Margaret Naumburg
| Margaret Naumburg | |
|---|---|
| Born | Margaret Naumburg May 14, 1890 New York City, United States |
| Died | February 26, 1983 (aged 92) Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Residence | United States |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | psychology, education, child development, art therapy, dynamically oriented art therapy |
| Institutions | Walden School, University of Louisville, New York Psychiatric Institute, New York University |
| Alma mater | Vassar College, Barnard College, Columbia University, London School of Economics |
| Known for | First American psychologist to provide training and graduate level courses in art therapy. Introduction of the first Montessori school in America. |
| Notable awards | Honorary Life Membership, American Art Therapy Association, Ernest Kris Prize in 1973, Fellow of the American Orthopsychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association |
Margaret Naumburg (May 14, 1890 – February 26, 1983) was an American psychologist, educator, artist, author and among the first major theoreticians of art therapy. She named her approach dynamically oriented art therapy. Prior to working in art therapy, she founded the Walden School of New York City.
Naumburg finished undergraduate studies at Vassar and Barnard colleges in New York.
She did work at Columbia University with John Dewey in education and at the London School of Economics and Oxford. While in Italy she studied child education with Maria Montessori.
In 1914 Naumburg opened the first Montessori school in the United States. She opened "Children's School" which was later renamed Walden School in 1915 in New York City. It began with two teachers and ten students focusing on letting children develop their own interests and ideas. Naumburg believed children would not only learn knowledge, but learn how to use knowledge to their advantage.: She believed understanding yourself was so important that she encouraged her staff at the school to undergo psychoanalysis.
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.
Many notable individuals taught at the Walden School including Lewis Mumford, Hendrik van Loon, and Ernest Bloch.
Naumburg married writer Waldo Frank in 1916, with whom she had a son, Thomas, in 1922. They divorced in 1924. She started writing shortly after and published her first book in 1928.
Margaret Naumburg is attributed as introducing art as a therapeutic modality in the 1940s. Between 1941–47 Naumburg worked at NY State Psychiatric Institute with adults and children and later published a series of case studies where she art for diagnosis and therapy in the institution (Rubin, 2010, p. 59). . However she was not alone in this endeavor. She was unique in using it as a primary agent rather than an auxiliary tool. She called her approach Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy based primarily on Freudian theory.The dynamic oriented approach was her main contribution to the art therapy community. This approach promotes " the release of spontaneous imagery" from the client through the symbols drawn and free association of the artworks (Rubin, 2010, p. 145). Naumburg viewed Art Therapy as a distinctive form of psychotherapy. She was also sympathetic to Jungian notions of universal symbolism and Harry Stack Sullivan's ideas about interpersonal psychiatry. Building off the work of Freud and Jung, Naumburg explored the inner personal meaning of symbols. Naumburg insisted the only valid interpretation of anyone's art came from the creator. She was skeptical about simple or rigid approaches to meaning consistent with Freud's teaching about dream analysis. Naumburg wrote “when art teachings are routine it discourages efforts at spontaneous and creative expression forcing pupils” (Naumburg, 1973, p. 137) to recreate what they already know is good.
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