Margaret Naumburg
Made spontaneous images a path to the unconscious.
A founder of art therapy who developed "dynamically oriented art therapy," treating spontaneous artwork as symbolic speech that surfaces the unconscious.
techniques
Our most fundamental thoughts and feelings, derived from the unconscious, reach expression in images rather than words.
Who they were
Margaret Naumburg was an American educator, psychologist and author. She studied at Barnard and Columbia and with Maria Montessori, founding the experimental Walden School in 1915. From the 1930s she turned to therapeutic work, developing dynamically oriented art therapy and researching at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is widely regarded as a mother of art therapy.
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
Art Therapy Theory
Image-making gives unconscious feeling a form that can be seen and integrated.
The approach they founded
Art Therapy
Creative expression brings emotional experience to the surface, where it can be seen and integrated.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Naumburg — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.