An Introduction to Fred Newman and Psychology

(Foreward by Kenneth Gergen to Performing Psychology.)

The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of the study. Read more...

Articles by Fred Newman toward a Postmodern Psychology

All Power to the Developing!
Annual Review of Critical Psychology 2003
Over nearly three decades we have described our work (our politics) in many different ways. Perhaps this is an expression or result of differing elements of our joint subjectivity—a moral and scientific aversion to labels and being labeled, an intellectual delight in the search for a (never-realizable) linguistic precision.

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Undecidable Emotions
Journal of Constructivist Psychology 2003
Social therapy, as I understand it, is done (performed) ² with groups of people. Hence, a most basic (theoretic) question, so far as I can tell, is: what is a group? My answer(s) to this question (fundamental to my understanding of psychology and therapy) derive more from my studies of set theory and foundations of logic and mathematics (which I have studied modestly) than from anthropology or sociology (which I have not studied seriously at all). Read more...

Vygotsky's Tool and Result Methodology
Chapter 3, Lev Vygotsky Revolutionary Scientist 1993
The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of the study. Read more...

Therapeutic Deconstruction of the Illusion of Self
Performing Psychology 1999
I'm a little intimidated by my own title which rings rather academic. But coming up with that title has been of value to me, because it's made me think about some things that I haven't thought about in this particular way for a long time. So let me share with you what the title is about and maybe, if we can comprehend the title together, we'll have made some kind of step forward. Read more...