SOCIAL THERAPEUTICS
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A 20-week online certificate program
in the methodology of social therapeutics
January - June 2011
This certificate program is a unique opportunity to study social therapeutics directly with Institute founders Lois Holzman and Fred Newman and explore in depth the foundations, politics, philosophy and community-based applications of their unique group performatory approach. We welcome applicants from a range of disciplines, including-but not limited to-psychology, psychiatry, social work, education, counseling, applied theatre, youth development, anthropology, sociology, community development, public policy and public health.
Program Overview
The program will introduce social therapeutic method through selected materials from its founders, developers and commentators. Among the topics to be covered are: human development and group creativity; the enhancement of sociality and engagement of alienation; the practice of method and revolutionary activity; performance and play; developmental philosophy and developmental learning; thinking, speaking and creating conversation; and the contributions of Marx, Vygotsky and Wittgenstein.
Social therapeutics is
• a recognized approach within both the postmodern and the cultural-historical activity theory movements in psychology, psychotherapy, education and organizational development. Originally developed by Fred Newman as a radical psychotherapy in the1970s, it has evolved into a practical human development methodology with broad application in the myriad of settings that children, youth and adults create and inhabit.
• a philosophically informed, practically oriented method in which human beings are related to as creators of their culture and ensemble performers of their lives. Its sustained on-the-ground effectiveness in supporting the social-emotional growth of people of all ages and backgrounds is a much-needed challenge to mainstream psychological thought and the practices that are based on it.
• the basis for specific social interventions that bring the social therapeutic understanding of learning and development to therapy offices, clinics, hospitals, classrooms, after-school programs, workplaces, and communities worldwide. It is also a contribution to the important theoretical work of scholars and researchers working to create new more humane and transformative psychological practice and method.
Program Structure
• Online Seminars. The course material is divided into four seminars of five weeks each (with short breaks in between each seminar). Students develop and present short projects for each module, with faculty and peer input.
• Conferencing and Live Chats. Arrangements are made during the course of the program for telephone and online chat sessions with faculty members.
Seminars take place online and are asynchronous, making it possible to accommodate people living in different time zones. Students must be prepared to invest the time and take the responsibility for creating a dynamic online learning environment by participating frequently in online discussion.
Applications for 2011 are due November 20, 2010. Tuition is $825. Students are responsible for purchasing required texts.
The application can be downloaded at www.eastsideinstitute.org/socialtherapeutics.
About the Social Therapeutics Faculty
Lois Holzman is the director and co-founder of the East Side Institute. As a leading proponent of a cultural approach to human learning and development, she has brought the writings of Lev Vygotsky to bear on the practices and methods of psychotherapy, as well as contributing to advancing their relevance to education, youth development and organizational studies. She is well known for her pioneering work in exploring the human capacities to play and perform and their fundamentality in learning how to learn. Holzman has helped shape and expand the international performance movement as a force for radical social change, through the bi-annual Performing the World conference, the Institute's International Class, and other collaborative community-building projects among psychologists, social workers, educators and cultural workers from around the world.
Holzman is particularly respected as an activist scholar who builds bridges between university-based and community-based practices, bringing the traditions and innovations of each to the other. She has written/edited extensively on human development, learning and play; the institutions of psychology and education; and social therapy and its applications. Her most recent book is Vygotsky at Work and Play. Holzman earned her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Columbia University and was a postgraduate research fellow at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition.
Fred Newman is co-founder and principal trainer of the East Side Institute. He received his Ph.D. in analytic philosophy and foundations of mathematics from Stanford University in 1962. Galvanized by the civil rights and anti-war movements, in the late 1960s he abandoned his career as an academic philosopher and turned to community and political organizing. Over the past 40 years, he has worked with hundreds of clients and colleagues to create social therapy. His abiding interest in development for communities and individuals alike led him to a "postmodernization" of Marx and a call for the "end of knowing" in favor of performance.
Newman's work informs and is informed by sustained, community-based psychological, educational, cultural and political projects in New York and elsewhere. He has written extensively about the theory and practice of social therapy, the politics of psychology and postmodernism, practical philosophy, and social change. His most recent essay, "Where is the Magic in Cognitive Therapy?" appears in the 2008 volume, Against and For CBT. In addition, he is a playwright and theater director, and served as artistic director of the Castillo Theatre from 1989 to 2005. He has written and produced 30 plays and musicals that are deeply philosophical and sharply political.
Carrie Lobman is a leading expert in the use of improv theatre as a tool for creating developmental learning groups for children and adults. She is the co-founder and director of the Developing Teachers Fellowship Program and the Revolutionary Conversations seminar series at the East Side Institute, and Associate Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. As a teacher trainer, Lobman helps educators to create more collaborative, creative, playful and participatory learning environments for themselves and their students. She received her doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the co-author with Matthew Lundquist of Unscripted Learning: Using Improv in the K-8 Classroom and numerous articles and chapters delineating a performance-based approach to teaching.
Christine Helm earned an M.A. in Anthropology and Education and M.Ed. in Applied Anthropology at Teacher's College, Columbia University. She is director of the Enterprise Center at the Fashion Institute of Technology/State University of New York and teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate level. For more than two decades she has participated in building the development community of which the East Side Institute is a part and is a long-time faculty member for the Institute's International Class and Therapist Training Program. Her area of expertise is introducing Fred Newman's philosophical contributions to postmodern therapeutics and promoting the ongoing activity of philosophizing.
About the East Side Institute
The East Side Institute is an international training, educational and research center for new approaches to human development, learning, therapy and community building. The Institute's work is devoted to changing psychology from a diagnostic, evaluative (and often stigmatizing) practice into a positive and creative force for the emotional, social and cultural development of all people and their communities. During the last 30 years the Institute has developed a unique group-oriented performatory approach called social therapy that relates to people of all ages as social performers and creators of their lives - of what they, their communities and the world are becoming. Drawing from the discoveries of its co-founders-philosopher-psychotherapist Fred Newman and developmental psychologist and learning strategist Lois Holzman-as well as the writings of psychologist Lev Vygotsky and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Institute specializes in creating learning environments that are improvisational, challenging, playful and practical
To download application form click here. For more information contact Melissa Meyer at (212) 941-8906, mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org.