Elizabeth Loftus

When looking at the field of psychology, we will learn about males who have contributed to the growth of psychology. Some examples of men we study in beginners psychology are E.G Boring, Robert I. Watson and of course Sigmund Freud. There is little mention of females who have contributed to psychology. Why is it that females are not really mentioned in the history of psychology? Females have contributed to the growth of psychology just as men have. A woman that has spent her whole life trying to understand memory is Elizabeth Loftus. We will begin with a short biography and also touch on how she has helped psychology to grow. Elizabeth Loftus was born Elizabeth Fishman on October 16, 1944 to Sidney and Rebecca Fishman in Los Angeles, California (Born, 1997). She was raised in Bel Air with both her parents. Then in 1959 her mother passed away, she had drowned in a swimming pool when Loftus was only 14 years old. Loftus wanted to be a high school math teacher, but after attending a psychology class at UCLA she changed her mind. She continued in school to receive her Bachelors in 1966 in math and psychology. She met Geoffrey Loftus in 1968 while attending graduate school at Stanford, and married him. While attending Stanford she was introduced to the study of long term memory and was very interested in this subject. Loftus got her Masters in 1967. She continued her education at Stanford and got her Ph. D in1970. Then in 1973 Loftus was offered a position as assistant professor at the University of Washington where her husband Geoffrey also worked. In 1991 both Geoffrey and Elizabeth called a quits on their marriage ending in divorce (Born, 1997). Today Loftus still works at the University of Washington as a psychology professor and also as an affiliate professor at the University of California where she was raised. Loftus main focus is on repressed sexual abuse memories that happened in childhood that appears 20 years later after the event happened in adult women.