Pioneering art therapist Sadie Ellis Garland Dreikurs (1900-1996) used self-expression through painting and drawing to reveal behavior, lifestyles, and personality patterns. She combined her talent and knowledge of art with a profound understanding of Individual (Adlerian) Psychology to create Adlerian Art Therapy.
Sadie Ellis (nicknamed “Tee”), grew up on the Near West Side of Chicago. An early recollection of hers was an incident at age six when a teacher demanded that she change a drawing she had made of a purple cow, and she refused. Hence, her memoir/book of techniques published in 1986 is titled Cows Can Be Purple: My Life and Art Therapy.
“Tee” began her studies in the children’s art classes at Hull-House at age eleven, mentored by Emily Edwards and Jane Addams, the founder. She briefly attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a scholarship obtained with Jane Addams’ assistance. She was forced to quit her studies, however, when her father’s business failed, but continued to attend art classes at Hull House. There she met her future husband, artist Leon Garland (1896-1941), a Hull-House resident teacher. After their marriage in 1927, the two left to travel to France, Germany, Switzerland, Lithuania, and Italy and study with André L’Hote in Paris. (While there, Leon suffered the first of his heart attacks.)
The Garlands returned in 1930 to Hull-House to live in a studio apartment atop the Hull-House buildings. Both taught classes in the Hull-House art school and exhibited in the city and internationally. They experimented with a variety of subjects and styles, including cubism. At Hull-House, Sadie became director of community services but also taught children’s art classes. At one point, being assigned a challenging group of “delinquent” boys, she gained their cooperation by having them paint together on huge sheets of wrapping paper taped to the Hull-House walls. These early experiments with group cooperative painting essentially began Sadie’s career in art therapy.
Working closely with Jane Addams, she was also among the pioneers in social work. In that capacity, she studied with psychiatrist Rudolf Dreikurs, who had emigrated from Austria to Chicago in 1937 and lectured on Adlerian child guidance techniques. Addams invited Dr. Dreikurs to live at Hull House with his family as well and became a good friend of the Garlands.
Two years after Leon Garland died of a heart attack, Sadie Garland married Rudolf Dreikurs. Throughout their marriage, she assisted Dreikurs in his writing and teaching. She supported him in establishing Child Guidance Centers, the Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago (now Adler University), one in Israel, and more. They traveled extensively to organize psychiatric clinics and conduct hospital staff orientations. She was his partner in all aspects of his work.
Dr. Bernard Shulman, one of Dreikurs’ key colleagues in his practice and establishment of the Adler Institute, suggested to “Tee” that her expertise with both art and Adlerian Psychology could be useful with psychiatric patients of his at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago. As early as 1962, she recalled, he encouraged her to create an Art Therapy program there. After Dreikurs’ death in 1971, “Tee” continued working with Shulman’s psychiatric patients and was invited to teach her techniques to graduate students at the Adler Institute. Her techniques were shared world-wide through ICASSI and students of her work. Sadie continued to write and teach at the Adler Institute when she was well into her 80s. In 1987, Mayor Harold Washington named her to Chicago’s Senior Hall of Fame; she was selected to be spokesperson for the women of those honorees in a speech before the City Council.
The Art Therapy Program continues today at Adler University, with master’s and doctoral degree programs established by her student, Dr. Judy Sutherland, in the 1990s. The curriculum retains the Adlerian techniques originally developed by Sadie “Tee” Dreikurs.
She tells her story in a documentary recorded in 1986: https://www.adlerpedia.org/resources/sadie-tee-dreikurs-partner-in-history-a-video-documentary/
This bio essay was created with support of Bryna Gamson on February 28, 2025.