Personal life space: Learning from Martha Muchow’s classic study

Abstract

In her study on the life space of the urban child, Martha Muchow extensively analyzed the personal life space of children growing up in Hamburg between two World Wars. Resorting to theoretical person<>environment conceptions as proposed by mentors and colleagues such as William Stern, Jakob von Uexkuell, and Heinz Werner, Muchow’s study represents a fine example of empirically investigating the emergence of the world not only as it is experienced by the child (subjectively) or in a purely physical and concrete relational manner (objectively), but also as the child lives his world (from a developmental and cultural psychological perspective). The aim of this paper is to briefly review Mey and Günther’s translation of Muchow’s original study and to expand on Muchow’s threefold differentiation of the personal life world. With the example of Gugging—a place for Art Brut—Muchow’s person<>environment conception is discussed in relation to the developmental aspect of time and socio-cultural processes.