High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Paul Goodman (9 September 1911 New York City ? 2 August 1972) was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd (1960) and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement. He is less remembered as a co-founder of Gestalt Therapy in the 1940s and '50s.Goodman's parents were immigrants, Barnett and Augusta Goodman. He had a Hebrew school education, and graduated first in his class at Townsend Harris Hall High School. His brother Percival Goodman, with whom Paul frequently worked, was an architect especially noted for his many synagogue designs.