I was going to wait until Monday to write another post on influential women, but there are so many women to discuss, I decided to include more posts. Today I will feature two more women who made important contributions to the mental health field.
Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930)
“For with each year I live, with each book I read, with each observation I initiate or confirm, I am more deeply convinced that psychology should be conceived as the science of the self, or the person, as related to its environment, physical and social.”
Mary Whiton Calkins is a graduate of Wellesley College. After graduating she was given permission to attend seminars at Harvard University, which at the time was an all-male institution. She completed all the requirements for a PhD but was denied the degree because she was a woman.
She taught psychology a Wellesley College, where she established one of the first psychological laboratories in the United States. Her research was focused on memory, dreams, and consciousness. She developed a system of self-psychology. According to this system the foundation of the study of psychology should be the conscious self. She opposed behaviorist John Watson’s idea that introspection was not a part of scientific psychology.
Calkins invented a technique, called the paired-associate technique that is still used in memory research today. In this method pairs of items are presented. The items are usually words. Recall is tested by presenting the first item as cue and asking the person to recall the second item.
In 1905 Calkins became the first female president of the American Psychological Association. She was the 14th president in the organization’s history. In addition, she became president of the American Philosophical Association in 1918.
It should be noted that Harvard still refuses to grant Mary Whiton Calkins the PhD posthumously, stating that Harvard did not admit women at the time she completed coursework there.
Mamie Phipps Clark (1917-1983)
“A racist system inevitably destroys and damages human beings; it brutalizes and dehumanizes them, blacks and whites alike.”
Mamie Phipps Clark grew up in the Jim Crow South. She lived with segregation. She witnessed the violence that goes with segregation.
Clark earned a master’s degree from Howard University. She earned a PhD in psychology from Columbia University in 1943. She was the first African American woman to earn a PhD from Columbia University.
Her research was focused on child development and racial trauma. Her work was instrumental in desegregating schools in the South. She, along with her husband Kenneth Clark, is known for using doll tests to demonstrate how segregation negatively affected Black children. Her research with the “Doll Test” key evidence in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.
Along with her husband, Phipps Clark worked to make the field of psychology more inclusive. Mamie Phipps Clark was a Black woman in psychology when that was a rarity in the United States. She opened the door for diversity in the field of psychology. She used her own personal experiences to devise research that led to the end of segregation in schools.
Mary Whiton Calkins and Mamie Phipps Clark made important contributions to the field of psychology and to American society. They paved the way for the women who are doing great work in mental health and psychology today. They broke barriers. Their work should not be forgotten.