TAFT, Julia Jessie

TAFT, Julia Jessie. (Dubuque, IA, June 24, 1882--Flourtown, PA, June 7, 1960). The oldest of three sisters, Julia's parents were Charles Chester Taft and Amanda May Farwell who moved from Vermont to Iowa.

After her family moved to Des Moines, her father established a prosperous wholesale fruit business and the family was financially comfortable. (1) Taft attended and graduated from West Des Moines High School. In 1904 she received a B. A. degree from Drake University in Des Moines. Also in her class of 1904 at Drake was Clara Charlotte Hastings, granddaughter of Pardee Butler and older sister of Milo Hastings. Two decades later Taft was to adopt a boy, Everett, the first-born son of Milo Hastings.

After college at Drake, Taft went to the University of Chicago and earned a Ph.D. in 1905. She returned to Des Moines to her former high school and taught there for four years. In 1908 she returned to the University of Chicago for graduate work. At that time she met Virginia P. Robinson. The two women became lifelong companions and colleagues. In 1909 she received a fellowship and began working with George H. Mead (who became her thesis adviser), James Hayden Tufts, and William I. Thomas. She also worked at Hull House, the social settlement of Jane Addams.

Taft's thesis topic was "The Woman Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness" accepted in 1913 by the philosophy department at the University of Chicago. It was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1916 with a note acknowledging her "indebtedness to Professor James H. Tufts and Professor George H. Mead for their advice and counsel". Her thesis became one of the philosophical foundations of the feminist movement.

In 1912 Taft found work at the Bedford Hills Reformatory for Women in New York City and stayed there until 1915. Taft then moved from the field of delinquency to the new field of mental hygiene as the Director of the Mental Hygiene Committee of the State Charities Aid Association of New York. In 1918 she left the Committee and moved to Philadelphia to join the Seybert Institution as director of a new Department or Child Study, organizing a school for problem children and doing much case work. She wrote many papers and spoke often about what she had learned and the diagnostic techniques she pioneered for dealing with institutionalized children.

In about 1920 Taft and Robinson bought a house on East Mill Road in Flourtown that became known as “The Pocket”, so called because the women had to dig deeply into their pockets to purchase the property.

In 1921 the Taft and Robinson chose to adopt two children. Everett was adopted on his birthday July 9, 1921 at age nine. Martha Scott was adopted in 1923 at age 6. Everett went on to marry and raise a family. Martha, who never married, became Chief Dietitian for the Veterans Administration Hospital in Philadelphia.

In 1924 Taft met Otto Rank, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, and became his American champion and translator. In 1929 Taft began an academic career at the University of Pennsylvania. The following year, she and Virginia Robinson announced their development of the "functional school" of social casework and published the first comprehensive text to integrate social and psychodynamic concepts, A Changing Psychology in Social Casework (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). (2)

In 1934 Taft became a full-time faculty member of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania. The School of Social Work was the first in the country to have an advanced curriculum focused on social work. Taft’s thinking and teaching simulated and guided this program from its beginning in 1934 until her retirement in 1950.

Taft retired from the University of Pennsylvania after commencement in June, 1950. For the first few years she still taught a few courses and was a consultant on the doctoral council. She then turned her full attention to translating and organizing the papers of Otto Rank which were given to her at the time of Rank’s death in 1939.

In 1930 Rank introduced the idea of “will” therapy, a radical idea in academic circles. Will for Rank, as defined by Taft, “… is the integrated personality as original creative force, that which acts, not merely reacts, upon the environment.” Rank emphasized conscious will to explain human behavior. Unlike most of her medical colleagues, Taft took this novel idea in stride. “I had been brought up on pragmatism and the thinking of George Herbert Mead and John Dewey. For me there was nothing to lose.”

In 1936 Taft translated Rank’s Will Therapy: An Analysis of the Therapeutic Process in Terms of Relationship and Truth and Reality: A Life History of the Human Will from German into English. When Rank died in 1939 Taft was given all his papers and became his chief American proponent. Taft incorporated Rank’s ideas on “will” into her therapeutic social work.

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Source:

"Jessie Taft." Wikipedia

1. Hansan, John E. "Jessie Taft (1882 – 1960): Social Worker, Advocate for Women, Academic and Founder of the Functional School of Social Work," The Social Welfare History Project, Online: http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/people/taft-jessie/

2. Milestones in the Development of Social Work and Social Welfare 1900 to 1950. Online: http://www.socialworkers.org/profession/centennial/milestones_3.htm