Mary Whiton Calkins

Mary Whiton Calkins (March 30, 1863 - February 26, 1930) was an American philosopher and psychologist. She is particularly famous for having been denied a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University, due to being a woman, and yet becoming president of both the American Psychological Association and American Philosophical Association. In fact, her contributions to these fields made her worthy of the position.

In her early work in psychology she developed the paired-associate technique for studying memory and founded the first experimental psychology laboratory at Wellesley College where she served on the faculty for four decades. She published prolifically both in philosophy and psychology, her greatest interest becoming the study of self.

Life

Mary Whiton Calkins was born on March 30, 1863 in Hartford, Connecticut, the eldest of five children. Her father, Wolcott Calkins, was a Presbyterian minister and she spent her early childhood in Buffalo, New York. In 1881, her father accepted the pastorate of a Congregational church in Newton, Massachusetts, about 12 miles west of Boston.

Although devoted to her family, Mary left home in 1882 to attend Smith College. On completing her undergraduate degree in in classics and philosophy, she traveled with her family to Europe for more than a year. When they returned her father helped her secure a position at Wellesley College as a tutor in Greek. Soon thereafter she was offered a position teaching psychology, with the requirement that she study for one year in a psychology program. Despite the difficulties due to her gender, Calkin was permitted to attend seminars at Harvard University taught by William James and Josiah Royce, although she was not admitted as a student.

She returned to Wellesley in 1891, where she began teaching psychology and established the first experimental psychology laboratory at a woman's college. However, she recognized her need for further study and again, following special petitions, was allowed to conduct research in Hugo Munsterberg's laboratory, although again not as a registered student. Although she completed all the requirements for the Ph.D., and her committee which included William James, Josiah Royce, and Hugo Munsterberg, were unanimous that she satisfied the requirements, the Harvard authorities refused to grant her a doctorate.

She returned to Wellesley and a career of teaching, research, prolific publication, and service to the academic community. In 1902, she and three other women who had completed graduate work at Harvard, were offered Ph.D. degrees from Radcliffe College, since as women they were not eligible for Harvard degrees. Calkins declined, noting that despite the "inconvenience" of not of holding a Ph.D. she would not take the easier path of accepting one from Radcliffe (Furumoto 1980).

In 1905 she was the first woman elected to serve as president of the American Psychological Association, and in 1918 the same for the American Philosophical Association. She received honorary doctorate degrees from Columbia University and Smith College, and in 1928 was elected to honorary membership in the British Psychological Association.

Calkins never married, devoting her time and energy into her career as teacher and researcher. In 1927 she retired from Wellesley. She died of cancer on February 26, 1930.

Work

Mary Whiton Calkins started her career as a Greek instructor at Wellesley College, but with an undergraduate background in philosophy. When approached to join the philosophy department teaching the new field of psychology she accepted and furthered her studies in both fields. She established a psychology laboratory at Wellesley, the first psychology laboratory at a woman's college. As well as teaching, she conducted research and published prolifically in both philosophy and psychology.

Philosophy

Her philosophical creed was expressed through her four principal statements which were shown in her books, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy (1907) and The Good Man and The Good (1918), that the universe contained distinct mental realities, and, although the mind was from a lower level of existence, it emerged from that level to one higher that answered to new special laws. This level of reality was ultimately personal, consciousness as such never existing impersonally. She asserted that the universe was mental throughout, and whatever was real was ultimately mental and therefore personal. She concluded that the universe was an all-inclusive self, an absolute person and a conscious being. On several philosophical problems she agreed with Samuel Alexander but claimed to have a greater level of consistency.

Memory

In her early research as a psychology student in the laboratory of Hugo Munsterberg, Calkins conducted experiments on associationism. During this work she invented the technique of paired-associates which she used for testing the effects of factors like frequency, recency, and vividness on memory. She found that frequency was the most significant (Calkins 1894, 1896). However, it was the technique that was of greater significance than the results (Calkins 1930). Indeed, this technique has continued to be used in the study of memory to this day.

Self

Surprisingly, given that psychology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was becoming increasingly the study of externally observable "behavior," Calkins moved away from that experimental path into the increasingly unpopular study of self. She first presented this "self-psychology" in 1900, "having worked it out with the thoroughness and care appropriate to a proposed departure from the classical (Wundtian and Titchenerian) system then dominant in American psychology" (Heidbreder 1972).

Calkins, in her autobiography written just prior to her death in 1930, attempted to trace the origins of her idea of the self. She credited William James for his idea of the stream of consciousness, and James Mark Baldwin and Josiah Royce for the social nature of the self. She also noted that she initially was influenced by Hugo Munsterberg regarding the view that every experience be treated both from the atomistic and the self standpoint, later abandoning the atomistic position in favor of self psychology.

Legacy

Mary Whiton Calkins is best remembered today for Harvard University's refusal to grant her a Ph.D.. Although she had a near-perfect examination, and despite the recommendations given by William James and Josiah Royce, they refused her because she was a woman. She was offered a Ph.D. from Radcliffe College, but she turned it down. In the end, she became the first female president of both the American Psychological Association (1905) and the American Philosophical Association (1918) without a doctorate. Efforts by a group of Harvard alumni in 1927, and a group of students at Kalamazoo College in Michigan in 2002, to have Harvard award her the degree posthumously.

Major publications

Calkins, Mary Whiton. 1892. Experimental Psychology at Wellesley College. American Journal of Psychology, 5, 464-271.
Calkins, Mary Whiton. 1894. Association. Psychological Review, 1, 476-483.
Calkins, Mary Whiton. 1896. Association. Psychological Review, 3, 32-49.
Calkins, Mary Whiton. [1901] 2007. An Introduction to Psychology. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0548200912
Calkins, Mary Whiton. [1907] 1925. The Persistent Problems of Philosophy. Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press Inc. ISBN 0404590926
Calkins, Mary Whiton 1908. Psychology as science of self. I: Is the self body Or has it body? Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 5, 12-20.
Calkins, Mary Whiton. 1910. A First Book in Psychology.
Calkins, Mary Whiton. 1915. The self in scientific psychology. American Journal of Psychology, 26, 495-524.
Calkins, Mary Whiton. [1918] 2007. The Good Man and The Good: An Introduction To Ethics. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0548164002
Calkins, Mary Whiton. 1930. Autobiography of Mary Whiton Calkins. In History of Psychology in Autobiography Vol. 1, Carl Murchison (ed.), 31-61. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Retrieved July 25, 2008.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Furumoto, L. 1980. Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930). Psychology of Women Quarterly, 5, 55-68.
Heidbreder, E. 1972. Mary Whiton Calkins: A discussion. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 8, 56-68.
Kimble, G. A., M. Wertheimer, and C. White (eds.). Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1991. ISBN 0805811362
Palmieri, P. A. 1983. Here was fellowship: A social portrait of academic women at Wellesley College, 1895-1920. History of Education Quarterly, 23, 195-214.
Scaroborough, E. and L. Furumoto. 1989. Untold Lives: The First Generation of American Women Psychologists. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231051557

External links

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