Paul Newham is an enigma: therapist, teacher, shaman and intellectual. His work seems to get to the heart of the most difficult and fundamental of human struggles, instating hope for those whom he touches.

Anne Kilcoyne
Tavistock Institute for Human Relations

My professional work is inseparable from my personal experience. What I know and what I can do continue to emerge from what I study as well as what I encounter.

My passage into adulthood was shaped by unusual circumstances.

I was among the first generation of people to be born from artificial insemination by an anonymous donor. I was raised by a violent and troubled alcoholic whom I thought to be my father; but I discovered the truth when I was eighteen.

This personal experience ignited a deep and indelible interest in the nature of human identity and how it is shaped; and it led me to investigate the nature of the self and how express who we are.

For 25 years I have studied what it means to be a person.

Overview

Paul Newham has developed an influential body of work based on scholarship, compassion, wisdom and a critical respect for tradition.

Professor Andrew Samuels
International Association for Jungian Studies

I tend to take on challenging large scale projects designed to have a positive impact on the quality of life. I have worked across many disciplines which include Human Communication, Corporate Training, Performing Arts, Psychotherapy and Adult Education.

I have directed performances for the professional theatre, contributed radical training modules to major educational organizations, provided specialist workshops for those who have been classified as 'handicapped', composed music for live performance, television and radio; authored popular courses and books as well as academic publications; consulted for corporate organizations; and I have given seminars across Europe, North America and Australia.

Training and Research

Look within and ask yourself before you ask others; accuse yourself before you accuse others; judge yourself before you judge others. And then, when you have reflected upon your own being to the point where your true conscience is satisfied: act, and act confidently.

Paul Newham

I began my training as an actor at Drama Centre, a radical method acting school in London. From there I went on to study psychotherapy, performance and anthropology at the famous and infamous Dartington College, where I had the opportunity to learn from the finest innovators in the field of arts and personal development.

After graduation I received funding from the British Academy which supported my original research into personal identity and self expression. I was supervised at Exeter and Warwick University in the United Kingdom.

My investigations were further funded by a number of bodies including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Wates Foundation, Shell, the Sobell Foundation and the Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust.

Arts

Without the arts, there is nothing to challenge our foolhardy misconception that everything can in some way be ordered and made to make sense.

Paul Newham

I was a part of the post-modern deconstruction that characterized the experimental theatre of the 1980s. During this time I worked with some of the finest innovators in the realm of contemporary arts, including Steve Paxton, founder of Contact Improvisation; and Enrique Pardo of the Roy Hart Theatre.

My performances combined musical composition, movement and text; they were part of my project to extend the limits of physical and vocal expression. My search was for a form of performance that affected an audience deeply, in a manner comparable to ritual, or spiritual participation.

Among my performance projects was the award winning House of Bones produced by Motionhouse which evolved from research into social reactions to the initial discovery of the HIV virus. The project traced these reactions to timeless human issues: how we treat the less fortunate and why we blame the afflicted. Tracing the history of epidemics from the plagues of Egypt through to the present day, the House of Bones explored our underlying social attitudes to disease, to sickness and to health.

Special Education

There is no one alive who could not, in a split second, and for no reason but the reasons of nature, lose all the basic faculties and functions that they take for granted. That would not make them any less a person with any less burning inside them. But it would change the way they were perceived: and therein lies the handicap and where the work is to be done.

Paul Newham

Influenced by my interest in performance, I brought a theatrical dimension to the arena of Special Education, enabling participants to use the stage as a circle of discovery and a platform from which to challenged notions about how we perceive difference.

The results of my early research led to the discovery of innovative therapeutic techniques that were able to radically enhance the quality of life for those with restrictive conditions, including Multiple Sclerosis, Down's syndrome and Cerebral Palsy.

When I began to train educators and therapists in the use of these techniques, it became apparent that those who are referred to as able have equal limitations to the so-called disabled. I therefore expanded my techniques to incorporate psychotherapeutic tools that assisted in the resolution of common psychological problems. This led to the founding of Voice Movement Therapy, a therapeutic framework which is now applied in clinical and educational contexts across the globe.

Therapy

The world is torn apart by conflict and contention, as each divided faction fights for what it feels is right. Meanwhile, our inner world too is divided, as motive battles with conjecture and feeling rages against thought. Healing happens when we find a pathway between these opposites.

Paul Newham

The first 15 years of my work were deeply influenced by psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. I was convinced for a long time that the models originally conceived by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung provided the most useful insight into human experience.

I have studied this field in depth, published widely on the subject, and experienced ten years of personal analysis. As a therapist I have worked with individuals recovering from sexual abuse, torture and neglect; couples in the midst of personal war; and those from all walks of life who have found themselves in the grip of despair.

At the turn of the century I took a different route. It became clear to me that the discoveries of cognitive science, particularly in the field of neurology and cognitive behavioural therapy, provide a form of intervention suitable for those stuggling with debilitating conditions which emanate from misbelief.

I became less interested in psychotherapy and more engaged by the process of learning, unlearning and relearning. I also became convinced that the analysis of human strengths initiated by the Positive Psychology movement and the progress of cognitive behavioural therapy can be combined to enable people to learn realistic optimism regain the level of self reflection which is a requisite for psychotherapy.

Strengths Psychology

Strengths of human character are the quintessential qualities of being upon which each person may draw in pursuit of a certain happiness. Discovering strengths is a relatively straight forward task if you are feeling well. If you are not it can seem as though all strengths have vanished. The greatest challenge is to assist those who have been weakened in recovering their belief that their strengths still exist.

Paul Newham

I am actively researching the nature of human strengths and the way they may provide clues to how people endure, overcome and excel.

The notion of innate character strengths provides a potential framework for understanding human fulfillment, contentment and happiness.

The analysis of character strengths is part of an emerging discipline called Positive Psychology which seeks to complement the diagnosis of disorder with the identification of all that is well and able within each individual.

My interest is in how the innate strengths and potential in each person can become eroded by self-defeating reactions to impinging circumstances. Character strengths, if they exist beyond our perception, may arise from a fusion of biological predispositions and learned behaviours. But their revival in those struggling to cope requires strategic intervention.

I believe that the combined discoveries of Psychotherapy, Positive Psychology and Cognitive Science might provide the foundation for such an intervention.

Cognitive Science

We all need someone to talk to. Some people need someone to talk to urgently, desperately. The challenge is discover what kind of talking actually helps someone talk to themselves in a way that the need for another loses its desperation. We need to know how to talk to ourselves.

Paul Newham

We are only just beginning to understand the way that the brain encodes data and uses it to determine our perceptions and actions.

Through fMRI and neuroimaging it is possible to observe the pathways of neural activity which are instigated by mental activities like thinking, and remembering.

From this we are beginning to discover the overriding influence of belief. It is not the accuracy of what you think that determines what you do. It is whether you believe something to be true.

And proving the inaccuracy of a belief does not reduce its influence on behaviour. We must believe something new in order to respond to life in ways which depart from the patterns of habitual reaction we have acquired.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is in many ways a science of belief. It provides a structured method by which self defeating beliefs can be replaced by ones which foster a greater degree of self determination.

I believe that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Neuroscience and Positive Psychology combined with established psychotherapeutic principles will together forge a path of hope this century, despite the differences which separate them and their practitioners.

Teaching

On the whole, we see things as we have been taught; on analysis, few of these teachings are accurate and our liberation comes when we can think again in the absence of any proclaimed leader and in the vitality of our own faith.

Paul Newham

I am primarily interested in the way we learn to communicate, the way we overcome adversity and how we can relearn who we are and revision our lives to enhance positive experience.

I believe in innovative approaches to education that celebrate the capacity for people to sustain curiosity from the cradle to the grave.

My relationship to education is deeply personal and rooted in my memories of being saved from a treacherous home life by dedicated and imaginative teachers who inspired me to look beyond the boundaries of my immediate environment.

I have taught in Colleges, Universities and Corporations; I also founded a specialist training school in London which attracted students from many countries.

Academic Publications

Writing brings momentary nobility to the wayward strength of an impulse, where the price of restraint is form.

Paul Newham

My therapeutic research is described in a series of books which together provide the most comprehensive review of vocal expression and its relationship to psychological functioning in print today. These include Using Voice and Song in Therapy; Using Voice and Movement in Therapy; Using Voice and Theatre in Therapy; and Therapeutic Voicework.

I have also written articles for a range of publications including the Journal of Analytical Psychology, Voice: Journal of the British Voice Association, Journal of the Imagination in Learning, Family Guide to Alternative Medicine, Positive Health, Human Potential, Open Mind, Human Communication, Community Living, New Theatre Quarterly, Performance, British Journal of Drama Therapy and Blackwell's Guide to 20th Century Theatre.

Popular Publications

Writing is an inscription of a moment bequeathed to eternity. It is lasting and represents the human capacity for commitment and therefore faith.

Paul Newham

I am the author of a popular set of accredited distance learning courses in a range of subjects including Wine Tasting, The Brain, Meditation, Wellbeing, Chocolate, Creative Writing, Understanding Your Dog, Gardening, Singing and World Cooking.
They are the most affordable distance learning courses available on the market in the UK and are sold through major retail stores.

I have written a number of articles for popular glossy magazines and appeared on radio and television in discussion.

Technology

Technology does not have to be an alternative to human relationship; it can and should increase the opportunity for growth, for understanding and ultimately serve our deepest desire for community.

Paul Newham

I have always been interested in and engaged with the contemporary, with an analysis of what defines the unique nature of this precise moment in time, as well as that which characterizes the period and place at which we stand in history. It was therefore inevitable that I would turn my attention to technology, to computers, to software and to the internet, those things being so central to where we are right now.

I have contributed to a number of projects which aim to make educational use of software.

Presentations

Whenever one person observes another act there is a performance. Drama is the inevitable outcome of sharing our lives with others.

Paul Newham

I have given many presentations, from key note speeches to vocal concerts. I have presented at museums, universities, churches and conferences.

For me any presentation, whether concert, lecture, seminar or speech, is a performance, a ritual, a spiritual gathering, a dance of cognitive capacity, an illusion and a cabaret. I enjoy weaving thoroughly-researched information with inspiring and entertaining anecdotes.