Jessie Taft, Therapist and Social Work Educator: A Professional Biography [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512805680

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JESSIE TAFT Therapist and Social W a r k Educator

Jessie T a f t , June,

1959

JESSIE TAFT Therapist and Social Work Educator A Professional

Biography

¿¡fòt Edited by

V I R G I N I A P. R O B I N S O N

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

© 1962 by The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Published in Great Britain, India, and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-10746

7321 Printed in the United States of America

A L U M N I A S S O C I A T I O N of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work is privileged to share in this memorial to Dr. Jessie Taft. Her death in June i960 called forth from the alumni a spontaneous and widely expressed wish to honor her as teacher and writer. Officers and Executive Committee of the Alumni Association, the membership at large, and the School faculty agreed that the publication of a volume of her assembled writings would express most fittingly their appreciation of Dr. T a f t and at the same time add significantly to the literature of social work. THE

In Miss Virginia Robinson's editorship of this book, the Alumni Association is fortunate indeed. Her long and close collaboration with Dr. T a f t in social work education, her distinguished skills as teacher, writer, and editor combine to make this tribute to Dr. T a f t all that the Alumni had envisioned, and more. In these pages former students of Dr. T a f t will find expression of the thought and spirit which imparted so much meaning to their professional education. All readers will find that the re-statement of her original approach to helping in the social work setting is as vital and evocative today as when she taught and wrote. The Alumni Association's wholehearted response to the

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advance underwriting of this publication, the devoted help of Dean R u t h E. Smalley and the School faculty, together with Miss Robinson's gifted editorship now b r i n g into being a biography that will long stand as a living memorial to a beloved teacher—Dr. Jessie T a f t . FLORENCE SILVERBLATT,

A l u m n i Representative for the Jessie T a f t Memorial July 19,1961

Foreword IT WAS Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote: " A n institution is the lengthened shadow of one man." Anyone associated with an institution, and certainly with that specific institution, a school of social work, knows how integral and vital to its on-going life are the separate and combined efforts of all who are a part of it. Yet, distinctive and vigorous institutions do bear the special mark of the particularly strong and gifted, the giants, who over a considerable period of time, poured their life and gifts into the institution's life. N o institution among schools of social work has been more blessed in its "giants" than the School of Social Work of the University of Pennsylvania, whose faculty has included such men and women as Karl de Schweinitz, Kenneth Pray, and, in a very special and central way—Virginia Robinson and Jessie T a f t . In this volume there evolves the strong, forthright, deeply compassionate, immediately and humanly responsive scholar, psychotherapist and social work educator who was Jessie T a f t . Through her own writings and through the story of her life, which becomes their context, so comprehendingly and movingly told by Virginia Robinson, her lifelong friend and companion, she is here revealed as an always powerful, developing, and then fully developed professional self. T h e interaction of these two

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women, which served as spark to the genius of each, and which resulted in a contribution second to none in social work, is illustrated and exemplified in the production of this book. Strikingly confirmed here are the words of the citation presented by the A l u m n i to Dr. T a f t on the occasion of the School's celebration of its Fiftieth Anniversary in 1959: "Much that comprises the strength and distinction of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work originated in her thinking, teaching, and writing." With humility and a deep sense of responsibility, the present School honors and seeks to comprehend ever more fully and to use ever more creatively in its continuing development, the heritage in which Dr. T a f t and Dr. Robinson shared so centrally. For the School's alumni, the publication of this book, an undertaking initiated and sponsored by them, has special meaning, for their lives were deeply touched by the living presence of Dr. T a f t . For the profession as a whole it makes available in one place and preserves for all time a theory of social casework, unique and powerful in character, whose impact on social work practice and social work education, already great, even revolutionary, promises to continue to be just as great as the profession will let it be. " T o have great poets there must be great audiences too," and the depths to which readers will take what is here written, and let it be for them a moving and direction-giving experience in their own lives, must depend on the readers themselves. What Dr. T a f t said of the writings of Otto Rank might be said of her own: " . . . as to the importance of his relation to social work, he gave to a limited group of social

Foreword

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workers the secret of helping. But it is not understood except by those who have felt its effects. It will never be popular; it is too hard to live up to." Here I dare to be more confident and optimistic than Dr. Taft—about the capacity and the courage of social workers generally, both to understand and to live up to the hard yet deeply rewarding doctrine of discipline and responsibility, and necessity to live life fully and in the present moment—a doctrine full of life and promise—which constitutes the core of the contribution of both Dr. Rank and Dr. Taft, and through them and Dr. Robinson, of the School of Social Work of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. T a f t lived positively, for and not against; for life richly and responsibly lived, for a belief in the wish and capacity of each to so live his own life, for defining and then using a psychology of help through human relationship, functionally determined and moving in time, as true for education for social work as for its practice. She was the living exponent of her own credo of the power of the positive will, a lover and liver of life. As she was so, she emerges so, in these pages, from her earliest beginnings to her own quietly affirmed ending with life, although the form and content of her professional contribution were influenced and confirmed by Dr. Otto Rank and her long friendship with Dr. Robinson. " T h e professional self is the immortal self," said Dr. T a f t . Here is her immortality, and more. Here is the immortality of "Miss Robinson and Dr. T a f t " as they were lovingly known. As present Dean of the School she served so brilliantly, it is my privilege to commend this volume not only to members of the social work profession who will find in it

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for their own and their profession's use all of the vigor, the penetrating psychological insight, and the clarity of Dr. T a f t , but to any reader who may wish to restore and renew the life in himself through association with a life fully, abundantly, and most generously lived. RUTH E. SMALLEY,

Dean

School of Social Work University of Pennsylvania July 7, 1961

Editor's Preface in the fall of 1 9 5 8 , Dr. Ruth Smalley, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work, asked me to write a history of the School for presentation at the Fiftieth Anniversary celebration of the School in the spring of 1959 there began for me and for Jessie T a f t , my lifelong companion, an exploration into our past going back to 1917. In that year I came to the faculty of the School; in the year following, Jessie T a f t came to Philadelphia to develop a mental hygiene program for children under the Seybert Institution. She soon became an authority on mental hygiene and problems of children in this community, speaking and writing on these subjects, and teaching a course in psychology for students in the Pennsylvania School of Social Work. From that time on, our interest in defining and creating professional education for social work had been absorbing. For purposes of Writing this history we had not only our own memories to depend on but published and unpublished speeches, correspondence, catalogues of the School, curriculum studies and all the papers that collect in the files of teachers. Those that bore clearly upon the history of the School were in order by the time the paper was delivered in June, 1959. When we returned from vacation in Vermont in the fall of 1959, Dr. T a f t decided to continue with the process WHEN,

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of organizing our past by putting her separate papers in order. These included copies of all of her published speeches, early reports of her work in children's agencies, several records of office interviews with difficult children, copies of some pieces of teaching material and case illustrations. It was characteristic of her to answer, often by return mail and in longhand, personal letters from friends and former students and to destroy these letters. T h e correspondence relating to writing and publishing her last book, a biography of Otto Rank, and current professional correspondence was preserved. In January, February, and March she worked regularly on this material with great satisfaction in seeing her professional past in perspective. She finished this task in March, i960. In undertaking the editorship of a Memorial Volume to be drawn from these papers, I recognize my handicap in my own involvement, personal and professional, in this history. This involvement has left open no possibility of choice of editorship either to the alumni or to myself. It has made the work of editing this volume at times painful, but always deeply rewarding. It has been my aim to present only such biographical material as is necessary to follow the development of a professional person in the field of mental hygiene and social casework in the first half of this century. Jessie T a f t always said "the professional self is the real self, the self that carries value, the immortal self." This was never said to deny that it was also for her the human self. Nothing she ever wrote from the slightest comment on a student's paper to a national conference address was written or spoken perfunctorily or from the level of intellect alone; every utterance came

Editor's

Preface

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from a whole self responding spontaneously and humanly as well as responsibly to the person or situation before her. For this reason her papers as published in this volume constitute a biography. Without the sponsorship of the alumni and faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work this volume could not have been undertaken. T h e i r interest and concern expressed in contributions to the Memorial Fund and in meetings with me through Florence Silverblatt, President of the Alumni Association, Dr. R u t h Smalley, Dean of the School and Dr. Isabel Carter, the faculty representative, have been a source of stimulation and support on which I have relied throughout my work as editor. Anita Faatz has given me invaluable help as consultant through her intimate knowledge of the material we were using, her discriminating judgment in selecting papers, and her special editorial and bibliographical skills. T h e work of compiling the bibliography is hers. T o Mrs. Grace Seeburger, my first secretary in the School and presently the able secretary of the Alumni Association, belong my sincere thanks for her unfailing patience and skill in typing and retyping the manuscript. VIRGINIA P .

Flourtown, Pennsylvania June, 1961

ROBINSON

Acknowledgments to reprint, acknowledgment is made to the Family Service Association of America for articles appearing in The Family and Social Casework; the National Conference on Social Welfare for papers printed in the Proceedings; the World Federation for Mental Health, United States Committee for discussion from the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Mental Hygiene; the Journal of Jewish Communal Service for a paper from the Jewish Social Service Quarterly; the American Academy of Political and Social Science for an article from The Annals; the University of Pennsylvania Press and School of Social Work for quotations from their Journals; the Child Study Association of America for an article appearing in Child Study; the John Dewey Society for an article published in Progressive Education; the University of Chicago Alumni Association for the quotation from University of Chicago Magazine; the Division of Pupil Personnel and Counseling of the Philadelphia School District for a paper delivered at its meeting; to Alfred A. Knopf for reprinting excerpts from Will Therapy and Truth and Reality; to the Julian Press, for excerpts from Otto Rank, a Biographical Study. In each instance, full details of publication are given in the bibliography at the end of this volume. For permission to quote from correspondence and other F O R PERMISSION

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materials thanks are due to: Miss Phoebe Crosby, Dr. Florence Clothier Wislocki, Mr. Edward Solenberger, Miss Anita J. Faatz, Mr. Arthur Ceppos, Mr. Roland Baughman, Mrs. Margorie Mohan Turville, Dr. Frederick H. Allen, Dr. Fay B. Karpf, Dr. John N. Shlien, Mr. Jack Jones; and to Miss Laura Taft and Mrs. Lorraine Taft Warner, for permission to use family pictures.

Contents Forewords

Florence Silverblatt and

Ruth E. Smalley

Editor's Preface

Virginia P. Robinson

Acknowledgments