Margaret Frank

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/naumburg-margaret

Margaret Naumburg

1890 – 1983

by Julie Altman

Up to the present time, education has missed the real significance of the child’s behavior by treating surface actions as isolated conditions. Having failed to recognize the true sources of behavior, it has been unable effectively to correct and guide the impulses of human growth.... The new advances in psychology, however, provide a key to the real understanding of what makes a child tick.

This is a quote from Margaret Naumburg, founder of the Walden School and author of many works on psychology and art therapy. She was born on May 14, 1890, in New York City to German-born Max Naumburg, a successful clothing manufacturer, and American-born Theresa (Kahnweiler) Naumburg. Margaret was the second daughter in a family with three girls and one boy. Although raised in a Jewish home and interested in Jewish mysticism, she identified more closely with the ideologies of Ethical Culture. This organized intellectual and spiritual movement did not require a formal conversion for participation and attracted other German Jews throughout the United States. Naumburg’s ideas alienated her from her parents.

While a student at Barnard College, Naumburg roomed with Evelyn Dewey, took courses with John Dewey, was the president of the Socialist Club, and counted Walter Lippmann “as one of her closest men friends.” Shortly after graduation, she left for Europe, where she studied economics at the London School of Economics, learned the Delcroze method in music under Alys Bently, and studied child education with Maria Montessori.

Upon her return to New York in 1914, Naumburg settled into the new American bohemian community of Greenwich Village, where she openly lived with Waldo Frank, author of novels and cultural criticism. Frank, a graduate of Yale University, was the son of a successful lawyer. Both Naumburg and Frank became consumed by postimpressionist art and reality and dedicated their lives to reforming society. Naumburg’s desire for public recognition and for respect in the field of child development and education eventually led to her marriage to Frank in 1916.

In 1914, Naumburg opened the first Montessori school in the United States. It occupied space at the Henry Street Settlement House. This experience gave Naumburg the opportunity to develop her own educational philosophies, which early on began to conflict with Montessori methods. After only one year, she left the school to establish her own institution, the Walden School.

Naumburg’s Walden School opened in a rented room at the Leete School on East 60th Street. It began as a nursery school for two-year-olds, and a new level was added each year. In 1928, the first graduating class included the children of a famous analyst, a university professor, an art teacher, and a well-known writer and suffragist. The school was perceived as part of a movement to “free the arts.” It was praised highly in the press and had strong support from the intellectual community. In 1915, the New York Tribune described the “very interesting and remarkable” new experiment. The intellectual and cultural atmosphere was further enhanced by the presence of Hendrik Van Loon, Lewis Mumford, and Ernest Bloch, who were invited by Naumburg to work with the students.

Influenced by Freud’s theories, the Walden School used psychoanalysis as the base of its educational philosophies. The emphasis at the Walden School was on “the development of children’s capacities,” not the “accumulation of knowledge.” The first catalog states the school’s aim “to develop individuality and initiative” and, through music and art, to stimulate the child’s creative activity. The art program, developed by Naumburg’s sister Florence Cane, was greatly influenced by Jung.

In 1922, Naumburg gave birth to a son, Thomas. By 1924, the marriage had dissolved, and, soon after, Naumburg resigned as director of the Walden School. By the late 1920s, she found a new career in writing. In 1928, her book The Child and the World, based on her experiences at Walden, was published.

In the 1930s, Naumburg began her work and research in art therapy. While working with children at the New York Psychiatric Institute, she developed her method of diagnosis and therapy by teaching free art expression. She wrote about her philosophies and methods in four texts: An Introduction to Art Therapy, Schizophrenic Art, Psychoneurotic Art, and Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy. In the 1940s, Naumburg pursued training in psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital. By the late 1950s, she was lecturing widely and developed the first art therapy courses at the New School for Social Research and at New York University. Naumburg remained at the New School for Social Research until her retirement in 1969.

Naumburg received the Ernest Kris Prize in 1973 and was a fellow of the American Orthopsychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.

Margaret Naumburg died on February 26, 1983, at age ninety-two.

SELECTED WORKS BY MARGARET NAUMBURG 

The Child and the World (1928); Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy (1966); An Introduction to Art Therapy (1973); Psychoneurotic Art (1953); Schizophrenic Art (1953).

Bibliography

American Journal of Art Therapy 22 (October 1982); EJ; Frank, Dr. Thomas, and Kate Frank. Conversation with author, February 1995; Karier, Clarence J. Scientists of the Mind (1986); Obituary. NYTimes, March 6, 1983; UJE; The Walden Story: Forty Years of Living Education (1954). ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From Wikipedia:

Margaret Naumburg was first an educator, with undergraduate work done at Vassar and Barnard Colleges. She did Graduate studies with John Dewey at Columbia, as well as Beatrice and Sidney Webb at the London School of Economics. Later Margaret studied with F. Mathius Alexander in England, Dr. William Brown at Oxford, Dr. William McDougall, and Maria Montessori in Italy. Psychology, parapsychology, and physical coordination are some areas that these studies were in. She took her psychological and educational backgrounds to create what would become art therapy. Naumburg was born in 1890. She expressed that as a child she felt constrained and miserable. Her son, Thomas Frank (1983) mentions that "perhaps her feeling both misunderstood and without opportunity to share her inner life during these early years gave her a beginning motivation to battle for less restrictive educational approaches focused on the individual child's emotional needs. And perhaps those early restrictive experiences with her own parents influenced her ultimate approach to art therapy."

In early adulthood Naumburg and author-husband, Waldo Frank lived and worked in New York City. They shared a circle of friends and colleagues comprised of many elite creators of the time. This includes people such as painter Georgia O'Keeffe, poet John Marin, and film star Charlie Chaplin.

In 1914 Margaret Naumburg started what she called the "Children's School". She later renamed it the Walden School. She wanted to practice her belief that "the emotional development of children, fostered through encouragement of spontaneous creative expression and self-motivated learning, should take precedence over the traditional intellectual approach to the teaching of a standardized curriculum.", as said by Thomas Frank (1983). Her psychoanalytic training influenced her educational methods. At the Walden School, all teachers were encouraged to see a psychoanalyst personally.

In 1920, Naumburg invited her sister Florence Cane to teach at the Walden School after she had criticized the way that art was being taught there. Margaret hired faculty according to different principles than were typical of the time. The faculty she hired often did not even have education degrees.

In the early 1920's Naumburg resigned as director from Walden and had a son shortly after. Three years later she divorced Waldo Frank. In 1928 she published her first book, which was based on her experience with the Walden School called The Child and the World.

Margaret Naumburg did much of her personal therapy with Dr. Beatrice Hinkle, who was a Jungian. Later she did more personal analysis with Dr. A. A. Brill, a Freudian. Freud, Jung, and Harry Stack Sullivan were all theorists who influenced her work. Naumburg was also interested in Eastern Philosophy, the occult, psychodrama, parapsychology, modern surrealist art, and primitive art. Those interests played a role in the development of her theories as well.

From 1930 on she concerned herself primarily with developing art therapy technique and moved away from progressive education. Naumburg devoted much of her life to the establishment of art therapy as a discipline, which psychiatry as a field, really opposed. "She was forever pointing out that art therapy, with its use of symbolic language and imagery, was often a more effective road to the unconscious than the usual verbal approach of psychoanalysis and dynamic psychotherapy", Thomas Frank (1983).

Naumburg was a poet and a playwright in addition to being an academic writer. Academically speaking, she wrote numerous papers and a total of five books in her life. From 1941-1947 she researched under Dr. Nolan D. C. Lewis at the New York Psychiatric Institute. Two books that she wrote stemmed from this research: Studies of the "Free" Art Expression of Behavior Problem Children and Adolescents as a Means of Diagnosis and Therapy (1947) and Schizophrenic Art: Its Meaning in Psychotherapy (1950). In 1953 Naumburg published Psychoneurotic Art and in 1966 she published Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy.

Margaret Naumburg taught at New York University into her eighties. She facilitated the beginning of art therapy instruction at the undergraduate level. A graduate program for art therapy was not started until 1969. Margaret Naumburg never held a teaching position on graduate level.

Margaret Naumburg offered private seminars in her own home and created the first art therapy courses ever offered, which occurred at the New School for Social Research at New York University.

Free association, art as a means of visualizing the unconscious, and the necessity for the patient to interpret his or her own work were central to her ideas.

Like all pioneers, she had to fight hard for her creation; she was a tenacious advocate for art therapy during its most critical formative stage. I think that she was a genius; and that we are incredibly fortunate to have had her as our primary progenitor. Although others also thought and wrote about 'art therapy' in the mid-twentieth century, I doubt that the profession itself would exist today as a separate discipline without Margaret Naumburg's courageous and energetic efforts." - Judith Rubin (2006, p. 8) "The techniques of art therapy are based on the knowledge that every individual, whether trained or untrained in art, has a latent capacity to project his inner conflicts into visual form." (Naumburg, 1966, p. 1) "Florence, became an artist and a teacher, and is now acknowledged as a pioneer in the therapeutic use of art as therapy ... In contrast, Margaret's pioneering work developed over time in the direction of what is now known as art psychotherapy ." (Rubin, 2006, p. 5). "In those early days, Margaret Naumburg virtually was art therapy." - Elinor Ulman

The work of Florence Cane and Margaret Naumburg is the basis on which all modern therapeutic art theories and practices are built. They significantly contributed to the fields of art therapy and art education. When Naumburg stopped teaching and started to concentrate on art therapy, she still stressed to art educators the importance of creativity, the intuitive, the nonverbal, and the unconscious. It has been speculated that tensions existed between the two sisters, but that this tension probably caused them both to be more productive.

References •Cane Detre, K. , Frank, T., Refsnes Kniazzeh, C., Robinson, M. C., Rubin, J. A., and Ulman, E. (1983). Roots of Art Therapy: Margaret Naumburg (1890-1983) and Florence Cane (1882-1952) - A Family Portrait. American Journal of Art Therapy, , 113-116.

• Reference: Biographical Summaries of Notable People - SmartCopy: Nov 16 2022, 8:17:25 UTC