Partner Jessie Taft
Queer Places:
University of Pennsylvania (Ivy League), 3355 Woodland Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Bryn Mawr College (Seven Sisters), 101 N Merion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
The Pocket, 15 E Mill Rd, Flourtown, PA 19031
Virginia
Pollard Robinson (September 6, 1883 – June 28, 1977) was a teacher and social
worker. She served as Professor of Social Case Work at the University of
Pennsylvania and was the leading force and major theoretician behind the
functional approach to social work. The sociologists Virginia Robinson
and her lifelong companion Jessie Taft were hired by the prison reformer
Katharine Bement Davis
to undertake research on female criminals: their partnership lasted more than
50 years and included two adopted children.
Jessie Taft with lifelong companion Virginia Robinson in May 1954 by their home, "The Pocket", in Flourtown, Pennsylvania
Jessie Taft with family in 1923. (L-R)Jessie, Martha, and Everett Taft, Virginia Robinson. Everett was adopted in 1921, Martha in 1923.
Virginia Robinson was an early proponent of professionalization who
championed higher standards, conceptualized approaches and content for
professionally controlled graduate work, and practiced professional social
work education from her positions at the University of Pennsylvania School of
Social Work and as an officer of the Association of Schools of Professional
Social Work. Along with her colleague and life partner, Jesse Taft, Robinson
was a proponent of the work of Otto Rank, and established the theoretical
framework of “functional casework” that characterized the curriculum at the
school for many years. Her extensive writings on supervision and casework
process were influential and widely used texts.
Virginia Pollard Robinson joined the staff of the Philadelphia Training School
for Social Work in 1918 (an earlier name for the University of Pennsylvania
School of Social Work). From 1918 until her retirement in 1952 Miss Robinson
held successively positions as Associate Director, Associate Dean, Assistant
Director and Vice Dean. Her distinguished work as teacher, administrator,
writer and student of social work processes was largely responsible for the
School’s unique development, both in size and in distinctive contribution to
social work and social work education.
To a degree rare in social work education her view of her tasks was marked by
a sustained interest in and respect for the field of social work practice,
while at the same time she maintained a scholarly perspective upon the field
as a rich source for study, learning and teaching. Even more significantly for
the School, the nature of Robinson’s interest in social work as related to
professional education suggested methods of interchange and patterns of
relationship between classroom and field work which have proven steadily
fruitful through the years and remain widely recognized as effective in
preparing the student both in comprehension of his task and in be- ginning
competence in practice.
Robinson’s book “Supervision in Social Casework“ was published in 1936. This
definitive book lifted supervision in social work out of its neglected
position as a casually undertaken sideline of casework, and established it as
an area of teaching and learning. Thus recognized, supervision has since been
practiced in social work with increasing skill and usefulness to social
agencies. Heightened effectiveness of their services has ensued as well as
clearer definition of their spheres of usefulness to community, client and to
professional education for social work. In turn, professional education has
gained greatly from a collaboration sustained with the social agency able to
provide not only skilled supervision for the student’s field work but also
communicable definition and function of purpose.
In the winter of 1936, due to Depression Era public service appointments made
by the Governor of Pennsylvania, the School of Social Work lost the services
of both its Director, Kenneth L. M. Pray, and the Dean of faculty Karl de
Schweinitz. The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social
Work elected Virginia P. Robinson to the post of Acting Director in 1936. She
had served the School as Associate Director since 1919 and had worked her way
through seven years in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Pennsylvania, earning a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1931.
She titled her dissertation “A Changing Psychology in Social Case Work” and
the University of North Carolina Press immediately published it in book form.
It was an extraordinary work, one which caused a sensation in the field of
social work education. Bertha C. Reynolds, Associate Director of the Smith
College School for Social Work, reviewed it with approval in the June 1931
issue of the Family Service Association journal, The Family: Some books sink
into the pool of oblivion with scarcely a ripple. Some, for a brief time, are
like molten matter cast up by an erupting volcano. Some are like earthquakes,
felt but not comprehended at the time and producing no one knows what changes.
One only knows that after their coming nothing is the same again. “A Changing
Psychology in Social Work” bears the mark of such a book.
On the other hand, Frank J. Bruno, a distinguished professor of social work
at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in
St. Louis, reviewed “A Changing Psychology…” in the January 1933 issue of The
American Journal of Sociology. He wrote with evident concern. In his view:
There has always been one school [of thought] which has relied upon
differences in personality for the explanation of deviant behavior and another
which has emphasized the predominant importance of the social, economic, and
political mediums in which development has taken place. Miss Robinson goes
nearly to the extreme of the personality hypothesis.…Her statement that
psychology and not social science has spoken the last word upon social case
work is confirmatory evidence of this allegiance. … The book exhibits the
qualities inherent in positive statement of conviction as compared with the
attitude of the scholar whose conclusions are tentative and subject to change
on the presentation of new evidence. The author seems to have found in the
methodology of [Otto] Rank an end to all searchings for method in social
interaction. This leads to an uncompromising form of statement, as well as a
confidence in the comprehensiveness of the formula which is in marked contrast
to the tentative methodologies of most of the contemporary professions.
Virginia Robinson was breaking new ground. Like others who lead a profession
in a new direction, she suffered the criticism of many of her peers.
Nevertheless, she pressed ahead. She had the courage of her own convictions.
She was strengthened by the support of Karl de Schweinitz, Kenneth Pray, and
the founder of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, the psychiatrist
Frederick H. Allen, M.D. Most of all, she enjoyed the committed backing and
intellectual powers of her life partner, Jessie Taft. Taft was the one who had
met Otto Rank in 1924, during his first visit to the United States. She had
undergone psychoanalysis with him in 1926-27. Taft wrote “The Function of a
Mental Hygienist in a Children’s Agency,” which she read at the National
Conference of Social Work in 1927. She had published “A Changing Psychology in
Child Welfare” in the September 1930 issue of The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science. In 1934, after fifteen years at the
Children’s Aid Society of Pennsylvania, she had become a full-time member of
the faculty at the Pennsylvania Society of Social Work. In 1936 she had
translated and published Rank’s Will Therapy: An Analysis of the Therapeutic
Process in Terms of Relationship. Jessie Taft was the person most responsible
for developing the “functional school” in social work theory and practice.
Virginia Robinson was her partner every step of the way.
Virginia Pollard Robinson was born September 6, 1883 to Walter Landon Robinson
and Hallie Thomas in Louisville, Kentucky. She was an outstanding high school
student and then enrolled in Bryn Mawr College where she earned both a B.A.
(1906), and an M.A. (1907). After leaving Bryn-Mawr she taught high school
English in the Louisville area for four years; however, she was not ready to
accept teaching high school as a career and enrolled in summer school at the
University of Chicago, where she met Jessie Taft who would become her lifelong
partner. From 1911 to 1918 Robinson worked at a series of social agencies in
the New York City area. Robinson joined the staff of the University of
Pennsylvania in 1918. After seventeen years in various assignments, she was
appointed Professor of Social Case Work. Until her retirement in 1952 Robinson
successively held positions as: Associate Director, Associate Dean, Assistant
Director and Vice Dean. Robinson and Jessie Taft both resigned in 1952.
Together they had adopted and raised two children, living in Flourtown,
Pennsylvania, in a close-knit community of professional women. Jesse Taft
died in 1960.
Robinson’s teaching and writing encompassed many fields of practice, but she
had a particular interest in child welfare and was an early proponent of
therapeutic child placement and adoption. In 1965 she founded the Otto Rank
Association and served as president and editor of its journal. Her goal was to
foster interest in the exploration and application of Rank’s ideas to diverse
areas of endeavor, including art and literature. The Association continued
until 1983.
Robinson’s Doctoral dissertation “A Changing Psychology in Social Case Work”
was revolutionary in social work. Published in 1930, this book in four
printings sold thousands of copies and could have been reprinted a fifth time,
but for Dr. Robinson’s request that it go out of print. “Supervision in Social
Casework: A Problem in Professional Education” was published in 1936. This
definitive book lifted supervision in social work out of its neglected
position as a casually undertaken side-line of casework, and established it as
an area of teaching and learning. “Training for Skill in Social Casework” was
published in 1942. This book, one of the School’s series, The Journal of
Social Work Process, was edited by Dr.Robinson, her paper of the same title,
appearing as its chief article. As the name implies, this piece describes an
effective helping process in social casework. At once authoritative and fine
grained, the article examines the elements of class room and field work
learning which altogether result in the attitude and skill requisite to
effective practice in social casework. In 1949 Dr.Robinson published “The
Dynamics of Supervision Under Functional Controls: A Professional Process in
Social Casework.” In this second book on supervision she developed further a
concept of school-field collaboration for education in social work,
high-lighting developments in the field during the thirteen years intervening
between this work and the earlier one, and delineating also some of the
problems arising from issues sharpened by social work’s clearer self
definition.
In retirement, Dr. Robinson authored: “Jessie Taft: Therapist and Social Work
Educator (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962). Robinson died
June 28, 1977 at the Pine Run Health Care Center in Doylestown Pennsylvania at
the age of 93. The University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work
established and awards annually: the Virginia P. Robinson Prize for an
outstanding student essay.
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