Family Life Margaret Naumburg was born in New York City on May 14, 1890, Her father, Max Naumburg, descended from a long line of musicians and
Reform Jewish community leaders originally from
Bavaria. The family had a deep legacy in music patronage: her cousin Walter Naumburg founded the prestigious
Naumburg Prize, and her uncle Elkan Naumburg funded the construction of the
Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, where free classical concerts continue today. Together, they would pioneer early practices that integrated psychoanalytic and creative expression in child development, laying the groundwork for art therapy. In 1916, Margaret married the writer and intellectual
Waldo Frank. Their marriage was forged within the progressive, bohemian milieu of
Greenwich Village and was understood by both to be unconventional. Frank was openly unfaithful and considered the marriage more of a social arrangement. They had one son, Thomas Frank, in 1922. While Waldo hoped that parenthood would bring emotional unity to the relationship, Margaret found herself overwhelmed—both by the demands of motherhood and the collapse of their shared idealism. The marriage deteriorated, and they divorced in 1924. During and after her marriage, Margaret engaged in an intense romantic and spiritual relationship with
Jean Toomer, the Black writer and mystic best known for
Cane. Their bond was forged through mutual involvement in the teachings of
Georges Gurdjieff, whose spiritual system of “The Work” emphasized harmony between mind, body, and emotion. However, their relationship ultimately fell apart due to both interpersonal tensions and the racialized dynamics of Toomer’s leadership within the
Harlem Gurdjieff community, which Margaret struggled to navigate. Margaret's family life—marked by emotional constraint, gendered expectations, and personal longing—deeply informed her educational and therapeutic innovations. Her vision of child-centered education and her later development of dynamically oriented art therapy can both be seen as direct responses to the repressions of her early familial world. Rather than replicating the moralism and rigidity of her upbringing, Naumburg’s life work sought to liberate creativity, give voice to unconscious expression, and foster relational freedom.
Education Margaret Naumburg’s educational path reflected both her rebellion against conventional schooling and her lifelong search for integrative, liberatory approaches to learning. The school’s curriculum was profoundly interdisciplinary. Drawing from her training with Maria Montessori in Rome in 1913, Naumburg adapted sensory-based and developmental methods but moved away from Montessori’s authoritarianism. Instead, she synthesized influences from psychoanalysis, the Alexander Technique,
Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and Alys Bentley’s work on movement and rhythm. Naumburg believed children would not only acquire 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.The school was deeply embedded in the New York bohemian and intellectual milieu of the 1910s and 1920s. Many notable individuals taught at the Walden School including
Lewis Mumford,
Hendrik van Loon, her sister
Florence Cane, and
Ernest Bloch.
Early Founder of Art Therapy in the United States Margaret Naumburg’s second major career—emerging after her departure from the Walden School in the mid-1920s—would come to define her enduring legacy as one of the founders of art therapy in the United States. Her shift toward therapeutic work began in the 1930s, following a period of personal transformation and spiritual exploration that included time in the
Gurdjieff movement and collaboration with trance medium
Eileen Garrett. While she had no formal clinical training at the time, Naumburg’s background in psychology, her immersion in
psychoanalytic literature, and her experience as an educator positioned her to approach therapy from a symbolically and developmentally informed perspective. Naumburg believed that this release of imagery acted as a way to connect with the unconscious mind. Naumburg also 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. Specifically, she explored the roots of expression through "recurrent symbols" and "recurrent use of similar technics" (Naumburg, p. 437). However, Naumburg insisted that the only valid interpretation of anyone's art came from the creator. She was skeptical of simple or rigid approaches to
symbolic meaning, which was consistent with
Freud's teaching about
dream analysis. It was important to Naumburg to avoid interpreting or commenting on the client's artwork so the client would not change their mind about what was created and to avoid being wrong. Naumburg used art as the means for clients to visually project their conflicts, and when it was too difficult for the client to relax, she would provide them with art lessons or specific directive projects instead. Between 1941 and 1947 Naumburg worked at the
New York State Psychiatric Institute with adults and children. She later published a series of case studies where she used art for
diagnosis and therapy in the institution. However, she was unique in this endeavor because she was using it as a primary agent rather than an auxiliary tool. Rather than using art to reinforce cognitive or behavioral aims, Naumburg encouraged unstructured expression—drawing, painting, and sculpting—as a means to access emotional conflicts and symbolic processes. She recorded these sessions with meticulous attention to the children’s imagery, verbal associations, and shifts in behavior. This work culminated in her 1947 monograph
Studies of the "Free" Art Expression of Behavior Problem Children and Adolescents as a Means of Diagnosis and Therapy, published in the
Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs series. It is widely recognized as the first formal American text on art therapy. She later republished it with a new introduction in 1973 as
An Introduction to Art Therapy. Naumburg subsequently extended her research to include adolescent girls diagnosed with schizophrenia and adult patients experiencing neurotic conflict. These case-based inquiries formed the basis for
Schizophrenic Art (1950),
Psychoneurotic Art (1953), and
Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy (1966)—a trilogy that combined vivid case material with evolving theoretical reflections. In these texts, Naumburg presented art as a primary form of
symbolic speech, through which clients could express inner experiences more directly than through verbal language. She asserted that therapists should not impose interpretation, but instead support the patient's own discovery of meaning through their images and associations. Her approach was psychoanalytically grounded but eclectically practiced. She drew from both
Freudian and
Jungian frameworks, integrating a sensitivity to
archetypes,
developmental stages, and the reparative potential of imaginative play. Though she maintained rigorous clinical standards, she resisted institutional conformity and remained professionally unaffiliated until receiving licensure as a psychologist in 1961. Naumburg’s pedagogical efforts were equally foundational. In the 1950s, she began offering public lectures, informal seminars, and exhibitions of client artwork. By 1958, she was teaching formal courses in the Psychology Department at
New York University, followed by appointments at the
New School for Social Research after
NYU declined to reappoint her in 1965. These courses, which often attracted
teachers,
therapists, and
occupational therapy professionals, introduced a generation of students to the therapeutic potential of spontaneous visual expression. The
American Art Therapy Association (AATA) recognized her pinnacle achievements with art as therapy with the highest honor by giving her the first Honorary Life Membership award. She was awarded the honor in 1971. She taught art therapy at undergraduate level at
New York University. She successfully lobbied for the creation of a graduate level program at the university that began in 1969. Naumburg taught into her eighties. She died in 1983 at the age of 92.
Legacy Margaret Naumburg’s legacy spans two foundational contributions to 20th-century thought and practice: the creation of a psychologically attuned model of
progressive education, and the establishment of
art therapy as a clinical discipline in the United States. Across both domains, her work was rooted in a radical conviction that inner life matters—that the unconscious, the symbolic, and the creative must not be suppressed, but invited, witnessed, and made meaningful. In education, she broke from rote instruction and moral discipline, offering instead a model of schooling that prioritized self-expression, emotional insight, and relational autonomy. At the
Walden School, Naumburg integrated psychoanalysis, somatic practices, and the arts into a coherent educational philosophy decades ahead of its time. In art therapy, she offered a new method of accessing and engaging the unconscious through image-making as a distinct and autonomous form of communication. Her concept of
dynamically oriented art therapy emphasized that symbolic content emerges from within the client and should be explored, not decoded. This approach continues to influence psychodynamic art therapy, particularly in its emphasis on nonverbal processes, image-based insight, and respect for the client’s interpretive authority. Naumburg’s legacy also lives in the countless practitioners she taught, mentored, and inspired. Despite facing institutional exclusion, gendered skepticism, and professional marginalization, she built a life’s work that continues to shape fields she helped invent. She taught without a blueprint, published without a discipline, and insisted on the legitimacy of what had not yet been named. And yet, her life also reflects the contradictions of her era: she was expansive in theory but often guarded in relationships, fiercely protective of her vision yet hesitant to collaborate widely. As colleagues and students have recalled, her sharp intellect was matched by intense solitude, and her dedication to her work often came at personal cost. Still, her impact is undeniable. Margaret Naumburg created spaces where freedom, expression, and transformation were not only possible but necessary. ==Books==