A Study on the "Classical History" of Female Psychology

The "classical history" of women in psychology, St. Thomas University's Ann Johnson: "The contributions and lives of female psychologists have been excluded or minimized for many years in traditional explanations of the field. After the infusion of feminist criticism and analysis into psychology in the 1960s and 1970s, it finally began to change. At that time , their contributions, and their lives were revived, and historians began to document the life stories of female psychologists." According to Johnson, the "first generation" of female psychologists has received more attention over the past few years; however, information on "second generation" female researchers (who received doctoral degrees between 1906 and 1945) is difficult to find. Johnson also saw that historians tend to focus on psychologists who work as academics and not on those who work in applied psychology. As a result, little is known about women working as applied psychologists in the early and mid-20th century. Mildred Mitchell and Georgene Seward, clinical psychologists working in military settings, are two exceptions to this rule. However, there are a few more (an experimental psychologist who challenges traditional gender roles with experimental research in his book Sex and the Social Order). Johnson concluded that our criteria for deciding who should be considered a role model among women in psychology needed to be rethought and we needed to examine new role model categories such as career flexibility, work-family balance, and perseverance. At the beginning of her presentation, "Feminism in Psychology," a professor at York University named Alexandra Rutherford saw that "overtly feminist stories about the past of psychology" have not been explored as extensively as other aspects of psychological history. In every presentation, Rutherford underlined that feminism has appeared throughout history in various guises, depending on the era. Her presentation is structured around the "waves" of feminism to keep the focus on feminism as a political movement and how that political movement "influenced some of the women who made her way as psychologists at the time." Her speech was edited this way to focus on feminism as a political movement.