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The Cult Dossier · No. 094 · Political / Terror

The Newman Tendency

Social Therapy; New Alliance Party; International Workers Party

1968 – present (much reduced) · New York City

XI. THERAPY, POLITICS AND THE SMALL GROUPS

Non-religious — Marxist political group fused with a therapy practice

Who led it

FRED NEWMAN (17 June 1935 – 3 July 2011), who took a Stanford PhD in analytic philosophy in 1962, and FULANI (Lenora Fulani), the movement's political face.

What it worshipped and taught

SOCIAL THERAPY — a group therapy modality Newman developed with LOIS HOLZMAN, in which the patient's individual problems are treated as products of capitalist alienation and the therapy group itself is the unit of treatment. Patients were recruited into political work; political recruits were pushed into therapy. Newman openly insisted there was nothing wrong with therapists having sex with patients, and opposed professional ethics rules against it. Money flowed from the therapy practice into the political operation.

Who was in it

Fred Newman; Lenora Fulani, the first woman and first African-American to achieve ballot access in all 50 states in a US presidential election (1988); the All Stars Project, the youth arts charity; Michael Hardy; the many left and right political figures the group briefly allied with — including Lyndon LaRouche in 1974, and the Independence Party whose line Michael Bloomberg ran on.

How it ended, or where it stands

THE POLITICAL APPARATUS DISSOLVED; THE YOUTH ORGANISATION OUTLIVED IT AND GREW. The All Stars Project runs development-through-performance programmes in several cities and partners openly with municipal government, publishing annual reports and audited financials. THAT TRAJECTORY IS THE ENTRY’S POINT: a network that began as a therapy-plus-politics operation of contested reputation ended as a youth charity standing next to mayors at press conferences. Readers can weigh that as rehabilitation or as reach; this file records it and does not settle it.

The dead

—

Of note

The clearest fusion of therapy and electoral politics in the American record, and a case study in how a small disciplined group can achieve ballot access far beyond its actual support.

Its timeline

  1. LATE 1960s Newman founds Centers for Change after the Columbia student strikes.
  2. 1974 Centers for Change briefly merges with LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees; the merger collapses within months.
  3. 1979 New Alliance Party founded.
  4. 1988 Lenora Fulani achieves 50-state ballot access for president.
  5. 2001–2009 Newman presses the Independence Party to back Michael Bloomberg, who runs on its line in 2001, 2005 and 2009, amid persistent controversy. The All Stars Project wins an 8.5-million-dollar municipal bond in 2002 despite Democratic objections to Newman's statements.
  6. 3 JULY 2011 Newman dies; the political operation fades. The All Stars Project continues as a youth charity.
  7. 2024–2026 THE ALL STARS PROJECT IS NOT MERELY SURVIVING, IT IS EXPANDING — which this file understated. Founded by Newman and Lenora Fulani in 1981, it now works in several cities. Its New Jersey arm marked 25 YEARS in Newark and Jersey City in 2024, and ON 1 APRIL 2025 it appeared at Dallas City Hall WITH MAYOR ERIC L. JOHNSON to announce a partnership running the city's Dallas Works summer jobs programme, placing more than 100 young people in paid internships.

Its people

Fred Newman

—

Founder, Social Therapy / the Newman Tendency · 1935 – 3 July 2011 · active 1968–2011

A Stanford PhD in analytic philosophy who invented 'social therapy', a group modality treating individual distress as a product of capitalist alienation, and used it to recruit patients into a political organisation while pushing political recruits into therapy. He openly had sexual relationships with patients, describing monogamy as bourgeois. The therapy practice funded the politics. His political vehicle achieved 50-state presidential ballot access under Lenora Fulani in 1988 and later became deeply entangled with New York's Independence Party.

Before the law. Never charged. Licensing complaints did not result in prosecution.

Where things stand. Deceased 2011. The All Stars Project continues as a youth charity.

  1. 1968 Founds Centers for Change.
  2. 1974 Brief alliance with Lyndon LaRouche.
  3. 1988 Lenora Fulani achieves 50-state ballot access.
  4. 1990s Complaints to New York licensing bodies over unlicensed practice.
  5. 3 July 2011 Dies; the political operation fades.

Checked

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