1	Lois Shawver	While we are waiting for questions to be posted, and they will be shortly, let me thank you for reading our posts. Do you feel that some parts of the conversations we had about you were relevant to what you would like to tell us about? Sometimes we may have gone off on tangents.
2	Fred Newman	I think that I'm disposed to think that everything is relevant and that there are no tangents. I found pretty much everything that was talked about of interest and provocative. It's very valuable to me to hear how other people hear what I have to say. After all in writing as well as in speaking what we're typically trying to do is clarify what we're trying to do. But that's often altogether different than what people hear us -- Lois [Holzman] and I -- saying. So for example, I was struck by the fact that a lot of how people on the list read what I'm saying takes the form of a contrast and/or debate and/or comparison between (in philosophical language) particulars and universals. Or more psychologically speaking, between the individual and the group. So questions were asked about the group mind, or which is more dominant for me the group or individual, but as I understand it the point that I'm trying to make is to suggest that it might be time to get rid of that distinction. That the group/individual dichotomy, like the universal/particular dichotomy, might be ready for the dustbin of history. In some ways, I've always been moved by Rorty's eloquent and ultimate statement about Truth with a capital "T". Namely, that he is no longer interested in that issue. I feel similarly about this group vs. individual distinction. I think it stands in the way of understanding development.
3	Val Lewis:	Delighted you're with us today, which is around 8 am Monday morning over here [in Australia]. My question is one I've been wanting to ask since I first read (and much enjoyed) your writings a few years ago. I'd like you to expound on the term 'therapy' in social therapy. As I understand [social therapy's] more revolutionary and postmodern aspects, it has struck me as not being like 'therapy' in the traditional sense, which word tends to reflect an element of 'getting fixed' which in turn can conjure up certain structuralist assumptions. If you were starting again, with the benefit of hindsight, would you still call it 'therapy'? And if so, why would you?
4	Fred Newman:	I think you're right that the term therapy does imply being fixed and that has little or nothing to do with what we do is social therapy. However, part of why we called it and continue to call it social therapy is that people come to it to seek help with a certain set of expectations. Our understanding of what we do to help them is not to fix them, but to help them grow and develop, which they find and we find valuable. So we don't see what we do as a fixing and the process of social therapy is to help people to come to see that growth rather than repair is what's going to make a difference to them. We continue to use the term therapy and to do something which is quite different than traditional therapy. and indeed that contradiction is an important part of the social therapeutic process.
5	Jerry Shaffer	While you are pondering the question from Down Under, here's one from practically next door, in Storrs Connecticut. I was struck by your remark in "Undecidable Emotions" that "Every social therapy group, every week, makes a revolution. And in doing so, making revolutionary history (development) is the cure." I wonder if you could amplify that.
6	Fred Newman	Dear Jerry, thank you for that question and for all of your interesting observations. I think that observation of mine has to be understood in the context of a modernist conception of revolution. which I not only understood for a long time but adhered to. The modernist notion of revolution seems to me to have insisted that revolutionary activity had to somehow or another directly engage the structural core of a society. But after many many years of thinking about this, I'm no longer convinced that there is a structural core, so that for me -- at this point in my life -- the revolutionary process has more to do with an infinitude of continuous developmental growth activities -- ultimately I would hope involving the world's population. But the revolutionary process it seems to me does not have to adhere to the modernist conception, #1 of striking at the core and #2 of being destructive, but rather is the continuous and overlapping infinitude of processes of people collectively creating something new. For example, one way of thinking about this is a shift from the early Wittgensteinian notion manifest in the Tractatus, of discovering a formal structural analysis of language -- to the latter Wittgenstein of the Investigations, which reflects on the fundamentality of process in the evolution of language.
7	Riet Samuels	Hello Fred, I love the idea that "growth rather than repair" is going to make a difference. When you try to help people to "grow and develop" is there something that guides you in that process? Or are your reactions/questions/or whatever always spontaneous and unpredictable?
8	Fred Newman	I think what guides me, together with the people I'm working with, is a collective creative impulse. In some ways it's to me very much like directing a play. Which as many of you know, I do a great deal of. It's not as I don't have some ideas of what I'm looking for, but the creative impulse of the cast and the technicians and myself as director is what dominates. By the creative impulse I guess what I mean is a desire to take what we have collectively -- the ideas, the talents, the presuppositions, the tastes, the energies -- and to create something new with those inputs, something other than any or all of the inputs. And I've come to see the therapeutic work as much closer to theatre work -- in that sense. Because I believe that we effect "cure" by creating something new together.
9	Judy Weintraub	Fred,What sort of language do you find helps understanding development?
10	Fred Newman	Judy, what I've found most helpful in recent years is the language of performance. My evolution as a theatre person, playwright and director has impacted profoundly on my therapy, even as the therapy seriously effects my theatre work. In performance, I think the focus is far less on getting it right, particularly in improvisation work which I most admire, and more on what you are able to create.  Performance language and performance concepts and performance activity is the language that I have come to. The danger -- as with all language -- is that performance language itself can become overdetermining. As I understand it and try to practice it, social therapy, though performatory is always trying to create new language and as much as possible new forms of language, to further evolve and develop itself. In this respect, Wittgenstein is kind of a meta director.
11	Judy Weintraub	Fred, I like the idea that I've heard you and Lois [Holzman] use about performing and creativity and the capacity to be both who you are and who you are not at the same time. I gather this has something to do with your use of the term, 'dialectic.' creating something new implies that before it was created, it was not there, but in order to bring it about, one must act as if it is there, or in some way be somewhere one is not.  I am stoked on your approach. I was in an improv workshop once and found it to be more therapeutic than the therapy I had previously. It's as you say, not any special gift but finding out the moment is wide open to some indeterminate degree. That's liberating.  Along the lines of the questions about individual v. group work, for a lot of people practicing therapy, groups may not be an option, immediately at least. But it doesn't seem at all inconceivable to adapt this approach to a one on one situation. After all, in a sense, two people are a group. And in a sense, even one person is a group. I think it seems to be your "logic" perhaps that the more people the better? Or, is there a point of diminishing returns (don't you love that metaphor?).  Anyway, I wonder what you think of the potential of media like this to allow therapists and clients around the world to connect with your institute per se. Do you think theatre can take place in this format? Here, we have done some on line roleplay in the past. It was interesting. I'm in Los Angeles. Are there any social therapy projects or trainings around here, or is it a goal you have to branch out more geographically and have more institutes around the world?
12	Fred Newman	Judy, I love what you're saying and I think we should do all of it. Maybe you could contact Joyce Dattner in California (jdattner@aol.com). I think this important distinction between who we are and what we're becoming which is very hard to make if you hold on the particular/universal or group/individucal dichotomy. It is useful to think about it in the way you did in your question.  I do think that having more people in the group -- more than two -- makes it easier to break down the individual/group distinction -- which I think is a positive thing. One way of thinking about this -- though this is terribly oversimplified -- is that who we are in the group is who we are individually and what we're becoming in the group is what the group is creating. To some extent this is my understanding of Vygotsky and his zone of proximal development (ZPD) Going back to the use of this technology it expands the limits to thousands -- I think that I don't believe in the law of diminishing returns. I think I believe in the law of continuous creativity.
13	Riet Samuels	Fred, do all the people who come for help join a group as soon as possible, or is there one-on-one therapy as well?
14	Fred Newman	I no longer do one on one therapy, but other people on the staff do. In general, the effort is to support people as much as they need in order to be able to come into group. People will also sometimes do one on one sessions with my co-therapist, in some ways what those sessions sometimes do is to help people to find a creative way -- i.e. a group developmental way -- to bring that into the group.
15	Jerry Shafer	Fred, I see at least two things you might look for effecting a "cure." One is novelty, overthrowing old and entrenched ways of thinking. Another is that the result must reflect the various contributions of the group. Are there other things you look for or hope for?
16	Fred Newman	Jerry, those two are very important. Another important thing is helping people to see that they have the capacity to do something else. I think that you're quite right and what is also critical is helping people to see that they can collectively create. That they can, if you will, make new meanings. It's not just to make new meanings, but to come to see that this collective process that we're all engaging in is a manifestation of our capacity to do just that. For example, one of the things that I teach people in my theater work even people who have never been in a play, is that they can improvise. Many people when first looking at improvisation think that those who do it have an extraordinary almost unhuman gift. But part of the growth in the group as well has the improv groupings is to come to see that we have this creative capacity. As I understand it, and this might be simplistic, what the child learns is not merely what she/he produces as product, but that she/he is a producer of these products.
17	Val Lewis	There has been an upsurge in the use of email, chat rooms etc. in this new cyber world, for reaching out to folks for therapy. How would you see social therapy making use of this global medium?
18	Fred Newman	Val, it seems to me to be prima facie to be valuable and useful -- for people to be creating together. I was struck by Lois Shawver's talk about "generous listening" and I think that this chat line is potentially a very valuable way for people to do emotional creativity together. I don't see a necessary bifurcation between cognitive/intellectual work and emotive work. I see all of it in terms of creative work, so I find this chat that we're now having to be therapeutic for me. And I hope others find it helpful, if not therapeutic. But I think it's important for us to use this medium perhaps to get over the societal dualism or categorical distinction between the cognitive and the emotive and have creative discussions on line which are -- in the traditional sense of the word -- therapeutic, not in terms of fixing ourselves, but in creatively growing together.
19	Riet Samuels	Would you mind saying just a little bit more about the following: People will also sometimes do one on one sessions with my co-therapist, in some ways what those sessions sometimes do is to help people to find a creative way -- i.e. a group developmental way -- to bring that into the group. Could you possibly give an example of "bringing a creative or group developmental way" into the group?
20	Fred Newman	Riet -- let me give the crudest of examples. It might be that in the one-on-one session the therapist and client together think of a way talking about something which is very connected to the history of what the group has been creating together -- and in some ways less about the individuated problem. The person returns to the group hopefully with a way of trying to connect their "individuate problem" with the history of the group activity. That may or may not work, but the very process of engaging one's "individuate propblem" is a creative step in the direction of what I think of as breaking out of the "problem-solution" syndrome. In other words, I think it's useful to see that "your problem" can be something more than just "your problem." It can be a contribution to the group play. After all, Shakespeare did well with Hamlet's problem.
21	Jerry Shaffer	Fred, I see at least two things you might look for effecting a "cure." One is novelty, overthrowing old and entrenched ways of thinking. Another is that the result must reflect the various contributions of the group. Are there other things you look for or hope for?
22	Fred Newman	Dear Jerry, Absolutely. Let me take it just a fraction of an inch further. In the process of collective creativity we've tried to do it in a way which makes it impossible to attribute an individuated creator. In the sense we do this -- going back to Lois Shawver's earlier statement -- by way of creating an atmosphere in which nothing is irrelevant and nothing is tangential. Once again, it's like improvisational work where the smallest and seemingly innocuous comment can transform the whole process -- and the longest speeches can turn out to have very little to do with the creative process. But once again, I agree with your formulation.
23	Lois Shawver	When you say "improvisational work" do you mean performing plays that are improvised and created on the spot? Perhaps in your theatre?
24	Fred Newman	Yes -- or at Performance of a Lifetime.
25	Lois Shawver	Do all the people in group therapy participate in improvisational drama? Is this part of the process? Or is it something that just a few do?
26	Fred Newman	More than a few, though not everybody. Although in a certain way, all of the therpeutic work is to some extent improvisational drama. But to answer your question most directly, some people choose to do work at Castillo or Performance of a LIfetime, some choose not to. Some of those people are in social therapy, some are not.
27	Val Lewis	A frequent criticism is made of online therapy, viz. that you can't see the body language of the other. Hence the medium can force a type of cognitive/intellectualism by virtue of having to deal in written word. Given that it is unlikely that visual input via video etc. is going to be part of it for many years as the world goes online, this remains a problem. How do you see using this medium creatively that would facilitate projects such as social therapy? One idea I had would be to collaboratively write, via chatroom, a social therapy-like experience. Is this possible?
28	Fred Newman	Dear Val -- well one thing we could creatively engage together is that technical limitation. Maybe it would help us to be more developmental and creative in how we talk to each other. I believe the visual is important. But I don't think of it as something that we can't -- not so much as to overcome -- but to creatively engage. Perhaps we rely too much on the visual in some cases. And don't push ourselves enough creatively to see what we can develop together without visual cues. this is not an argument against visual cues, but rather an argument for human creativity. Maybe you could tell me what you look like engaging in this chat.
29	Riet Samuels	Oh, I'm sorry to be such a pest, but I again have a sentence that I'd like to know more about. Maybe if I review one of your videotapes again I might see it. Do you think I would find there the "history of what the group has been creating together?" Or is it something the group "knows/feels" once they have been participating for a while?
30	Fred Newman	Riet, I think that this is an interesting question following Val's last question, because sometimes the visual can be more misleading. I think the tapes are useful if people watching them contextualize them as an experience of watching a tape of what other people are doing and participating as a watcher in that way. But not taking the tape to be a literal or completely accurate recording of the history of the process or the experience the people in the group have. In some ways the philosphical issue here is "aboutness" -- we have to be careful I think in overstating or overdetermining what something is about. As we watch a tape or engage in a chat, we have to continuously remind ourselves that this process that we're engaging in is hopefully creative and developmental in itself and is not simply about something else. Either my work or your work -- that it is about what we are collectively creating. And that is significantly other than the various individuate inputs. So I would hope that the videos are viewed in this developmental and creative way -- and are added to by those who watch so we can further include and evolve this continuous process.
31	Nick Drury	Kia Ora (greetings) Fred from New Zealand. I would like to ask you about your paper 'Undecidable Emotions'. The early part bounces off of Gödel, and although you have set out the problem Gödel was tackling, and told us of his answer, it is not so easy to understand Gödel's proof. I have seen a couple of books which attempt to set out Gödel's proof in a manner which non-mathematicians can understand, it seems quite difficult to put it in a simple language frame. Is there a simple way of understanding Gödel's proof, and how can it be related to the concerns Wittgenstein was dealing with?
32	Fred Newman	Dear Nick, what Godel shows is that the effort to give a completely precise and logical characterization of mathematics is ill-fated. That there's a mathimatical/logical argumetn to show that it can't be done. What that has to do with ultimately is the self-referentiality of language -- even formal languages. By self-referentiality I mean the capacity of language to be used to talk about itself. I think Godel's work has profound implications for all language. Relative to emotional language, I think that for too long many forms of traditional psychology has been rooted in th epostivistic notion that you could reduce emotional expressions and emotional language to certain combinations of core emotional states. But whether you can or you can't the methodology of such a position is to insist on a decideabiltiy for emotionality that doesn't even exist for mathematics. I don't believe that this is a failure of emotional language anymore than Godel believed it was a failure of mathematical language. It is rather a feature of emotional language. I think it's liberating to accept this kind of undecideability for emotionality because it frees us up to create emotional meaning, rather than to keep searching for it using a positivist method.
33	Jerry Shaffer	It's been very quiet for a bit. I can't help thinking Nick's difficult question may have something to do with it. Will we find Fred saying, a la Fermat, that he has a simple and elegant answer but has run out of time?
34	Fred Newman	Jerry, thank you once again -- this time for raising Fermat. As I understand the recent work with Fermat's last theorem, it turns on amongst other things a new and innovative meaning of PROOF. Indeed proof theory as I understand it has been one of the important developments in 20th Century mathematics. I think in psychology, particulary in therapeutics, we have to learn how to create new meanings of proof.  I'm going to try to answer the 5 remaining questions and sign off for the night. This chat has been wonderful I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Lois Shawver has very graciously invited me to come back and I would be delighted to do
35	Riet Samuels	Ah, that is wonderful, but I still have a question then about the person being prepared (can't think of a better word right now) to not bring their individuate problem to the group but fit (probably not a good word either) more into the "history" the group has already. How do we know when the person is better able to participate into the group? Am I asking "about" questions again?
36	Fred Newman	Riet -- I don't think we do know -- but that might be a whole other topic of discussion. As many of you know I have some problems with knowing! Nonetheless the group that is the client and one-on-one therpist, both of whom know what the group has been doing can create if you will tactics for giving to the group and helping the group which developmentally uses what the individual had been seeing as her/his individuated problem. As a director I frequently help members of the cast to speak a line in a way which is more attentive to what another character on the stage has been saying -- so that the audiences experience is not simply that the character said something, but the character heard what another character said and said this in a connecting way. Often that is what direction looks like and it can take many different forms. What I often try to share with the actors that I work with is that they have something more to do than saying their lines. They have to create the play. So in therapy. And the one-on-one session might be characterized as a kind of tutorial.
37	George Spears	[Fred] You said to [Jerry]: Jerry, those two are very important. Another important thing is helping  people to see that they have the capacity to do something else. To me, this is what I consider to be the the most important 'thing' that I have learned from you. which of course, comes right behind that...'and, how do you know what's important..? Any way, it also supports what you said about group, too. Though I struggle to keep Bette Braun as my 'individual' therapist--she is having none of it. When Bette mentioned in group one day, your concept of time and history was....'there was a place where 'time and history crossed...and it's there that one can stand up and choose who they want to be..'. I felt freed of centuries of humiliation...and realized immediately that I actually was somebody who could do something.. That's what I meant to you, Jerry....when I said that I had fought certain ways that I saw as 'idolizing Newman, etc. Anyway, whatever,...I will echo what Vicky said in Community Group, today ( and, as you are continually saying ...the miracle is that I can) ..that I do thank you for sticking your neck out to continually help create create our current moment. And, certainly (in a postmodern way) my neck, as well.
38	Fred Newman	Right on George.

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