We Knew Paul: Conversations With Friends and Students of Paul Rosenfels - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932961096 ISBN 13: 9780932961099

Publisher: Ninth st Center, 1991

About this title

About the Author:

Dean Hannotte

Author and psychological counselor Dean Hannotte was born in 1946 to middle-class parents. His childhood and adolescence were filled with big questions about human nature, but he could find no adequate answers -- certainly not from school teachers. His formal studies at the Bronx High School of Science and St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, home of the "Great Books" program, failed to prepare him for the very real and very personal challenges presented by a world in denial of its problems.

It was Dean's close companionship beginning in 1966 with the psychiatrist and former psychoanalyst Paul Rosenfels which was to spark profound changes in both of their lives. Rosenfels had already published in two books the core of his theories concerning a science of human nature, based upon his analysis of the psychological polarity first introduced by Jung, and had attracted an articulate group of students who were using his insights into non-gender-based masculinity and femininity on their own.

In 1973, Paul and Dean and their students opened the public forum that came to be known as the Ninth Street Center. Dean rented a large basement on East Ninth Street in a counterculture backwater of Manhattan known as the East Village. After weeks of fixing up and painting the space, they opened the doors to an enthusiastic public. Nightly talk groups and peer counseling using Paul's concepts were offered, and there was usually a table filled with goodies prepared by Paul. The only requirement for entry into this urban academy was a willingness to learn. It took very little time for the spirited psychological discussions at the Center between Rosenfels' students to become a celebrated feature of East Village life among several hundred regular attendees.

Paul's revolutionary insights about human nature were openly shared, examined and tested within a growing, intellectually vibrant community. For the most part, it was an assemblage of articulate gay men and women who wanted to change all of society for the better through reasoned psychological interaction. Experiencing the enthusiasm of these students enabled Paul to write a series of Ninth Street Center Monographs enlarging upon his last book, "Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process."

After Paul's death in 1985, Dean conducted interviews with those who had witnessed the extraordinary spirit and experimental attitude of those very creative times. These interviews were published in 1991 as "We Knew Paul: Conversations With Friends and Students of Paul Rosenfels."

About this edition

• Publisher: Ninth st Center
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0932961096
• ISBN 13: 9780932961099
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 257
• Editor: Hannotte Dean