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The author explains his optimism, interestingly, by reference to his experience with patients in his psychoanalytic practice. He speaks of encountering the strength of the strivings for happiness and health exhibited by his patients, which he believes is the natural embodiment of humans. "There is less reason", he says, "to be puzzled by the fact that there are so many neurotic people than by the phenomenon that most people are relatively healthy in spite of the many adverse influences they are exposed to". The statistics supporting this are overwhelming, and without a doubt are on the side of optimism.

The book is not a "pop-psychology", "self-help" book though, but instead a theoretical attempt to shed light on the problem of ethics and psychology. The author's goal is to get the reader to ask questions, and not to expect to find advice on how to obtain "happiness". The author's main goal is to find a validation for humanistic ethics that does not collapse into moral relativism but is based upon human nature and human's inherent qualities. The character structure of the mature and "integrated personality" is the origin of virtue, and vice originates from the ignoring of the self and "self-mutilation". To have confidence in values, the author argues, one must know oneself and be aware of one's capacity for doing good and being a productive human being.

The author carefully distinguishes between humanistic and authoritarian ethics, with the ethical norms of the former originating from humans themselves, while the latter some other entity. It is important for him to clarify the definition of "authority", one being "rational" authority, whose source is "competence", and "irrational" authority, whose source is always power over people. Rational authority he says, is based on the equality of the authority and the subject, with both of them differing only in the skill level in their respective fields and always having mutual respect for each other. Irrational authority on the other hand is based inherently on inequality, and denies the human capacity to know what is good or bad.

In humanistic ethics, as the author sees it, is formally based on the principle that only humans can determine the criteria for good and evil, and completely rejects any transcendent source of values. What is "good" is what is good for humans, and the "bad" is what acts to their detriment. Humanistic ethics, far from suppressing individuality and self-realization, encourages it, and there is no room in it for ethical doctrines that do not take into account the needs and nature of human beings. It is a life-affirming ethical philosophy, one that taps the human capacity for genius, and encourages responsibility for one's own existence. The crippling of human powers is the ultimate vice.

The problem then for humanistic ethics is to find out exactly what humans do in fact need in order to develop a healthy psychology. Throughout the book, the author attempts to characterize what such a psychology would be. In many instances throughout the book he makes some unexpected commentary, if judged by the overall theme of optimism in the book. For example, he views the human capacity for reason as both a "blessing" and a "curse". Viewing reason as a distinctly human capacity, not shared by other organisms (and this is troubling from the standpoint of current evidence to the contrary from biology), the author puts humans into a state of "constant and unavoidable disequilibrium". No matter what the level of accomplishment, humans will always be discontented and perplexed, and consequently driven to find new solutions, resulting in an endless restless cycle of achievement and discontent. But many humans do not fit into his sweeping generalizations here, but instead are very contented with their lives on this planet, and find the challenge of life fascinating, and who mourn only the prospect of it ending.

Because of his professional status as a psychoanalyst, it is not surprising perhaps to see a somewhat elaborate classification of what constitutes a healthy versus a non-healthy personality. There are "receptive", "exploitative", "hoarding", and "marketing" characters, which are non-productive and signs of personality "disorder" in his view. He gives detailed descriptions of these different types, but unfortunately does not quote case studies or any studies in the literature to support his views. Do individuals who have these personalities find it difficult to live and adjust in soceity? The author would probably argue that such an "adjustment" could be done, but that by itself does not mean that the individual at hand is not following a healthy course of action. The author seems to be getting quite dogmatic in his classifications here, and leaves the reader with a somewhat narrow view of what constitutes a truly healthy personality.

With more scientific research and justification put into his ideas, the author could have given the reader a more accurate view of what constitutes a healthy, integrated personality. The book is a good start though, philosophically speaking. Sometimes philosophy can encourage further scientific research, and sometimes it can clarify the issues involved in such research, but it can never take the place of science. The author's optimistic view of human nature is, to repeat, totally justified from a statistical point of view. And his view is somewhat rare, surprisingly, if one examines the statistics: the vast majority of humans are healthy, productive, and proud of their inner capacity for genius, and are without doubt fine examples of the humanistic ethic.

Now my daughter is in third grade and I'm trying to help her learn how to write. Our first use of the book helped us capture and explore what she learned on a museum trip. I was really impressed with the resulting report. It was focused, full of real content, and had a delightful narrative style. We even used wondering questions to help us focus further inquiry.

This book is a must-have for anyone interested in life-long learning.

Newman, a methodologist, psychotherapist and teacher extraordinaire, does not focus on individual problems and pathology. He provides no answers. Rather he invites those who study with him, as well as his readers, to engage in an unscientific, performatory investigation of human life. Dive in, he encourages, to a learning challenge that turns everything upside down - how we think about emotionality and truth, what a group is, how the activity of giving helps cancer patients, what it means to make demands on clients without being coercive, and much more. Get to know Fred Newman - his thinking, his values, his sensibilities, his capacity for intimacy in the service of human development. Psychological Investigations is a dialogic approach to the teaching of this radical social/cultural methodology that I think has the potential to take us out of the fly bottle of emotional pain and social crisis that pervades life in the 21st century. If you let yourself be touched, Psychological Investigations can impact profoundly on your therapeutic practice and your life. It is a must read for clinicians and healthcare professionals, students of philosophy, and anyone in despair about the social and moral crises of our times.

Social group work, with its practice of forming homogeneous groups around a common presenting problem, its focus on stages of group development and group tasks was very helpful to me early in my career but of limited use in supporting inner city youth to develop in the context of a school-based mental health program.

Fred Newman looks at the world through a different lens. He does not see individuals, rather he sees groups. While he does not deny the existence of the individual, he sees the group as the fundamental unit of human development. This way of seeing has profound implications for practice. The group, not the individual, is the unit that learns and develops.

This passionate belief in a new way of thinking about what a group is has informed my practice as the director of an inner city high school mental health program, "Let's Talk About It."
Young people with a range of emotional and social problems are invited to become partners in creating their own mental health program. With a ten year track record of success, young people are becomming choicemakers as they graduate or tansfer to a new school to go on and take responsibility for their lives.

Psychological Investigations gave me a bird's eye view of a therapeutic approach called "social therapy." As a long-time therapy patient of various disciplines, I was curious to know what makes it different from other approaches. It satisfied my curiosity by sharing actual conversations between the founder of social therapy Fred Newman, and therapists.

Based on the premise that "building the group" is the cure, social therapy is a methodology that goes against the individualistic pull of the world. But how does it work?
In the chapter called "Mundane Creativity" Newman talks about individuals in a therapy group coming together each week from all across the city...." people are exceedingly individuated; everyone has had a different week, and yet we come together as a group. The interesting and fascinating question is, what can we create together in order to make this therapy session a valuable event? What can we build?" That's the question, and from what I can tell, the answer is the cure!

--Melissa J. Meyer

Edited by Dr. Newman's colleagues, Lois Holzman and Rafael Mendez, "Psychological Investigations" is a book of dialogues between Fred Newman and his students (mostly therapists-in-training). Newman's postmodern words and vision are transformative. In keeping with this non-descriptive, non-objectifying, and non-assuming methodology for human growth and development, these dialogues are not talk about some thing as much as they are the thing itself - a performance of social therapy. One gets the sense in reading this book that Dr. Newman and his colleagues are creating social therapy right before our eyes. This, to my understanding, is the essence of this performatory methodology, which is not based on 'knowing' or an accumulation of knowledge but on creative, dialectic, group activity - building a group through the questioning and dialogic challenging of assumptions.

A Stanford-trained philosopher, Newman draws heavily from the philosophic works of Karl Marx and Ludwig Wittgenstein and from the early 20th century developmental psychologist Lev Vgotsky. Newman's understandings resonate with the postmodern writings of Ken Gergen, Harlene Anderson and Richard Rorty.

Those unfamiliar with Dr. Newman's previous books may wonder what a philosopher could teach us about `real' life - about human behavior, growth and development. In Part I, editors Lois Holzman and Raphael Mendez answer this question by providing the reader with the social, political, and intellectual history of Newman's development as the founder and leader of the social therapy movement.

In particular, I find Lois Holzman's writings to represent the most cutting edge, uncompromising and intellectually rigorous thinking in the developmental psychology literature. In my opinion, Dr. Holzman is years ahead of her modernistic, behaviorally-oriented colleagues. I would highly recommend her articles and co-authored texts with Fred Newman to anyone who has a serious interest in human behavior in any context - be it organizational, family, education, therapy, corporate business, or politics - and to anyone who has a serious interest in their own growth and development.

I first encountered Stanislav Grof in the late 'seventies at a seminar held in Pacific Grove, California. He was a featured speaker, and to say that I was impressed would be an understatement.

In this book, he discusses transpersonal psychology, involving a shift in awareness. Our psychologists and psychiatrists need to engage themselves in this transformational system and get outside the accepted paradigm of the current model of reality that scientists work within today, accepting certain basic assumptions, and move on to the equivalent of the quantum theory of consciousness.

He points out in another of his books, Beyond the Brain, that the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm (a system of thought based on the work of Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes) is still accepted and the orthodox foundation of precepts in use in psychiatry, psychology, anthropology and medicine. He points out that physics has moved on to a new paradigm: relativity and quantum theory and beyond, while the previously named sciences have languished, and opines that it is time for psychiatrists and psychologists to re-examine their fundamental belief structure as well.

Grof said, at the seminar, that he was originally--in Czechoslovakia where he originated--a dyed-in-the-wool Freudian, until he began to perceive difficulties with that approach. He grew from there. He was one of the original medical investigators to use d-lysergic acid diethylamide in serious psychiatric research, from which he derived some astonishing results.

Grof was formerly Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is no lightweight airhead, but rather is a highly qualified, credentialed and credible researcher. This and his other books are well worth your time, if you have the necessary vocabulary and the scientific background to benefit from them.

Grof makes a bold argument that understanding of the perinatal and transpersonal levels changes much of how we view both mental illness and mental health. His research in transpersonal experience evokes serious questions into such areas as reincarnation and the spritual side of the human being.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre,

author of The Road to Damascus: Our Journey Through Eternity
and other books

Grof builds a carefully laid out tapestry of thought unlike any other writer. Boldly going into dimensions that the orthodoxy fears, Grof consistently shows us that the best findings are often the result of adventurous undertakings.

One must truly venture into uncharted territories in order to discover hidden, powerful forces in the world.

All of Grof's work makes for a rich intellectual and spiritual treasure that will be edifying humankind indefinitely.