Paul Goodman (September 9, 1911 – August 2, 1972) was an American novelist, playwright, poet, literary critic, and psychotherapist, although now best known as a social critic and anarchist philosopher. Though often thought of as a sociologist, he vehemently denied being one in a presentation in the Experimental College at San Francisco State in 1964, and in fact said he could not read sociology because it was too often lifeless. The author of dozens of books including Growing Up Absurd and The Community of Scholars, Goodman was an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and a frequently cited inspiration to the student movement of that decade. A lay therapist for a number of years, he was a co-founder of Gestalt therapy in the 1940s and 1950s.\n', '

Paul Goodman was born to Augusta and Barnett Goodman, Americans of German, Jewish, and middle-class heritage, on September 9, 1911 in New York City. His father left the family prior to his birth, making Paul their fourth and last child, after Alice (1902) and Percival (1904). Their mother worked to support the family as a women\'s clothes traveling saleswoman, which left Goodman to be raised mostly by his aunts and sister in New York City. His brother Percival Goodman, with whom Paul occasionally collaborated, was an architect especially noted for his many synagogue designs.\n', '

As a child, Goodman freely roamed the streets and public libraries of his native New York City, experiences which later inspired his radical concept of "the educative city."\n', '

Return to Paul Goodman Autograph Profile