Lois Holzman Ph.D.

Lois Holzman, Ph.D., is the director of the East Side Institute, an international training and research center for new approaches to therapeutics, education and community building; and a founder of the biennial Performing the World conference, which brings together practitioners, scholars, researchers and activists for whom theatrical performance and the creative arts are essential for personal and social transformation. With colleague Fred Newman, the late public philosopher and founder of social therapy, Holzman has advanced social therapeutics, a “psychology of becoming” that incorporates play, performance and practical philosophy to inspire life-long human development through group creativity. Her texts, Vygotsky at Work and Play (Holzman) and Lev Vygotsky Revolutionary Scientist, (Newman and Holzman) have introduced psychologists, educators and helping professionals the world over to an activist-take on the methodological writings of psychologist Lev Vygotsky.

Her latest book, The Overweight Brain: How Our Obsession with Knowing Keeps Us from Getting Smart Enough to Make a Better World, offers "non-knowing growing" as an alternative to the psychology we are socialzed to.