Margaret Lowenfeld
Encyclopedia
Margaret Frances Jane Lowenfeld (4 February 1890 - 2 February 1973) was a British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

-born pioneer of child psychology and psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...

, a medical researcher in paediatric medicine, and an author of several publications and academic papers on the analysis of child development and play
Play (activity)
Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...

. Margaret developed a number of educational techniques which bear her name and have achieved worldwide recognition.

Early years

Margaret Lowenfield was born in Lowndes Square in Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge is a road which gives its name to an exclusive district lying to the west of central London. The road runs along the south side of Hyde Park, west from Hyde Park Corner, spanning the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...

, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on 4 February 1890. Her father, Henryk (Henry) Loewenfeld, who was from Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...

, had arrived in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in the early 1880s. Although almost penniless he soon became a wealthy businessman through a variety of ventures, including the buying up of rundown theatres in the West End of London
West End of London
The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...

 and starting a brewery selling non-alcoholic beer in Fulham
Fulham
Fulham is an area of southwest London in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, SW6 located south west of Charing Cross. It lies on the left bank of the Thames, between Putney and Chelsea. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...

 at the time the temperance movement took hold. He married, Alice Evans who was British in 1884. Margaret was educated locally at a Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 school and later attended Cheltenham Ladies College in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....

, England along with her older sister, Helena Rosa Wright
Helena Rosa Wright
Helena Rosa Wright was a British-born pioneer and influential figure in birth control and family planning both in the Britain and internationally. With her husband she undertook missionary work in China for five years. She qualified as a medical doctor, later specialising in contraception medicine...

 who went on to be an influential figure in Birth Control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...

 and Family Planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...

.

Medical training and mission work

Margaret followed her sister by going to the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women in Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury
-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...

, London and having passed the intermediate MB exam was able to achieve the minimum requirement to practice medicine by the time of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Later that year she got a job at the Royal Free Hospital
Royal Free Hospital
The Royal Free Hospital is a major teaching hospital in Hampstead, London, England and part of the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust....

 followed by a short period at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. In 1917 at the second attempt she passed the MRCS (Eng.) and LRCP (Lond.)
Conjoint
The conjoint was a basic medical qualification in the United Kingdom administered by the United Examining Board. It is now no longer awarded. The Conjoint Board was superseded in 1994 by the United Examining Board, which lost its permission to hold qualifying medical examinations after 1999.Medical...

 examinations and her MB, BS (Lond.) in 1918 and took up an house surgeon posting at the South London Hospital for Women.

Her further training was interrupted when she was asked in late 1918 to join a mission to her ancestral home in Chrzanów
Chrzanów
Chrzanów is a town in south Poland with 39,704 inhabitants . It is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship and is the capital of Chrzanów County.- To 1809:...

 where there had been outbreaks of typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...

, dysentary, cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

 and influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...

. The varying health condition of the children was a major influence on the direction of her later career as she began speculating about what enabled some children to survive and even flourish in spite of traumatic experiences. Margaret came back to England for a short period during which war broke out between Poland and Russia. She returned to Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

 to set up a medical department for prisoners of war. Margaret also took charge of improving sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...

 and later undertook refugee work.

In 1921 Margaret came back to London and as a result of illness came into contact with Wilfred Trotter
Wilfred Trotter
Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter, FRS was a British surgeon, a pioneer in neurosurgery. He was also known for his studies on social psychology, most notably for his concept of the herd instinct, which he first outlined in two published papers in 1908, and later in his famous popular work Instincts of...

, a pioneer of both neurosurgery
Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spine, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.-In the United States:In...

 and social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...

. Through this association Margaret was later to develop an interest in psychodynamic psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 related to the treatment of shell-shock and to learn of the work of Hugh Crichton-Miller
Hugh Crichton-Miller
Hugh Crichton-Miller was a Scottish psychiatrist and founder of the Tavistock Clinic in London.He attended Fettes College in Edinburgh, Edinburgh University, and Pavia University. Crichton-Miller served as vice president of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy....

 who founded the Tavistock Institute
Tavistock Institute
The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a British charity concerned with group behaviour and organisational behaviour. It was launched in 1946, when it separated from the Tavistock Clinic.-History of the Tavistock:...

. Margaret's limited medical experience precluded her obtaining a medical posting so instead she chose to follow a research career. She became a postgraduate researcher at the Mothercraft Training Centre
Canadian Mothercraft Society
The Canadian Mothercraft Society is a non-profit, charitable NGO that serves children ages 0 to 6, their families, their teachers, and their community....

 studying infant health and was influenced by the work by Truby King
Truby King
thumb|Sir Frederic Truby KingSir Frederic Truby King CMG , generally known as Truby King, was a New Zealand health reformer and Director of Child Welfare. He is best known as the founder of the Plunket Society....

 the New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 pioneer of infant feeding and childcare. In 1923 she obtained a Medical Research Council
Medical Research Council (UK)
The Medical Research Council is a publicly-funded agency responsible for co-ordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is one of seven Research Councils in the UK and is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...

 fellowship to study at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow where she specialised in paediatrics and she researched and published in the field of childhood rheumatism. In 1926 she returned to research infant feeding at the Royal Free Hospital and also established a private practice in Queen Anne Street, London, which she maintained for the rest of her working life. Alongside this research, between 1926-7 she undertook voluntary work as a medical officer at the newly opened Pioneer Health Centre in South London, also known as the Peckham Experiment, aimed at integrating a range of health and social services in areas of inner city deprivation.

Child psychotherapy

From 1928 Dr Lowenfeld began her work on child psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...

. That year she established the Children’s Clinic for the Treatment Study of Nervous and Difficult Children one of the first child guidance clinics in Britain in Notting Hill
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...

, London, which, by 1931, she had developed into the Institute for Child Psychology (ICP). The ICP trained child psychotherapists in the use of Lowenfeld's theories and techniques as well as operating as the local child guidance centre. These arrangements provided ICP students with unique experiences of child guidance practice during their training. It was during 1929 that from the use of a sand tray, toys and models the Lowenfeld World Technique was first established. It was first exposed to the psychotherapy community in 1931 and later in 1937 at the British Psychological Society
British Psychological Society
The British Psychological Society is a representative body for psychologists and psychology in the United Kingdom. The BPS is also a Registered Charity and, along with advantages, this also imposes certain constraints on what the society can and cannot do...

 conference it was analysed by Carl Gustav Jung who attended. Subsequently, the theories and methods originated by Lowenfeld also became the basis of a range of related therapeutic techniques. In particular the development of sandplay therapy by Dora M. Kalff the Swiss therapist who studied with Dr Lowenfeld.

Lowenfeld's first book on her theories and techniques of child psychotherapy, Play in Childhood was published in 1935 in the USA where here techniques had become popular and remains a seminal work to this day. Margaret's research theses during the late 1930s were influenced by the work of the English philosopher R. G. Collingwood
R. G. Collingwood
Robin George Collingwood was a British philosopher and historian. He was born at Cartmel, Grange-over-Sands in Lancashire, the son of the academic W. G. Collingwood, and was educated at Rugby School and at University College, Oxford, where he read Greats...

. Between 1937 and 1938 Margaret presented her theories on child behaviour to the British Psychological Society
British Psychological Society
The British Psychological Society is a representative body for psychologists and psychology in the United Kingdom. The BPS is also a Registered Charity and, along with advantages, this also imposes certain constraints on what the society can and cannot do...

, for which she received mixed reviews. During the Second World War the ICP clinic was evacuated to Berkhamsted
Berkhamsted
-Climate:Berkhamsted experiences an oceanic climate similar to almost all of the United Kingdom.-Castle:...

, Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

. The ICP was re-established in London after the War, continued to thrive and was eventually became funded by the National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...

. On the Psychotherapy of Children was an important monograph presented as a conference organised by her at the ICP in 1948. In this the Lowenfeld Mozaic Test was first described. Although Lowenfeld's second important book The World Technique was started in 1956, and the first part completed within three years. However, it was not published until after her death in 1979 through the work of Ville Andersen who organsised Margaret's papers.

Educational research and techniques

Margaret was greatly impressed by the work of anthropologist, Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....

 who she finally met in 1948 and later influenced Lowenfeld's research on child education and also her view of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

. The first technique invented and developed by Dr. Lowenfeld, The Lowenfeld World Technique (1929) was influenced by the book Floor Games
Floor Games
Floor Games is a book written in 1911 by H. G. Wells. It is a light-hearted, sometimes humorous discussion about the theory, purpose, and methodology of playing a variety of children's games with models, miniatures, and other props....

, created by H.G. Wells in 1911, which she recalled enjoying as a child. The other techniques she created were Lowenfeld Mosaics (1948), Lowenfeld Poleidoblocs (1950s), and Lowenfeld Kaleidoblocs (1960s).

Recognition and Legacy

Margaret Lowenfeld's techniques are featured in a special cabinet in the History of Medicine section at the Science Museum
Science museum
A science museum or a science centre is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of...

, London. Her work is also well-represented in a major semi-permanent exhibition at the Science Museum, 'Mind Your Head', that celebrates the Centenary of the British Psychological Society.

In summarising the achievements of Dr. Margaret Lowenfeld's the Trust set up in her name records:-
Her outstanding contributions sprang from her recognition that play is an important activity in children's development and that language is often an unsatisfactory medium for children to express their experiences. She consequently invented non-verbal techniques that enabled them to convey their thoughts and feelings without resort to words.


Her obituary, published February 1973 in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, summarised her achievements as:-
...bringing a brilliant mind to the study of the psychology of children and to devising methods to identify and eliminate anti-social tendencies at a formative stage and release and develop their highest potentials.
It was recorded that the practical application of her theories were applied with remarkable success with disturbed children by doctors, teachers, magistrates and local authorities and had had a continuing contribution to the health of the community. It was also noted that her work had received greater recognition in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and the Continent
Continent
A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.Plate tectonics is...

 than in the UK.

Later life

After retiring from full-time medical practice Margaret Lowenfield moved out of London to a house in Cholesbury
Cholesbury
Cholesbury is a village in Buckinghamshire, England, on the border with Hertfordshire. It is situated in the Chiltern Hills, about east of Wendover, north of Chesham and from Berkhamsted....

, Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....

 which she had purchased back in the 1930s to use as a weekend retreat, following the death of her mother. She was joined by her longtime colleague at the ICP Ville Anderson who became her companion and carer until Margaret's death on 2 February 1973 at St Johns and St Elizabeth’s Hospital, St John's Wood
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district of north-west London, England, in the City of Westminster, and at the north-west end of Regent's Park. It is approximately 2.5 miles north-west of Charing Cross. Once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, it was later owned by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem...

 London. She is buried along with her sister, Helena and alongside her cousin Gunther and his wife Claire Löewenfeld
Claire Loewenfeld
Claire Loewenfeld, born Lewisohn in Berlin, Germany was a nutritionist and herbalist who worked in England during and after the Second World War promoting the importance of good nutrition, most notably rosehips from Britain's hedgerows as a source of vitamin C...

, at the Church of St Lawrence Cholesbury.

Selected publications originally by Margaret Lowenfeld

(Originally published in 1935) (Published posthumousely)

External links

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