Saul Bernard Newton

Saul B. Newton (June 25, 1906 – December 21, 1991) was a controversial Canadian-American psychotherapist who led an unorthodox therapy group in New York City. It had no formal name, but outsiders called its members "Sullivanians" or "The Fourth Wall."

Background Newton's original family name was Cohen. He was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, and attended the University of Wisconsin. In 1943 he was drafted into the U.S. Army and fought in World War II. He went on to study psychotherapy after the war. Newton retained a dual focus on politics and psychology throughout his life. They had previously worked at the William Alanson White Institute, but left several years after the death of Harry Stack Sullivan, one of the White Institute's founders. Although Newton and Pearce's institute was named after Sullivan, it is widely seen as having offered an extremely distorted and often abusive version of Sullivan's teaching to better meet Newton's personal whims. ) At its peak in the late 1970s, this community had several hundred members (patients and therapists) living on the Upper West Side. The group gained some notoriety, not only for its non-monogamous lifestyle, but because patients were often encouraged to sever ties with their families. directed by Joan Harvey, his fifth wife, an actress and psychoanalyst.

Newton died in 1991 from sepsis, following the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Works Conditions of Human Growth (with Jane Pearce). Citadel Press, 1986.