Margaret Naumburg papers Ms. Coll. 294 Finding aid prepared by Amey A. Hutchins. Last updated on July 23, 2020. University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts 2000 Margaret Naumburg papers Table of Contents Summary Information....................................................................................................................................4 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................5 Scope and Contents..................................................................................................................................... 19 Arrangement note.........................................................................................................................................22 Administrative Information......................................................................................................................... 22 Controlled Access Headings........................................................................................................................23 Other Finding Aids......................................................................................................................................24 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 25 Correspondence......................................................................................................................................25 Elementary education materials.............................................................................................................84 Writings..................................................................................................................................................85 Lectures.................................................................................................................................................. 99 Exhibits.................................................................................................................................................110 Client records (RESTRICTED)...........................................................................................................112 Art Therapy courses............................................................................................................................ 119 Student work........................................................................................................................................ 122 Consciousness investigations...............................................................................................................124 Proposals.............................................................................................................................................. 133 Biographical/Professional information................................................................................................ 134 Works by others...................................................................................................................................135 Miscellaneous.......................................................................................................................................139 Slides.................................................................................................................................................... 140 Photographs..........................................................................................................................................140 Photograph albums...............................................................................................................................141 - Page 2 - Margaret Naumburg papers Oversize................................................................................................................................................142 - Page 3 - Margaret Naumburg papers Summary Information Repository University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts Creator Naumburg, Margaret, b. 1890 Title Margaret Naumburg papers Call number Ms. Coll. 294 Date [inclusive] 1912-1974 Extent 182 boxes Language English Abstract Margaret Naumburg (1890–1983) was an American psychologist, educator, artist, and author. She was one of the first proponents of art therapy and utilitzed art as a method for both diagnosis and therapy. The collection contains materials documenting all the phases of Naumburg's long and productive work life. The materials include correspondence; copies of and materials for Naumburg's writings, lectures, and exhibit catalogs; materials for case studies; lecture notes for the courses she taught and papers her students wrote in those courses; and work by others that she collected and saved. Other media in the collection include slides, photographs, and audio recordings. Cite as: Margaret Naumburg papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania - Page 4 - Margaret Naumburg papers Biography/History Margaret Naumburg was born in New York City on May 14, 1890, when the United States was poised almost exactly between the Civil War and World War I. Sigmund Freud, whose work would affect her life so profoundly, would not use the term "psychoanalysis" for another five years, and the American medical establishment was not yet aware of his work. In her life Naumburg had two prominent careers based on Freud's insights into the workings of the human psyche. In the first, she played an important role in the progressive education movement in the United States through her founding of the Walden School, where psychoanalytic principles were central. In the second, she was a pioneer in the emerging field of art therapy. This future teacher's memories of public school were very bleak: My earliest recollections of school are of the hard wooden benches, the rigid posture, often hands behind the back, and the enforced silence of school periods. The overactive, dominant, shrill teacher, and the meek and intimidated children. I still recall the relief when gongs rang and there was a break from the silent tension for lunch and the playground. The monotony of learning arithmetic and learning to read was broken by learning to sing scales to the teacher's pitch-pipe. Art meant drawing cubes and pyramids. [1] She then went to the Horace Mann School, a private school which was founded as a site for experimental efforts by the students of Teachers College. The change seems to have made little difference to her. School was one source of bleakness in a generally grim childhood. She recalled wishing, at the age of ten or twelve, "to penetrate and experience the life outside herself. For other people's lives seemed full and varied, her own, empty and monotonous." As an adolescent, she captured her "attitude of injured withdrawal" by putting up on her wall the motto, "In order to avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." She had two older sisters, Alice and Florence, and a younger brother, Robert. Her relationship with her mother was very difficult, and although she was fond of her father, his presence in her papers is minimal. Under these circumstances, she looked up to Florence, eight years older, as a substitute mother. Florence was beautiful and artistic, two qualities Margaret would long for throughout her life. At a time of reflection in the 1920s, Margaret would confess that she had wanted to be Florence.[2] Barnard College awarded Margaret Naumburg a B.A. in 1912. She had studied with philosopher John Dewey, whose educational principles would later be important to her as a contrast to her own priorities as an educator. A future career in education was far from her mind then: "When I graduated from college I thought that the one profession I must avoid was becoming an educator. This attitude had been engendered by my own sense of boredom and futility in so many of the courses I endured both in school and college." [3] Her ambitions were unclear, yet in the spring of her senior year she was finding her way into new currents of thought. She read an early article in McClure's Magazine about Maria Montessori's work in Italy.[4] She also "had through a friend been able to read one of the first papers, published in the United States, by Dr. A. A. Brill on Freud and psychoalysis [sic]. I did not realize, as yet, how deeply this psychoanalytic approach to the unconscious had won a response in my own unconscious." [5] - Page 5 - Margaret Naumburg papers Her plan for the fall of 1912 was to start graduate work at the London School of Economics. During the intervening summer, she and her mother traveled in Europe. In Italy they met Montessori, who had opened a school based on sense training and attention to the phases of early childhood development in 1906 and begun training teachers in 1909. At first the London School of Economics seemed to be the right place for Naumburg. Taking a seminar with Sidney Webb, she threw herself into a study of the young cinematography industry. She sent her parents an enthusiastic letter: "these three months in London, including the work and the people, meant more to me than my four years of college." [6] After those three months, however, she decided to leave in order to take advantage of an opportunity to study with Montessori in Italy. In January