Paul Goodman (1911-1972) was best known in the Sixties as a social critic, author of GROWING UP ABSURD and many other works on political, sociological, and educational themes. Some called him “the philosopher of the New Left.” He was also a prolific writer of novels, stories, plays, and poems. All told he wrote over 30 books, including classics like COMMUNITAS (with his architect brother Percival Goodman) and GESTALT THERAPY (with F. S. Perls and Ralph Hefferline).
The collection of Goodman’s essays printed here under the title NATURE HEALS includes selections from his thinking on psychological subjects over a period of several decades.
Goodman trained first in Reichian techniques and wrote the first major American account of Wilhelm Reich’s theories in their relation to the neo-Freudianism of Erich Fromm and Karen Horney. Shortly thereafter he met Frederick and Laura Perls, and with them and a few others was a founding member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. In the collaboration with Perls and Hefferline on the book, Goodman was responsible for the presentation of the theoretical section, “Novelty, Excitement and Growth.” He practiced individual and group therapy through the Fifties, and his later social criticism contained many essays on psychoanalytic topics. Also included here are lecture notes for seminars he gave at the New York Institute, notes of self-analysis, and excerpts from his journals.
NATURE HEALS has been edited, with an introduction, by Taylor Stoehr, Goodman’s literary executor and editor of a dozen volumes of his work. He is currently writing Goodman’s biography.
The collection of Goodman’s essays printed here under the title NATURE HEALS includes selections from his thinking on psychological subjects over a period of several decades.
Goodman trained first in Reichian techniques and wrote the first major American account of Wilhelm Reich’s theories in their relation to the neo-Freudianism of Erich Fromm and Karen Horney. Shortly thereafter he met Frederick and Laura Perls, and with them and a few others was a founding member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. In the collaboration with Perls and Hefferline on the book, Goodman was responsible for the presentation of the theoretical section, “Novelty, Excitement and Growth.” He practiced individual and group therapy through the Fifties, and his later social criticism contained many essays on psychoanalytic topics. Also included here are lecture notes for seminars he gave at the New York Institute, notes of self-analysis, and excerpts from his journals.
NATURE HEALS has been edited, with an introduction, by Taylor Stoehr, Goodman’s literary executor and editor of a dozen volumes of his work. He is currently writing Goodman’s biography.
