Naomi Feil (July 22, 1932 – December 24, 2023) was a German-American social worker who developed validation therapy (holistic therapy that focuses on empathy and provides means for people with cognitive deficit and dementia to communicate).
Naomi Feil was born in Munich, Germany, on July 22, 1932, and immigrated to the United States in July 1937, growing up first in New York City and then, from age 8 on, in Cleveland at the Montefiore Home for the Aged where her parents worked.
[1] After a period of early adulthood in New York City, acting and studying theater at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio, Feil resumed her lifelong calling, acquiring a master's degree in Social Work from Columbia University and returning to Cleveland to begin her professional life at Montefiore, incorporating her natural flair for improvisation and theatrical skills into her many decades of teaching and training here and abroad, which she was still doing after moving to Eugene, Oregon, in 2015.
In November 2023, she relayed to the worldwide network of validation therapy practitioners that she had metastatic cancer.
[3] Between 1963 and 1980 Naomi developed validation therapy as alternative to traditional methods of working with the severely disoriented aged people.