How Did Mary Calkins Contribute To Psychology
Mary Calkins made numerous contributions to the field of psychology and laid a solid foundation that later psychologists relied on as the field grew. Mary was a pioneer in the Psychology field & the first American Psychological Association woman president. During the late 1800s &the early 1900s, she concentrated her efforts and willpower to become an inspirational figure to others and to help develop a new science in the field of psychology. Despite the challenges faced by women during her times, she relentlessly went on to setting her goals, achieving them and fighting for the voiceless women’s rights ("Mary Whiton Calkins," n.d.).
Biography of Mary Calkins
Mary Calkins was born at Connecticut in Hartford on the 30 March 1863. Her father was a Prysbetyrian church minister in Buffalo, but he joined Congregational church in Newton in 1880 where the family settled permanently. Mary was the first born in her family, and she had four siblings whom she had a strong relationship with (Difebo, 2003).
Mary completed her high school in Massachusetts and enrolled for undergraduate work at Smith College. She took off a year break from Smith College following the death of her sister, Maud. …show more content…
She tutored her two brothers and learned Greek. She went back to Smith College, and she graduated one year later with a major in philosophy (Difebo, 2003).
She taught Greek at Wellesley College, a women’s college for liberal arts until a professor in the department of Philosophy approached her and advised her to consider teaching Psychology in the field of Philosophy. Mary took up the challenge, and she agreed to meet the requirement of studying for one year in a psychology program. During this time, the society was male dominated, and women suffered unequal treatment. Despite the numerous supports she received from her family, male professors and her friend, she still had a hard time getting the education she yearned (Difebo, 2003).
She considered studying abroad, but she changed her decision following a discouragement from a letter from a friend who was studying abroad. She was dissatisfied with the German system, which discriminated against women, and she saw no hope for changes in the system. She began looking for institutions in the United States and found Harvard since it was the only university that had a psychology laboratory. Some professors allowed her to attend their lectures but on an informal basis. She felt that Harvard had the capacity to enable her get the information she needed about psychology. She, therefore, wrote to the president of the university to ask to be sitting on lectures on a formal basis (Difebo, 2003).
The principal turned her offer down but with the aid of her father's petition letter & Wellesley College president emphasize on the importance her gaining more knowledge in the field of psychology; she was allowed to sit on lectures but still on an informal basis. At Harvard, she had the opportunity to gain knowledge in an individualized setting since the students at Harvard boycotted some classes because a female was present and most of the times she found that she was the only students attending psychology lectures (Difebo, 2003).
She studied for one year and then returned to Wellesley College as an instructor in psychology. She created a laboratory with the assistance from others at Wesley. This psychology laboratory was the first in any women’s college (Difebo, 2003).
Mary began to contemplate returning to Harvard in order to gain more knowledge from a psychology specialist, Hugo Munsterberg, who was relocating from Germany to Harvard area. She consequently petitioned to be allowed to attend lectures formally but once again she was only allowed to study informally. She studied at Harvard for almost three years under Munsterberg. In 1895, Mary presented her thesis to her professors at Harvard who unanimously agreed that she qualified for a Ph.D. Shockingly; Mary was eventually denied her degree by Harvard officials because she was a woman after three years Radcliffe College offered to award her a Ph.D. However, Calkins being a woman who was motivated by equality and a strong belief in her values, she turned down the offer. Accepting a degree from Radcliffe college which was an all-woman and did not offer the degree in Psychology seemed illogical to her and apparently she would only settle for a degree from Harvard where studied (Difebo, 2003).
Twenty-five years later, a prominent former student from Harvard sent a petition to the University asking that Mary be awarded the degree she earned from the institution.
However, Harvard officials still maintained their position not to award her the degree. Mary taught at Wellesley College for the much of her years and was a key player of the psychological advancement at Wellesley. Other than helping set up the first psychology laboratory there, she engaged her students actively and allowed many of them to do experimental work. In addition, Mary challenged the variability hypothesis put forward by Joseph Jastrow that that was presenting women as inferior. She saw no difference between men and women intellect, and she attributed the trivial difference to environmental factors (Difebo,
2003).
Mary retired from Wellesley College with the title of Research Professor in 1929, after a forty-two years teaching career. She planned to dedicate her retirement to writing and enjoying the company of her mother. With a life full of determination, she succumbed to inoperable cancer one year later. Her life was marked with indelible marks in the lives of those she interacted with and in the field of psychology (Difebo, 2003).
Contribution of Mary Calkins to the Field of Psychology
Psychological Laboratory
Mary Calkins opened the Wellesley psychological laboratory in 1891.She liaised with other professors who provided her with valuable advice in setting up the laboratory. The psychological laboratory was quite a revolutionary because there were only 12 others in North America during that time. Further, it was the first psychological laboratory in women’s college.
Fifty-four students worked under Mary in the lab in 1891 to 1892.Some of the activities they carried was out was to dissect sheep’s brains, conducting studies attention, association, sensation, memory, space perception and reaction time.("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.).
In 1892, Mary wrote an article describing her psychology course in which she reported that she used simple experiments to provide first-hand material used for the study of various topics. She wrote a variety of articles that described the results of the experiments she carried out with her students. Their studies encompassed dreams, synesthesia, psychological aesthetics, moral consciousness, emotional life, drawing and stories. In a few years Mary had set up a laboratory that offered training to hundreds of students in psychology, and published in journals many findings collected by the students. ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.).
Dream Research
Mary conducted a two months intensive research that entailed studying dreams recorded in a period of seven weeks. Each night was recorded instantly after waking from a dream, everything remembered about it. After considering at total of 205 dreams collected by Mary and 170 other dreams recorded by Stanford (another researcher), they made a conclusion that on average, four dreams could be recorded in one night. Mary also found that there was a close relationship between dream life and waking life. She said that a dream was a reproduction of people, places and occasions of a recent sense of perception (Difebo, 2003).
Mary Published her account of the finding in 1883.Several years later, her dream research findings were viewed as inferior in comparison with Freudian view of dreams. However, In the 1890s, when Freudian dream analysis fell under intense criticism, because of its stress on hidden meanings, Mary’s dream works became central and dream researcher in neurosciences commended her efforts. ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.).
Paired Associate Technique
Paired –Associate technique entailed showing a series of colours that were paired with numerals, followed by testing for remembrance of the figures when the colours with which they were previously paired are flashed again. Here findings showed that numbers paired with bright colours were better retained than those paired with neutral colours. However, the major factor influencing memory was incidence of exposure. She realized she had discovered a new method of memorizing. In 1886, she published a paper in which the paired learning associate was presented. The report was incorporated as a supplement to Psychological Review. The formula where a person when presented with a stimulus is required to give the appropriate response came to be a standard device in human learning. Few years later, George Muller reinvented the method has been in wide use since then ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.)
Self-Psychology
Mary dedicated most of her research to the theory of the self- psychology. She argued that the self is a conscious and mobile force in the perspective of psychology. She defined self-psychology as the study of the conscious organism, concentrating on the subject (self), the object, and the connection between the two. She presented her theories in her book, An Introduction to Psychology, in 1901, and she expounded deeply on self-psychology in her presidential talk to the American Psychological Association. Mary stressed the significance of the experience of the self in its environment and the role of the elf in social circle. Her analysis of the self-contributed greatly to the advancement of self-psychology (Difebo, 2003).
Women’s Issues
As a pioneer, Mary removed barriers for women in the discipline of psychology. She wrote widely about women's inequality, and even conducted research about its consequences. As a psychologist in an era when women were deprived of the right to vote, she spoke in several women's rights to vote conventions. She struggled not only for development in her psychology field but also for the development of women (Bumb, 2013).
Evaluation of Mary Calkins Self-Psychology theory
Strengths
During her times, there were only two forms of psychology in the development. These were science of selves and atomistic psychology. Mary Calkins was the first person to discover the psychology of selves she argued that her theory of self – psychology attempted to reconcile structural and functional psychology. The originality of her theory strengthened its acceptance in the field of psychology. Self-psychology theory stood the test of time the theory provided a firm foundation for the development of new theories (Bumb, 2013).
The other strength of her self-psychology theory can be attributed to its relatedness either directly or indirectly with other psychology models of the time. As Sigmud Freud’s psychoanalysis theory gained popularity, Mary felt that her self-psychology theory could interpret all the facts discovered by Sigmund. Mary wrote that self-psychology was eventually at the center of every psychoanalysis systems. She further argued that the conscious ego did not only play a role on the psychoanalysis stage, but also the unconscious studied closely turns out to look like nothing much as a disassociated self.When Gordon Allport wrote a book: ”Personality: A Psychological Interpretation," he gave reasonable credit to Mary’s ideas of self- psychology (Bumb, 2013)
Strength of the self-psychology theory is that that it considered thought processes which were disregarded by other psychologists, particularly behaviorists. Processes such as attention, memory and perception have been studied as thy effect our behaviour. Furthermore, the theory can still be applied in a practical way and still be recognized by others in the field of psychology up to this day ("Strengths and Weaknesses of Psychoanalysis," 2014)
Weaknesses
Despite the numerous contribution self-psychology theories contributed to the study of psychology & other related fields, the theory has many weaknesses. One of its biggest weaknesses lacks empirical evidence to support complex nature of the theory. The purely psychological explanation is insufficient. Firstly, much of it is declared hypothesis .For example, be purported that any physiological explanation of consciousness of or disturbing experience is at current firmly assured. Critics of self-psychology theory argue that it depends so heavily on therapeutic achievements and consequently has less acceptability in the scientific domain ("Strengths and Weaknesses of Psychoanalysis," 2014)
Another weakness of self-psychology theory is the types of techniques or methods used, such as dream analysis. Another weakness is that that many believe that the theory is not a science and most of its main principles, which it’s founded on, are imprecise or lacks empirical evidence to substantiate it. (Calkins, 1908)
The procedures, related to consciousness are not enough to differentiate all discernable forms of consciousness. In other words, the biological conception (whether conceived as explanation or as description) does not provide a satisfactory classification of emotional phenomena. This means that the biological account of phenomena of consciousness, though essential as it is, is not enough as a discrimination of discernible facts from each other. (Calkins, 1908)
Personal Response
An examination of Mary’s self- psychology theory gives me an insight of how some of her theory’s concepts naturally apply to my everyday life. According to Mary, self-psychology is a personality, thoughtful psychology that recognizes the self as a person or organism that is conscious, that experiences, functions, and drives or is driven. Within the self- psychology system, the self, the self’s external objects, and the self's connection to the objects are all-vital. The self, though cannot be discerned, can be described, and is, therefore, made up of a number of features including uniqueness, totality, change, identity, relatedness or consciousness. ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.). These concepts from her theory apply to my life in the following ways:
• Totality in that I’m composed of many characters and has many temporal signs,
• A unique being in that that I am I & you are you-that no one, though similar, can take your place or of my place,
• An identical being in the sense that my adult self and my four-year’s old self are in a substance the same self,
• a changing being in that my adult self-differ from the four-years-old self and finally,
• I’m a self is being associated in a distinct fashion to myself and my experiences and to objects in the environment, personal and impersonal.
Mary Calkins contributed numerously to the field of psychology. She dedicated/committed her entire life to her work in the field of psychology .She constructed the first all-woman psychology laboratory in Wellesley College and trained hundreds of psychology students. She also developed the self-psychology, conducted dream research and invented the paired associate technique. The research and the theories produced important findings that were relied upon by other psychologists and other professionals from other fields.
Biography of Mary Calkins
Mary Calkins was born at Connecticut in Hartford on the 30 March 1863. Her father was a Prysbetyrian church minister in Buffalo, but he joined Congregational church in Newton in 1880 where the family settled permanently. Mary was the first born in her family, and she had four siblings whom she had a strong relationship with (Difebo, 2003).
Mary completed her high school in Massachusetts and enrolled for undergraduate work at Smith College. She took off a year break from Smith College following the death of her sister, Maud. …show more content…
She tutored her two brothers and learned Greek. She went back to Smith College, and she graduated one year later with a major in philosophy (Difebo, 2003).
She taught Greek at Wellesley College, a women’s college for liberal arts until a professor in the department of Philosophy approached her and advised her to consider teaching Psychology in the field of Philosophy. Mary took up the challenge, and she agreed to meet the requirement of studying for one year in a psychology program. During this time, the society was male dominated, and women suffered unequal treatment. Despite the numerous supports she received from her family, male professors and her friend, she still had a hard time getting the education she yearned (Difebo, 2003).
She considered studying abroad, but she changed her decision following a discouragement from a letter from a friend who was studying abroad. She was dissatisfied with the German system, which discriminated against women, and she saw no hope for changes in the system. She began looking for institutions in the United States and found Harvard since it was the only university that had a psychology laboratory. Some professors allowed her to attend their lectures but on an informal basis. She felt that Harvard had the capacity to enable her get the information she needed about psychology. She, therefore, wrote to the president of the university to ask to be sitting on lectures on a formal basis (Difebo, 2003).
The principal turned her offer down but with the aid of her father's petition letter & Wellesley College president emphasize on the importance her gaining more knowledge in the field of psychology; she was allowed to sit on lectures but still on an informal basis. At Harvard, she had the opportunity to gain knowledge in an individualized setting since the students at Harvard boycotted some classes because a female was present and most of the times she found that she was the only students attending psychology lectures (Difebo, 2003).
She studied for one year and then returned to Wellesley College as an instructor in psychology. She created a laboratory with the assistance from others at Wesley. This psychology laboratory was the first in any women’s college (Difebo, 2003).
Mary began to contemplate returning to Harvard in order to gain more knowledge from a psychology specialist, Hugo Munsterberg, who was relocating from Germany to Harvard area. She consequently petitioned to be allowed to attend lectures formally but once again she was only allowed to study informally. She studied at Harvard for almost three years under Munsterberg. In 1895, Mary presented her thesis to her professors at Harvard who unanimously agreed that she qualified for a Ph.D. Shockingly; Mary was eventually denied her degree by Harvard officials because she was a woman after three years Radcliffe College offered to award her a Ph.D. However, Calkins being a woman who was motivated by equality and a strong belief in her values, she turned down the offer. Accepting a degree from Radcliffe college which was an all-woman and did not offer the degree in Psychology seemed illogical to her and apparently she would only settle for a degree from Harvard where studied (Difebo, 2003).
Twenty-five years later, a prominent former student from Harvard sent a petition to the University asking that Mary be awarded the degree she earned from the institution.
However, Harvard officials still maintained their position not to award her the degree. Mary taught at Wellesley College for the much of her years and was a key player of the psychological advancement at Wellesley. Other than helping set up the first psychology laboratory there, she engaged her students actively and allowed many of them to do experimental work. In addition, Mary challenged the variability hypothesis put forward by Joseph Jastrow that that was presenting women as inferior. She saw no difference between men and women intellect, and she attributed the trivial difference to environmental factors (Difebo,
2003).
Mary retired from Wellesley College with the title of Research Professor in 1929, after a forty-two years teaching career. She planned to dedicate her retirement to writing and enjoying the company of her mother. With a life full of determination, she succumbed to inoperable cancer one year later. Her life was marked with indelible marks in the lives of those she interacted with and in the field of psychology (Difebo, 2003).
Contribution of Mary Calkins to the Field of Psychology
Psychological Laboratory
Mary Calkins opened the Wellesley psychological laboratory in 1891.She liaised with other professors who provided her with valuable advice in setting up the laboratory. The psychological laboratory was quite a revolutionary because there were only 12 others in North America during that time. Further, it was the first psychological laboratory in women’s college.
Fifty-four students worked under Mary in the lab in 1891 to 1892.Some of the activities they carried was out was to dissect sheep’s brains, conducting studies attention, association, sensation, memory, space perception and reaction time.("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.).
In 1892, Mary wrote an article describing her psychology course in which she reported that she used simple experiments to provide first-hand material used for the study of various topics. She wrote a variety of articles that described the results of the experiments she carried out with her students. Their studies encompassed dreams, synesthesia, psychological aesthetics, moral consciousness, emotional life, drawing and stories. In a few years Mary had set up a laboratory that offered training to hundreds of students in psychology, and published in journals many findings collected by the students. ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.).
Dream Research
Mary conducted a two months intensive research that entailed studying dreams recorded in a period of seven weeks. Each night was recorded instantly after waking from a dream, everything remembered about it. After considering at total of 205 dreams collected by Mary and 170 other dreams recorded by Stanford (another researcher), they made a conclusion that on average, four dreams could be recorded in one night. Mary also found that there was a close relationship between dream life and waking life. She said that a dream was a reproduction of people, places and occasions of a recent sense of perception (Difebo, 2003).
Mary Published her account of the finding in 1883.Several years later, her dream research findings were viewed as inferior in comparison with Freudian view of dreams. However, In the 1890s, when Freudian dream analysis fell under intense criticism, because of its stress on hidden meanings, Mary’s dream works became central and dream researcher in neurosciences commended her efforts. ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.).
Paired Associate Technique
Paired –Associate technique entailed showing a series of colours that were paired with numerals, followed by testing for remembrance of the figures when the colours with which they were previously paired are flashed again. Here findings showed that numbers paired with bright colours were better retained than those paired with neutral colours. However, the major factor influencing memory was incidence of exposure. She realized she had discovered a new method of memorizing. In 1886, she published a paper in which the paired learning associate was presented. The report was incorporated as a supplement to Psychological Review. The formula where a person when presented with a stimulus is required to give the appropriate response came to be a standard device in human learning. Few years later, George Muller reinvented the method has been in wide use since then ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.)
Self-Psychology
Mary dedicated most of her research to the theory of the self- psychology. She argued that the self is a conscious and mobile force in the perspective of psychology. She defined self-psychology as the study of the conscious organism, concentrating on the subject (self), the object, and the connection between the two. She presented her theories in her book, An Introduction to Psychology, in 1901, and she expounded deeply on self-psychology in her presidential talk to the American Psychological Association. Mary stressed the significance of the experience of the self in its environment and the role of the elf in social circle. Her analysis of the self-contributed greatly to the advancement of self-psychology (Difebo, 2003).
Women’s Issues
As a pioneer, Mary removed barriers for women in the discipline of psychology. She wrote widely about women's inequality, and even conducted research about its consequences. As a psychologist in an era when women were deprived of the right to vote, she spoke in several women's rights to vote conventions. She struggled not only for development in her psychology field but also for the development of women (Bumb, 2013).
Evaluation of Mary Calkins Self-Psychology theory
Strengths
During her times, there were only two forms of psychology in the development. These were science of selves and atomistic psychology. Mary Calkins was the first person to discover the psychology of selves she argued that her theory of self – psychology attempted to reconcile structural and functional psychology. The originality of her theory strengthened its acceptance in the field of psychology. Self-psychology theory stood the test of time the theory provided a firm foundation for the development of new theories (Bumb, 2013).
The other strength of her self-psychology theory can be attributed to its relatedness either directly or indirectly with other psychology models of the time. As Sigmud Freud’s psychoanalysis theory gained popularity, Mary felt that her self-psychology theory could interpret all the facts discovered by Sigmund. Mary wrote that self-psychology was eventually at the center of every psychoanalysis systems. She further argued that the conscious ego did not only play a role on the psychoanalysis stage, but also the unconscious studied closely turns out to look like nothing much as a disassociated self.When Gordon Allport wrote a book: ”Personality: A Psychological Interpretation," he gave reasonable credit to Mary’s ideas of self- psychology (Bumb, 2013)
Strength of the self-psychology theory is that that it considered thought processes which were disregarded by other psychologists, particularly behaviorists. Processes such as attention, memory and perception have been studied as thy effect our behaviour. Furthermore, the theory can still be applied in a practical way and still be recognized by others in the field of psychology up to this day ("Strengths and Weaknesses of Psychoanalysis," 2014)
Weaknesses
Despite the numerous contribution self-psychology theories contributed to the study of psychology & other related fields, the theory has many weaknesses. One of its biggest weaknesses lacks empirical evidence to support complex nature of the theory. The purely psychological explanation is insufficient. Firstly, much of it is declared hypothesis .For example, be purported that any physiological explanation of consciousness of or disturbing experience is at current firmly assured. Critics of self-psychology theory argue that it depends so heavily on therapeutic achievements and consequently has less acceptability in the scientific domain ("Strengths and Weaknesses of Psychoanalysis," 2014)
Another weakness of self-psychology theory is the types of techniques or methods used, such as dream analysis. Another weakness is that that many believe that the theory is not a science and most of its main principles, which it’s founded on, are imprecise or lacks empirical evidence to substantiate it. (Calkins, 1908)
The procedures, related to consciousness are not enough to differentiate all discernable forms of consciousness. In other words, the biological conception (whether conceived as explanation or as description) does not provide a satisfactory classification of emotional phenomena. This means that the biological account of phenomena of consciousness, though essential as it is, is not enough as a discrimination of discernible facts from each other. (Calkins, 1908)
Personal Response
An examination of Mary’s self- psychology theory gives me an insight of how some of her theory’s concepts naturally apply to my everyday life. According to Mary, self-psychology is a personality, thoughtful psychology that recognizes the self as a person or organism that is conscious, that experiences, functions, and drives or is driven. Within the self- psychology system, the self, the self’s external objects, and the self's connection to the objects are all-vital. The self, though cannot be discerned, can be described, and is, therefore, made up of a number of features including uniqueness, totality, change, identity, relatedness or consciousness. ("Mary Whiton - Psychology's Feminist Voices," n.d.). These concepts from her theory apply to my life in the following ways:
• Totality in that I’m composed of many characters and has many temporal signs,
• A unique being in that that I am I & you are you-that no one, though similar, can take your place or of my place,
• An identical being in the sense that my adult self and my four-year’s old self are in a substance the same self,
• a changing being in that my adult self-differ from the four-years-old self and finally,
• I’m a self is being associated in a distinct fashion to myself and my experiences and to objects in the environment, personal and impersonal.
Mary Calkins contributed numerously to the field of psychology. She dedicated/committed her entire life to her work in the field of psychology .She constructed the first all-woman psychology laboratory in Wellesley College and trained hundreds of psychology students. She also developed the self-psychology, conducted dream research and invented the paired associate technique. The research and the theories produced important findings that were relied upon by other psychologists and other professionals from other fields.