By Margaret Mead

Margaret Lowenfeld was the originator of unique methods of child psychotherapy and methods for studying the thinking and feeling processes of both normal and disturbed children. She was born on February 4, 1890 in London and died there on February 2, 1973 after a short illness. During her long, full, very energetic life, she made a large number of contributions to the field of child psychology.

A great variety of interests shaped her life: a Polish father, owner of many theaters in England; a Welsh mother; a childhood spent between an estate in Poland and life in London; journeys in between in horse drawn carriages; revolt against her father’s objections to the determination of his two daughters (Margaret, and the renowned English physician, Dr. Helena Wright) to study medicine; contact with the very poor during her early medical work; feeding refugees on the Polish front after World War I, an endeavor which demanded high organizational ability and generalship; her associations with the World Christian Student Movement and with the exceptional group of people who were board members and patrons of the early Children’s Center (among whom R. G. Collingwood was a frequent visitor and critic); the strong ties which she was able to make with colleagues in other countries; and the extra-ordinary effect that single books and new hypotheses had on a life in which there was little time for consulting sources. Everything that she touched came out new, minted with all the freshness and urgency of an idea reborn.

After obtained medical training at the Royal Free Hospital she became House Surgeon in the South London Women’s Hospital. After her relief work in Poland after World War I, she returned to England determined to seek a research career, and began research training in the Royal Hospital for Sick children in Glasgow, which led to her first publication on acute rheumatism and which focused her attention on the relationships between social and cultural conditions and illness. This was followed by research on lactation and led to a series of publications on the relationship between the actual lactation behavior of individual mothers and babies and the chemical constitution of the mother’s milk. These early studies established her research approach: attention to the whole situation, intensive observation of individuals, meticulous collection of case studies, and consideration of the wider social and psychological implications of her research results.