[1][2][3][4] Newham began by teaching young adults with physical and developmental disabilities, many of whom could not articulate speech, assisting them in combining instrumental music and nonverbal vocalisation as an expressive alternative to spoken communication.

Therefore, Newham developed techniques that helped his clients understand the seemingly wordless nature of their distressing experience and express it through artistic mediums, including dance, music, and drama.

[5][6] Newham's biological father was Bertold Paul Wiesner (1901–1972), an Austrian Jewish physiologist known firstly for his research into human fertility and the diagnosis of pregnancy,[7][8] and secondly for coining the term 'Psi' in 1942,[9][10][11] now widely used to signify parapsychological phenomena.

[12][13] Newham is one among hundreds of children conceived through the artificial insemination of Wiesner's sperm, facilitated by his wife, Doctor Mary Barton, an obstetrician who founded one of the first private fertility clinics, which operated in London from the 1940s until its closure in 1967.

[14][15][16] Barton and Wiesner falsely claimed that they procured sperm from a specially selected group of exceptionally intelligent anonymous donors, presuming their own identities would remain unknown after destroying all records of the clinic's clientele.

[19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Subsequent DNA paternity testing of adults conceived at the clinic indicates that Wiesner may have sired more than 600 children by donating his sperm to artificial inseminations performed by Barton, of which Newham is one.

[30][31] Newham originally trained in Stanislavski's system of method acting at the Drama Centre in London, where he studied the analytical psychology of Carl Jung and the movement analysis of Rudolf Laban under the tutelage of Yat Malmgren.

He subsequently trained at Dartington College of Arts, where he studied Authentic Movement with Mary Fulkerson, contact improvisation with Steve Paxton, and cultural psychology with Anne Kilcoyne before pursuing post-graduate research at the universities of Warwick and Exeter.

Alfred Wolfsohn (1896–1962) was a German Jew who suffered persistent auditory hallucinations of screaming soldiers whom he had witnessed dying of wounds while serving as a stretcher bearer in the trenches of World War I at the age of eighteen.

After being subsequently diagnosed with shell shock, Wolfsohn did not recover in response to hospitalisation or psychiatric treatment but claimed to have cured himself by vocalising the extreme sounds of his hallucinations, bringing about what he described as a combination of catharsis and exorcism.

These recordings inspired Newham to study how performing and listening to sacred words and music, including hymns, chants, and mantras, contributes to many indigenous forms of religious experience, spiritual practice, and traditional medicine.

[62][63][64][65] Newham began the practical application of his research while teaching young adults with special educational needs, including those with physical, learning, and developmental disabilities who could not articulate vocal sounds into intelligible speech, some of whom were members of Libra Theatre.

[66] While working with nonverbal populations, Newham developed techniques for interpreting the paralinguistic component of verbal communication, emphasising how characteristics such as pitch, loudness, and timbre enhance the expression of feelings through emotional prosody.

[71][72] Subsequently, professionals have appropriated Newham's techniques for facilitating vocal expression to empower marginalised populations, support learning and language acquisition for children in primary and elementary education, and enhance the quality of care for people with dementia.

Beginning with the professionals who cared for his special education students, Newham worked therapeutically with adults who, though neither physically disabled nor inhibited by a communication disorder, were distressed by a quality of psychological pain that they identified as beyond words.

[79][80] In response, Newham developed a framework of techniques that helped his clients communicate the subjective nature of their experience through artistic activity, combining expressive movement, vocal music, drama, and the recitation of creative writing.

[83][84][85][86][87] Newham aligned his initial approach to psychotherapy with the principles of analytical psychology developed by Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who had previously inspired Alfred Wolfsohn.

[89] As evolved by Jung, active imagination is a meditative technique comparable to daydreaming, by which patients evoke a sequence of mental images without deliberately influencing their nature while describing them to an analyst.

[90][91] Newham developed this technique by enabling his clients to vocalise mental imagery through a broad range of sounds, including those they perceived as cacophonous and repulsive, which he interpreted as audible expressions of their shadow.

[96][97][98] Newham concurred with theories drawn from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology, which propose that verbal and nonverbal components of maternal vocal communication contribute to the bonding between a mother and her baby while influencing the quality of attachment to her that the infant develops.

[115] Newham's contribution to this field includes practical techniques that enable someone to identify inner voices, attribute them to specific subpersonalities or possible selves, express them through artistic mediums, and subsequently interpret their psychological significance.

[116][117] While working with traumatised adults, Newham observed that although his clients struggled to communicate distressing thoughts and feelings with spoken dialogue, they could readily express themselves through creating and reciting vocal art forms, including song and poetry.

[118] In developing techniques to facilitate this opportunity, Newham situated his work within the paradigm of expressive therapy, which uses mediums of artistic creativity to investigate characteristics of subjective experience.

[136][137][138][139][140] Through this work, Newham integrated therapeutic applications of music, drama, and movement into a framework of principles and techniques that prioritises vocal communication, which scholars and practitioners of the expressive therapies have studied and assimilated into their practice.

[141][142][143][144][145][146] Newham's approach to therapeutic facilitation is cited as an example of art-based research, which is the systematic use of techniques integral to the artistic process as a primary way of examining and understanding human experience.