manual (Holzman & Mendez 2003) may be missing [uncertain].

4.1 Framing the work for new members (contracting)

  • Purpose / when: At intake and when a new member joins an ongoing group. Sets the expectation that the group is not a place to have problems fixed but to develop by building the group together. [source: Holzman 2020; ESI social therapy page]
  • Steps:
    1. Explain the format: ongoing, open, weekly, about 90 minutes, mixed membership, with a leader and an assistant.
    2. Say plainly that the group won't diagnose or solve individual problems. Its task is to become an environment in which everyone can get help.
    3. Expect the new member to hear this as "so the group will help me". Don't argue; say you'll come back to it as you go.
    4. [synthesis, ethics] Give written information on fees (sliding scale if used), confidentiality and how to leave. State that participation carries no expectation of volunteering, donating or joining any organisation, and how to raise a complaint outside the group.
  • Example language (illustrative): "This group isn't set up to fix what brought you here. We'll be working together on making the group a place where everyone, you included, can get help. That's an odd idea at first; we'll keep working on it."
  • Watch for: confusion or disappointment, which is expected. Explicit, documented consent and a clear exit route are especially important given the method's history [synthesis].

4.2 Composing a heterogeneous group

  • Purpose / when: When setting up or adding to a group. Diversity is treated as building material, not a problem to manage. [source: Holzman 2020; Holzman 2019 keynote; Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Steps:
    1. Recruit across age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, background and presenting problem rather than forming homogeneous diagnostic groups.
    2. Aim for about 10–20 members. The founders also describe groups of about 25.
    3. [synthesis] Screen for safety as in any open process group: acute suicidality, active psychosis, or a member who is the current partner, employee or relative of another member or of the therapist. The founders' non-diagnostic stance does not remove your duty to assess risk.
  • Watch for: members who need structured, symptom-focused treatment. Refer them on, or arrange it in parallel [synthesis].

4.3 Posing the group-building task

  • Purpose / when: The core intervention, made from the first session onwards and repeatedly. It turns the group from a collection of individuals seeking help into an ensemble responsible for creating a helpful environment. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; ESI social therapy page]
  • Steps:
    1. Members open, as usual, by raising things they want help with. Let this happen. [source: Holzman 2013]
    2. Rather than picking one problem to work on, ask the group how it is going to organise itself to help with what's been raised.
    3. Keep returning the responsibility to the group, not to yourself or the person who spoke.
    4. When the group does something together (one member builds on another, people relate across differences), name it as the group's activity.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Three people have brought something important. What does the group want to do with all of that?" / "How are we doing as a group right now at being somewhere people can get help?"
  • Watch for: members turning to the therapist as expert, or one member monopolising. It's working when members start addressing the group and asking each other how to proceed.

4.4 Reconvening the group

  • Purpose / when: When the session drifts into one-to-one problem-solving (between therapist and member, or between two members). The founders say the therapist does this, sometimes firmly. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Steps:
    1. Notice the shift: the rest of the group goes quiet or into advice-giving to one person.
    2. Interrupt briefly and respectfully.
    3. Turn attention back to the whole group and to what it is doing.
    4. Don't dismiss the person's content; place it as the group's material.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let me stop us. This has become a conversation between Ana and me and everyone else is watching. What's the group doing with what Ana has brought?"
  • Watch for: the person feeling shut down. Briefly check in with them [synthesis]. If reconvening is used to silence complaints about the group or the therapist, that is a misuse (see Harm account).

4.5 Working on how to talk, not what to talk about (methodological focus)

  • Purpose / when: When the group is stuck on content, searching for the "real issue", or arguing about whose problem matters most. The task is "figuring out how to talk about what they want to talk about" (Holzman 2013). [source: Holzman 2013; Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Steps:
    1. Shift the question from what the problem is to how the group can have this conversation.
    2. Invite proposals for how to proceed and try one.
    3. Afterwards, ask what kind of conversation the group just made.
  • Example language (illustrative): "We keep trying to find the right topic. What if the question is how we want to talk together tonight?"
  • Watch for: members experiencing this as avoiding their pain. It's working when the conversation becomes more inclusive and less adversarial.

4.6 "Pointless" and philosophical conversation

  • Purpose / when: To loosen goal-directed, problem–solution talk. The founders say "pointless conversation is recommended"; the Institute calls the approach "playfully philosophical". [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; ESI study program]
  • Steps:
    1. Allow conversation without a target outcome.
    2. When ordinary categories carry the weight ("my problem", "what caused it", "who I really am"), wonder aloud about them with the group, curiously, without lecturing.
    3. Keep it playful. The point is to open new ways of speaking, not to win an argument.
  • Example language (illustrative): "We all say 'my anxiety' as if it's something we own. What happens if we talk about it as something going on between us right now?"
  • Watch for: philosophising that becomes intellectualised, or that the therapist dominates. Stop if it feels to members like being talked down to [synthesis].

4.7 Performance rather than narrative: building with stories

  • Purpose / when: When a member brings a painful story. The aim is not to make the story prettier or solve it but to use it as material to create something new together. Newman's image, from his theatre work, is building with "garbage" (damaged material). [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; Holzman 2013]
  • Steps:
    1. Let the story be told.
    2. Instead of interpreting or advising, invite the group to do something with it: respond, add to it, take it somewhere new.
    3. Invite the teller to say it, or respond to it, in a new way (perform rather than narrate), for example as who they are becoming.
    4. Respect refusal. The founders report participants who could tell painful stories fluently but would not perform them, and treat this as a limit they met, not something to push through. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Example language (illustrative): "You've told this story many times, and told it well. What could the group make with it tonight that isn't the same story again?"
  • Watch for: retraumatisation with trauma material. Don't push "performing" of traumatic events; offer grounding and make declining easy. Trauma-focused treatment belongs elsewhere [synthesis]. It's working when members respond freshly instead of repeating familiar roles.

4.8 Completion and creative imitation

  • Purpose / when: Based on Vygotsky. Thinking is completed in speaking, and others can complete a person's speech, as carers do with babbling infants. This lets people perform beyond their current ability. Use it when members speak tentatively or can't find words. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; Holzman 2020]
  • Steps:
    1. When someone offers a half-formed utterance, invite others to add to it, not to correct or interpret it.
    2. Treat the result as jointly authored.
    3. Check back with the original speaker whether the completion helps them go further. Don't treat it as a correct reading of their mind [synthesis].
  • Example language (illustrative): "Sam started something there. Who can build on it, not explain it?"
  • Watch for: people talking over or speaking for a member, especially quieter or marginalised members. Completion must not become others defining someone's experience for them [synthesis].

4.9 Relating to people as "a head taller" (who they are becoming)

  • Purpose / when: Throughout. Members are supported to "do what is beyond them" and related to as who they are becoming, not as a diagnosis. [source: Holzman 2013; Holzman 2019 keynote; ESI social therapy page]
  • Steps:
    1. When a member says "I can't" or "I'm not someone who…", invite them to try it here, as a performance, with the group's support.
    2. Make it safe to be clumsy. Treat the attempt as development, not as being judged.
    3. Let the group support the attempt (applause and appreciation are used in Institute exercises) [source: Holzman 2019 keynote].
  • Example language (illustrative): "You say you never stand up for yourself. Would you be willing to perform someone who does, just here, just for a minute?"
  • Watch for: pressure. An invitation must be refusable without cost [synthesis].

4.10 Asking what members can give to the group

  • Purpose / when: To shift members from consumers of help to contributors to a shared environment. Members are not treated as "the most special person in the room" but asked what they can give to the group. [source: Holzman 2020]
  • Steps:
    1. When a member is preoccupied with getting help, ask what they could contribute to the group's work right now.
    2. Treat contributions to the conversation as giving.
    3. [synthesis, ethics] Keep "giving" strictly to participation in the session. Never link it to money, labour, volunteering or recruitment.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You've been waiting for the group to get to you. What could you give to what's going on here right now?"
  • Watch for: harm risk. Former members describe how a culture of giving to the group shaded into demands for unpaid work and money (see Harm account). Any extension of "giving" beyond the session is a red flag.

4.11 The session as an ensemble play ("theatre without a stage")

  • Purpose / when: The organising image for the whole session. Newman, who directed at the Castillo Theatre, came to see each group session as a new therapy play the members stage together, a "theatre without a stage". [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; Holzman 2013; Holzman 2020]
  • Steps:
    1. Treat each session as unrepeatable: no agenda carried over as unfinished business.
    2. Relate to members as an ensemble of performers. Social roles and familiar "lines" are material to improvise with, not to be stuck in.
    3. Near the end, invite the group to reflect on what it created tonight, not on what it solved [synthesis].
  • Example language (illustrative): "If tonight were a play we'd made together, what kind of play was it?"
  • Watch for: members feeling the theatre frame trivialises real suffering. Acknowledge the pain directly [synthesis]. The founders expect bewilderment; Newman's ideal audience member leaves wondering what on earth just happened. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]

4.12 Deconstructing fixed identity and "truth" of stories

  • Purpose / when: To loosen deep-rooted senses of self and identity and rebuild them as social relationships, and to expose the fictional quality of the stories people live by. Use it when a member's fixed self-description blocks new activity. [source: Holzman 2020; Holzman 2013; Holzman 2019 keynote]
  • Steps:
    1. Notice identity statements used as explanations ("That's just who I am").
    2. Wonder with the group what that statement does in the conversation, rather than whether it is true.
    3. Invite an alternative performance (4.9).
    4. [synthesis, safeguard] Never deconstruct a member's cultural, ethnic, sexual or family identity against their wishes, and never use it to weaken outside relationships. Protect a member's right to keep their self-understanding.
  • Example language (illustrative): "'I'm a loner' has come up a few times. What does saying it let us do, or stop us doing, right here?"
  • Watch for: harm risk. A former member is quoted as saying anything brought from one's background "is deconstructed" (Stein 2017). Applied systematically and coercively, this principle is associated in former-member accounts with loss of independent judgement and detachment from family. Stop if the member shows distress, confusion about reality, or growing dependence on the group [synthesis].

4.13 Responding to "I've got it" and to quick closure

  • Purpose / when: When a member announces an insight or a solution that closes down the conversation. The founders report that the group often challenges such claims. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Steps:
    1. Welcome the contribution.
    2. Ask the group what happens to the conversation once something is "got".
    3. Keep the activity open. Do not humiliate the member.
  • Example language (illustrative): "That sounds like a real shift. What does the group want to do with it, so it isn't just a full stop?"
  • Watch for: group challenging that turns into ganging up. Intervene to protect the member [synthesis].

4.14 Calling a stop

  • Purpose / when: One of the therapist's few formal functions is to end the session. The founders cite the phrase "I think we have to stop". [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Steps: Keep to time. End clearly, without forcing resolution. [synthesis] If a member is visibly distressed, offer a brief check-in after the group and follow your service's risk procedures.
  • Watch for: sessions running late into the night. Former members describe very late meetings as part of a control pattern (Stein 2017). Firm time boundaries are protective [synthesis].

4.15 Leader–assistant co-working

  • Purpose / when: The founders describe a leader working with an assistant. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft] Trainees learn by observing and then co-leading. [source: ESI study program]
  • Steps: [synthesis] Agree roles before each session (who reconvenes, who tracks quieter members). Debrief afterwards on how the group worked as a group and on any risk or boundary concerns.
  • Watch for: co-leaders who are also members' employers, political organisers or intimate partners. That is a dual-relationship breach [synthesis].

4.16 Performance and improvisation activities (workshop and community settings)

  • Purpose / when: Used in Institute workshops, community and youth programmes (the All Stars talent shows), not necessarily in therapy groups. They build an ensemble and practise performing beyond one's role. [source: Holzman 2019 keynote; Holzman 2020]
  • Steps (story exchange, as described in the keynote):
    1. Pair participants and assign A and B.
    2. A asks B for their story for two minutes; then swap.
    3. Close with applause.
    • Other activities: inviting participants up to improvise, using a "yes, and" stance. Youth talent shows were organised by the young people themselves, who produced, ran the technical side and recruited audiences.
  • Example language: the slogan "If you can perform on stage, you can perform in life" was used at the talent shows. [source: Holzman 2019 keynote]
  • Watch for: people who find performance exposing. Always offer an observer role [synthesis].

4.17 Learning the method by doing it (tool-and-result training)

  • Purpose / when: For clinicians who want to practise social therapy. The method is learned by practising it: the training group creates the learning environment and the learning at the same time. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft; ESI study program]
  • Steps:
    1. Observe a running social therapy group weekly.
    2. Join discussion and study groups on the founders' concepts.
    3. Co-lead a group, typically a virtual one.
    4. [synthesis] Arrange clinical supervision with a supervisor outside the training organisation, and keep to your licensing board's rules on scope and record keeping. The Institute itself declined diagnosis and record-keeping requirements (Holzman 2020).
  • Watch for: training that requires you to enter therapy with the trainers, to volunteer or donate, or to treat critics as enemies. These are red flags (see Harm account) [synthesis].

Not covered

Individual, couples and family social therapy procedures are mentioned but not described in the sources [uncertain]. Do not infer them from the group method.

5. Handling problems

The founders' texts address only a few difficulties: members mishearing the group task, drift to individual problem-solving, and people unwilling to perform. Everything else below is [synthesis] from general group-therapy practice, adapted to this method.

  • Member keeps asking for individual help. The founders treat this as expected; understanding the group task can take years. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft] Reconvene (4.4) and pose the group task (4.3) without shaming the member. [synthesis] If a member's need is acute (crisis, risk, a pressing practical problem), meet it directly, through individual sessions or referral. Do not hold to method at the cost of safety.
  • Unwillingness to perform. The founders report trainees who told painful stories fluently but would not perform them, and present this as a limit, not as resistance to be broken. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft] [synthesis] Offer smaller steps (one line, or an observer role) and accept "no".
  • Bewilderment or frustration at the method. The founders expect members to be puzzled. [source: Holzman & Newman 2011 draft] [synthesis] Explain the rationale plainly when asked. Mystification should never be used as a source of the leader's authority (see Harm account).
  • Overwhelm or trauma material. [synthesis] Because the method avoids diagnosis and interpretation, it gives no protocol for dissociation, flashbacks or panic in session. Slow the pace. Ground the person. Take the focus off "performing" the trauma, and offer trauma-specific treatment outside the group.
  • Risk (suicidality, self-harm, psychosis, safeguarding). [synthesis] A non-diagnostic stance does not remove your duty to assess risk. Use standard risk assessment and safety planning, follow your service's protocols, and keep records your licence requires. Holzman (2020) reports that the Institute declined New York's diagnosis and record requirements; a licensed clinician cannot.
  • Rupture: feeling silenced by reconvening. [synthesis] Name it. Acknowledge the cost to the member. Ask the group how to include them. Repair individually if needed.
  • Rupture: the group ganging up (for example while challenging an "I've got it", 4.13). [synthesis] Stop the process, protect the member and restate the norm: build on each other, don't take each other apart.
  • Members over-identifying with the group or the leader. [synthesis] Watch for members cutting outside ties, taking on unpaid work for the organisation, deferring all decisions to the group, or attending many meetings a week. Actively encourage outside relationships and independent judgement. This is the boundary between group building and the totalist dynamics described below.
  • Non-attendance. Groups are open and members come and go at will. [source: Holzman 2013] [synthesis] Don't chase or pressure. Check in once by an agreed route and respect a decision to leave. Pressure to stay is a red flag.
  • Dual relationships. [synthesis] Do not treat clients who are your colleagues in a political, artistic or business project, or members of an organisation you lead. Do not recruit clients into any of your projects. Do not ask clients for donations or volunteer labour.
  • Sexual boundaries. [synthesis, required by all professional codes] Sexual contact between therapist and client is prohibited. So is a therapist arranging or encouraging sexual relationships among group members. Newman's reported rejection of professional ethics codes, and the sexual practices former members describe, are among the harms reported below (with the status of each claim).
  • Clients who previously took part in Newman-linked therapy or political groups. See "What to do instead" below.

Harm account

This section reports allegations made by political investigators, journalists, a researcher and former members. Every claim is attributed to whoever made it; none has been tested in a court finding against social therapy as a clinical practice. Newman and Fulani rejected the "cult" characterisation (their published responses are given below), and the East Side Institute's published material does not address the allegations. Sources used directly: Ireland (The Nation, 2004), Conason (Salon, 1999), Stein (Aeon, 2017), Bush (Jewish Currents, 2016), Brown University Library's Hall-Hoag Collection note on the NAP (2013), a Cultic Studies Review news summary of a 2003 Charlotte Observer report, and Holzman's 2011 reply to the NYT obituary, which reproduces the obituary's full text. Older originals (Berlet 1987, Radical America 1987/88, NYT 1989 and 1991, the 1993 FBI suit) and Newman's 2003 New Therapist interview are cited through secondary accounts; claims resting on them name the original and are marked [uncertain]. Ireland and Conason wrote opinion columns relying partly on unnamed sources; Stein's accounts are former-member testimony.

What was actually done

  • Political-organisational embedding (documented, including by the founders).
    • Newman's International Workers Party (IWP) was a Marxist-Leninist cadre organisation formed in the mid-1970s after a short-lived alliance with Lyndon LaRouche's movement. [source: Bush 2016; Radosh 2011] Its later status (formally disbanded, or continuing as a core group, as critics alleged) is not settled in the sources used. [uncertain: secondary, unverified]
    • The New Alliance Party (NAP), co-founded by Newman and Lenora Fulani in New York in 1979, put Fulani on the presidential ballot in all 50 states in 1988. Its end is dated 1992 (Conason 1999) or 1995 (Hall-Hoag Collection 2013) [uncertain: date]. Its activists then worked through the Reform Party and the Independence Party of New York. [source: Hall-Hoag Collection 2013; Conason 1999; Ireland 2004; Radosh 2011]
    • Holzman herself records that social therapy was tied to welfare-rights organising and the NAP, and that its community clinics, school, theatre and youth projects formed one loosely connected community. [source: Holzman 2020; Holzman & Newman 2011 draft]
  • Recruitment through therapy and therapy as a requirement (allegations, by who made them).
    • Early critics. Bush (2016) records that the researcher Dennis King and Chip Berlet regarded the group as a "cult" from the 1970s onward. [source: Bush 2016]
    • Political Research Associates and Radical America. Chip Berlet's report Clouds Blur the Rainbow (1987; parts printed in Radical America 21(5), dated Sept–Oct 1987) criticised the NAP's "totalitarian control methods" and called Newman's group "cult like". [source: Hall-Hoag Collection 2013] The Radical America editors (1988) accused the NAP of "manipulative and cult-like practices". [source: Bush 2016] Berlet also set out his criticisms on NPR's Fresh Air (3 Feb 1992), which interviewed Newman separately (content not described here). [source: Fresh Air archive]
    • Journalists. Conason (Salon, 1999; opinion column, unnamed sources) wrote that therapy patients were "encouraged, and some say coerced," into giving time and money to Newman's political groups, and that inner members took their "mandated 'therapy'" directly from Newman. Doug Ireland (The Nation, 2004; opinion column) quoted an unnamed "deprogrammed former member" who called social therapy a "sophisticated indoctrination methodology" used to lure "patients" into political activity. [source: Conason 1999; Ireland 2004]
    • Former members interviewed by a researcher. In interviews for her doctoral research, Stein found that people recruited through the group's programmes were mandated to enter therapy that they had to pay for; two interviewees, one of them ("Denise") previously apolitical, were brought in through therapy. [source: Stein 2017]
    • Activist critic of high-control groups. In 2003 Rick Ross told the Charlotte Observer that social therapy was cult-like and had "devastated" some former members, who likened it to brainwashing. [source: Cultic Studies Review 2(3), 2003, news summary of Rothacker, Charlotte Observer, 26 May 2003]
    • Responses. Newman reportedly called the criticisms "absurd", put them down to jealousy on the left and said most social therapy clients take no part in his political activities (New York Times, 19 Dec 1991); in 1989 he reportedly said critics were "being sectarian" (NYT, 9 Sept 1989); in 2003 he reportedly called the "cult" charge "hostile, mean-spirited, and destructive" (New Therapist 24). Fulani reportedly said of Berlet's report "the entire thing is a lie" (Boston Globe, 13 Feb 1992). [source: Wikipedia, Fred Newman] [uncertain: secondary, unverified] Bush (2016) quotes Newman's rejoinder: "We don't repress individuality; we critique it." Holzman's public reply to the 2011 NYT obituary praised Newman and did not address the allegations. [source: Holzman 2011] The East Side Institute's published pages do not discuss them.
  • Labour, money and living arrangements. According to Stein's interviewees:
    • Members gradually gave up outside jobs to work for the group, often off the books.
    • They lived in shared apartments and attended meetings late into the night.
    • Members with money were "soon parted from it".
    • Denise worked long, mostly unpaid shifts and, while on the road for a campaign, phoned in from telephone booths for therapy that she paid for. [source: Stein 2017]
    • Ireland (2004) asserted that Newman's front groups subsidised his and Fulani's "lavish lifestyles" (opinion; no evidence given). In 2003 a dissident Independence Party coalition asked Wachovia to drop an $8.5 million bond issue for the Newman-linked All Stars Project, citing its leaders' social therapy. [source: Ireland 2004; Cultic Studies Review 2003 news summary]
  • Monitoring. Each member was assigned a "friend" whose role was to monitor and criticise them. [source: Stein 2017]
  • Sexual relationships.
    • The New York Times obituary (Douglas Martin, 9 July 2011) said Newman "fostered a sexually charged brand of psychotherapy". [source: NYT 2011, full text reproduced in Holzman 2011; also quoted by Radosh 2011]
    • Former members told Stein that the group promoted "friendosexuality", pairing followers in casual sexual relationships; that Newman's "wives" or "harem" were his most trusted lieutenants and at times his sexual partners; and that about 40 "lifers" formed the next layer and did much of the social therapy. [source: Stein 2017]
    • Whether Newman had sexual relationships with his own therapy clients specifically is not established in the sources [uncertain].
  • Reproduction and family. Stein reports that Newman told some women in the group to have abortions, that few members had children while involved, and that one former member left after the leadership told her to put her child into foster care. [source: Stein 2017] [single-source testimony]
  • Uncorroborated claims. Stein also refers to financial fraud and a stash of weapons known only to the inner circle. The essay gives no evidence for these, and no independent corroboration is available [uncertain].
  • Later history of the "cult" label. Berlet's magazine The Public Eye later said the "cult" categorisation was "no longer accurate" (date not given). [source: Bush 2016] In 1993 Newman, Fulani and the NAP reportedly sued the FBI (New Alliance Party v. FBI, 93 Civ. 3490) over the "political cult" label in FBI files, and the court reportedly found the label could not be directly traced to the FBI's 1988 investigation. [source: Wikipedia, Fred Newman] [uncertain: secondary, unverified]

How it caused harm

[synthesis of mechanisms, drawing on Stein 2017 unless stated]

  • Dual roles. The therapist was also the political leader, employer and landlord, with sexual and social ties to members. Clients' disclosures and dependency could then be used for the organisation's aims. Therapy fees and unpaid labour both flowed to the same organisation.
  • Fear and attachment. Stein argues that totalist groups alternate fear with "love" and make the leader the only safe haven. This produces disorganised attachment, "fright without solution", and dissociation that impairs clear thinking about the relationship. Former members described being "so afraid" and feeling they "would take a bullet for Fred". [source: Stein 2017]
  • Isolation. Restricting relationships with outsiders, sharing group housing, leaving outside jobs and monitoring by "friends" removed other sources of support and reality-testing. [source: Stein 2017]
  • Erosion of self and judgement. A former member said anything brought from your own background "is deconstructed", and that over time preposterous things came to seem normal. [source: Stein 2017]
  • Documented outcomes (testimony): loss of income and savings; years of unpaid work; reproductive coercion; neglect of children and family separation; fear and difficulty leaving. [source: Stein 2017 (former-member testimony); Conason 1999 (time and money only); Rick Ross to the Charlotte Observer, 2003, via Cultic Studies Review (some former members "devastated", likening it to brainwashing)]
  • Who was most at risk [synthesis]: people seeking therapy in distress or isolation, on low incomes (sliding-scale and community-clinic routes), young idealistic people, and those already in individual social therapy with someone in the organisation.

Recognising it today

[synthesis unless cited]

Red flags in a group, service or training:

  • Therapy or training that leads into volunteering, fundraising, campaigning or donating for an organisation linked to the therapist.
  • Therapy required as a condition of membership or employment.
  • Clients told, or nudged by group culture, that "giving to the group" means money or labour.
  • Therapists who are also the client's political leader, employer, landlord or sexual partner, or who encourage sexual pairings among members.
  • Rejection of professional codes ("we don't take our ethics from the APA").
  • Critics dismissed as enemies or as "sectarian".
  • An assigned buddy who reports on you.
  • Meetings late into the night.
  • Pressure to cut off family or to make reproductive or child-custody decisions for the group.
  • Systematic deconstruction of every belief and identity a member brings.

How legitimate practice differs:

  • Group building, performance, improvisation and Vygotskian ideas are used for emotional development within the session only.
  • Fees are transparent and separate from any other organisation.
  • There are no recruitment or fundraising requests and no dual relationships.
  • The therapist follows the licensing board's ethics code, including the sexual-contact prohibition.
  • Exit is easy, and outside relationships are actively supported.

The sources contain no evidence about current East Side Institute practice either way [uncertain]. Judge any present-day group on its conduct, not its lineage.

What to do instead and how to help those harmed

[synthesis unless cited]

  • Alternatives. For people who value a developmental, group-centred approach: established group psychotherapies (interpersonal or psychodynamic process groups, group analysis), psychodrama or drama therapy with registered practitioners, and Vygotskian or performance-based educational programmes run independently of any political organisation. All of these should operate under a licensing body with an ethics code.
  • Assessment of former members.
    • Ask about the time, money and work given, housing, relationships formed or ended in the group, any sexual contact with therapists or leaders, reproductive and child-care decisions, and current contact with the group.
    • Screen for PTSD and complex PTSD, depression, dissociation, shame, financial hardship and loss of social network.
    • Avoid confrontational "deprogramming" styles; Stein warns that threatening challenges can deepen attachment to the group. [source: Stein 2017]
  • Treatment.
    • Offer a stable, transparent, boundaried relationship as a contrast to the group's.
    • Provide psychoeducation on how coercive control works, which Stein argues is protective, and survivor testimony where the client wants it. [source: Stein 2017]
    • Rebuild outside attachments and independent decision-making.
    • Grieve lost years and relationships.
    • Use trauma-focused treatment where indicated.
    • Be careful with group formats and performance exercises that resemble social therapy; start with individual work and let the client choose.
  • Ethical, reporting and legal duties.
    • If a client discloses sexual contact with a licensed therapist, inform them of their right to complain to that therapist's licensing board. In some jurisdictions the treating clinician has a reporting duty; check yours.
    • Report child-protection concerns as required.
    • Signpost clients to legal advice about unpaid labour, financial exploitation or misused charitable funds.
    • Document carefully.
    • Do not treat current members of an organisation in which you are involved.

Sources

Pages used

Further pages used for the Harm account

Books and theses cited (cited through the sources above) [uncertain]

  • Holzman, L. & Mendez, R. (eds.) (2003). Psychological Investigations: A Clinician's Guide to Social Therapy. Brunner-Routledge.
  • Newman, F. (1994). Let's Develop! A Guide to Continuous Personal Growth. Castillo.
  • Newman, F. & Holzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist. Routledge.
  • Stein, A. (2016). Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems. Routledge.
  • Stein, A. (2007). Attachment, Networks and Discourse in Extremist Political Organizations (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota).
  • Berlet, C. (1987). Clouds Blur the Rainbow: The Other Side of the New Alliance Party. Political Research Associates. Catalogue record of a digitised copy: Lowcountry Digital Library, College of Charleston.
  • Tourish, D. & Wohlforth, T. (2000). On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left. M.E. Sharpe.
  • Martin, D. (2011, July 9). Fred Newman, writer and political figure, dies at 76. New York Times. (Full text reproduced in Holzman 2011, listed above.)
  • New Therapist 24 (2003), special issue on mind control.

Originals named in the Harm account (cited through secondary accounts) [uncertain]

  • Radical America 21(5) (dated Sept–Oct 1987, issued 1988): editors' statement on the NAP and excerpts of Berlet's report.
  • New York Times (1989, Sept. 9). Party, Described as Cult, Seeks Role in Primary.
  • New York Times (1991, Dec. 19). Street-Wise Impresario; Sharpton Calls the Tunes, and Players Take Their Cues.
  • Boston Globe (1992, Feb. 13): Fulani's response to Political Research Associates.
  • New Alliance Party v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 93 Civ. 3490 (1993).
  • Söderlund, J. (2003). Culture shock (interview with Fred Newman). New Therapist 24.
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