Mary Whiton Calkins Research Paper

Running Head: MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

A History of Modern Psychology
University of Phoenix
Aisha Cleveland

In the early twenty-first century minorities, women particularly, did not have much of a blessing to be in the workplace and more specifically the field of psychology. Mary Whiton Calkins was one of these women who worked almost selflessly to achieve a high educational standard that seemed to be unreachable. In a world dominated by the male gender, Calkins found herself fighting for recognition, never to obtain it from Harvard University. She first attended Harvard as an “unofficial guest” (Goodwin, 2008) according to Harvard officials but was later enrolled in Harvard in the fall of 1890 studying philosophy and physiological psychology
alongside William James. Calkins also worked with Josiah Royce and Hugo Munsterberg while attending Harvard in the 1890s and as much as she accomplished by working there she never obtained a Harvard degree because they would not give a Harvard degree to a female (Furumoto, n.d.). While studying at Harvard Calkins said when she read The Principles of Psychology she was introduced to psychology (Goodwin 2008). Calkins primary education was attained at a college for women called Smith located in Boston, Massachusetts where she moved with her family when she was 17 years old.
Because her parents were advocates for the multilingual, they made sure their child Mary could speak German, French, and English fluently. As a matter of fact when she went to Europe after she graduated in 1885 she also added Greek to her dialogue (Goodwin 2008). This served as a blessing to Calkins because she was able to study with a German man named Hugo Munsterberg who did not speak English very well but was able to work well with Calkins because she spoke fluent German. Munsterberg was head of the Harvard Lab where Calkins studied with him for two years of her training. At the same time she was a teacher at Wellesley teaching Greek but she wanted to go beyond that and teach Philosophy so this training was a great opportunity for her to spread her wings and follow up on the opportunity she was given to develop a course in laboratory psychology. In doing so she would ultimately need time off to continue her studies in order to learn more about her field of choice; hence, starting her tumultuous venter for a graduate education in
psychology. While studying with Munsterberg her first works in experimental psychology was in the thesis she wrote on association which she had published in two parts. According to Goodwin (2008) “Traditional philosophical and introspective accounts often describe how the strength of associations could be influenced by such factors as frequency, recency, vividness, and primacy.” Calkins wanted to experiment on these factors and through these experiments paired-associate learning was born and is now the standard method in cognitive research (Goodwin 2008). In 1985 Calkins took an unofficial exam to obtain her doctorate but to no avail did she obtain it. Harvard officials wanted her to accept a degree from Radcliffe College which was a women’s college partnered with them but did not have the same type of academic recognition and mostly because women were not recognized as equals to men at that time. Along with Calkins three other women had also earned their PhD from Harvard but were also denied and offered the lessor valued degree from Radcliffe. There was another philosopher named Ethel Dench Puffer who accepted the degree from Radcliffe because she realized she would never obtain one from Harvard (Seigfried,1993). Calkins declined because she felt like she deserved the degree that she had earned with her hard work and dedication from Harvard, not Radcliff. According to Seigfried (1993) “William James frequently stated that Calkins had passed her Ph.D. examination more brilliantly than any other graduate student.” Munsterberg considered her to be one of the strongest psychology professors in the country and superior to all of the other Ph.D. candidates of philosophical studies at that time (Goodwin 2008). With the help of Edmund Sanford of Clark University, Mary Calkins went back to Wellesley where she started out teaching Greek and continued where she left off building her lab. She ultimately gave all the credit for the creation of her lab to Sanford which is undoubtedly due to the lack of respect for the accomplishments of women. Had she not done so the psychology lab at Wellesley may not have held a noticeable standard of such high prestige? It is said that Sanford did however donate his apparatus, time, and advice in the effort of helping Calkins achieve her goal (Goodwin 2008). In 1898 Calkins turned her lab over to one of the few women to hold a Ph.D. Eleanor Gamble. Gamble received her Ph.D. from Cornell. During that time Cornell College was one of the few schools that allowed women to be admitted to obtain doctoral degrees. Before doing this however, Calkins published a slew of research to share with the world. She was the first to discover how paired associates were involved in memory. She co-authored with Stanford her doctoral thesis along with the work she accomplished at Wellesley College. In 1901 she wrote An Introduction to Psychology which had two editions. Later she would go on to summarize it and have it printed in German using a German title. In 1909 she wrote another book which was also published called A First Book in Psychology and it had four editions, not to mention her many published works in Philosophy as well. In 1905 Calkins was elected by the American Psychological Association (APA) to become their fourteenth president which made her the first female to ever have that honor.
In 1906 she gave a presidential speech called, A reconciliation between Structural and Functional Psychology. According to Goodwin (2008) in this speech she made the point that “both of these views could be accommodated within a system that recognized the self as the fundamental starting point.” Along with psychology Calkins also had a love for philosophy and this love brought about her most important work, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy (Goodwin 2008). In 1918 she made another “first” in female history becoming the first female president of the American Philosophical Association. In conclusion, Mary Whiton Calkins lived a full life doing exactly what she loved to do and even though she never received her Ph.D. from Harvard University she accomplished much in a world dominated by men. For most of her life she taught at Wellesley College and she was a major contributor to psychological advancement at that institution (Zedler, 1995). Calkins retired from Wellesley in 1929 and died of cancer one year later (Goodwin
2008).

References
Goodwin, C. J. (2008). A history of modern psychology (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Furumoto, L. (n.d., Fall). Mary Whiton Calkins. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 5(1).
Seigfried, C. H. (1993, Spring). History Harvard University. Hypatia, 8(2), 230-231. Zedler, Beatrice (1995). “Mary Whiton Calkins.” In M.E. Waithe (Ed.), A History of Women Philosophers: Vol. 4 (pp.103-123). Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.