ABSTRACT
Margaret Naumburg had two distinctive educational roles. While she has been cited for her achievements in the development and implementation of art therapy in the United States, she has less frequently been acknowledged for her role as an early childhood educator and member of the “new education” movement. The correspondence of the John Dewey family, and the professional and social interactions they describe, lend credence to Rosenfeld’s flowery praise of Naumburg as an “artist, “a “poet among the educators, “and a “listener, “who protects and nourishes young children (Rosenfeld, 1961, pp. 117–133). Naumburg was immersed in most of the educational innovations of her time, including the “New Education” movement, the Gary Plan 1 , the revitalization of American Indian education, and numerous types of arts education. Her work was published in the National Society for the Study of Education Yearbooks, the Bulletins of the Bureau of Educational Experiments, The Nation, The New Republic, the Outlook, The Survey, and several major New York City newspapers. She was a part of the artists and writers “colony” that met in New York City’s Greenwich Village during the early part of the twentieth century. She had close relationships with authors Waldo Frank (to whom she was married from 1916 to 1924) and Jean Toomer, and she was friendly with Sherwood Anderson, Ralph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Hart Crane, Robert Littell, Hughes Mearns, Lewis Mumford, Gorham Munson, Georgia O’Keefe, Paul Rosenfeld, Alfred Stieglitz, and other members of that intellectual, literary, and artistic circle. According to Gross, Naumburg’s unique contribution to the education field lay in her ability to fuse the ideas of the “New Education” movement with the concepts of psychoanalysis. Naumburg herself underwent three years of analysis with Jungian psychiatrist Beatrice Hinkle and later she did further analysis with Freudian A. A. Brill (a Walden school parent). She strongly encouraged the staff members of her school to do the same (Beck, 1958–1959, p. 201; Schauffler, 1937), and she later introduced Dr. Hinkle to F. M. Alexander. Margaret Naumburg as a Young Woman. (Personal collection of Dr. Thomas and Kate Frank) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203814420/e24fcd6f-3643-490d-83a2-15c12cdd9b89/content/fig9_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
