Margaret Frances Jane Lowenfeld (4 February 1890 – 2 February 1973) was a British pioneer of child psychology and play therapy, a medical researcher in paediatric medicine, and an author of several publications and academic papers on the study of child development and play. Lowenfeld developed a number of educational techniques which bear her name and although not mainstream, have achieved international recognition.
Early years
Margaret Lowenfield was born in Lowndes Square in Knightsbridge, London on 4 February 1890, as their second daughter, to a British mother and Polish father. Her father, Henry Lowenfeld from a wealthy family, had arrived in England in the early 1880s, apparently penniless from Silesia. He married Alice Evans, in 1884. He soon became a wealthy businessman through several ventures, such as buying up rundown theatres in the West End of London and starting the Kops Brewery in Fulham, selling non-alcoholic beer as the temperance movement took hold. Lowenfeld was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, England, with her older sister, Helena Rosa Wright who went on to be an influential figure in birth control and family planning.
Career
Medical training and Polish mission work
Lowenfeld followed her sister into the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women in Bloomsbury, London. By the outbreak of the First World War, she had passed the minimum requirement to practice medicine, In 1914 she got a job at the Royal Free Hospital followed by a short period at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. In 1917 she got the MRCS (Eng.) and LRCP (Lond.) and the MB, BS (Lond.). In 1918 she became a house surgeon at the South London Hospital for Women.
Further training was interrupted when in late 1918 she joined a mission to Poland, as Medical Officer for the British Typhus Unit. She also worked with the American YMCA assisting the Polish Army and POW department in stemming infectious diseases in her father's ancestral town of Chrzanów. The health of the children was a major influence on her later career as she speculated about the different outcomes in spite of their traumatic experiences. Lowenfeld returned to England briefly as war broke out between Poland and Russia. She went on to Warsaw to set up a medical department for prisoners of war and worked on improving sanitation and undertook refugee work.
In 1921 due to her own illness, Lowenfeld returned to London, and came into contact with Wilfred Trotter, a pioneer of both neurosurgery and social psychology. Through this association Lowenfeld developed an interest in psychodynamic psychology as a treatment of shell-shock and learned about the work of Hugh Crichton-Miller who co-founded the Tavistock Clinic. Lowenfeld's limited medical experience in England made it easier to follow a research career. She became a researcher at the Mothercraft Training Centre studying infant health and was influenced by Truby King, a pioneer of childcare. In 1923 she obtained a Medical Research Council fellowship and Muirhead Scholarship to study at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow where she worked on childhood rheumatism. In 1924 she returned to infant feeding with a scholarship at the Royal Free Hospital. She also established a private practice in Queen Anne Street, London, which she kept 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 pioneering health centre in South London, known as the Peckham Experiment, a service integrating health and social work to combat inner city deprivation.
Child Therapy
In 1928 Dr Lowenfeld established the Children's Clinic for the Treatment and Study of Nervous and Difficult Children, one of the first child guidance clinics in Britain, set up in Notting Hill, London. By 1931, it had developed into the 'Institute for Child Psychology' (ICP). The ICP trained child therapists in the use of Lowenfeld's theories and techniques. It was during 1929 that from the use of a sand tray, toys and models that the Lowenfeld World Technique was first established. It was first shown to the psychology community in 1931 and later in 1937 to the British Psychological Society conference it was observed by Carl Gustav Jung who attended the conference. Subsequently, the theories and methods originated by Lowenfeld became the basis of a range of therapeutic techniques, in particular the development of sandplay therapy credited to Dora M. Kalff, a Swiss Jungian analyst, who studied with Dr Lowenfeld.