TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF SUICIDE, EATING DISORDERS, AND VARIOUS OTHER SENSITIVE TOPICS REGARDING MENTAL HEALTH AND ILLNESSES.
As Women’s History Month comes to a close, I want to honor the contributions of five influential female psychologists. As a psychology major myself, I’ve learned plenty about Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, John Watson and other well-known male figures in the field. Women are less emphasized within the historical context of psychology due to significant discrimination based on their gender, but their accomplishments shouldn’t go unrecognized. The five psychologists listed below are just a few of the many female minds that sculpted the realm of psychology we understand today.
Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark
Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark was a child psychologist who was best known for the Doll Test, which was revolutionary not only for the field of psychology but also for the Civil Rights movement. Clark’s work began in the ’40s when segregation was widespread. She wanted to understand the level of self-consciousness African American children felt and when those feelings began. Clark studied a population of African American children and gave them the option to play with four dolls: two with white skin and blonde hair and two with brown skin and black hair. The results of the tests showed that most children chose the white dolls and attributed positive traits to them, while the brown dolls were called “bad” and disregarded. Clark confirmed that segregation gave African American youth a sense of inferiority that began as early as age three, and this conclusion was used as scientific evidence in court for the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Clark was a woman who used her intelligence to help implement social justice in America, a victory few psychologists can relate to.
Virginia Satir
Virginia Satir was the first psychologist to bring attention to one of my favorite areas of study: family therapy. In 1936, Satir became a public school teacher and worked with children in class then met separately with parents after class. She encouraged family members to be supportive and present with their children which ended up bringing many families closer together. Working with local families to create better lives for the kids she taught was the catalyst for an occupational shift. In 1948, Satir received her master’s degree in Social Services and began working at a psychiatric institute. There, Satir taught other therapists the importance of addressing the entire family during the treatment of a patient so that they could identify which problems were a result of familial tensions. Her goal was to expose issues that were deeply woven into a family dynamic in order to alleviate individual stressors. Satir’s experience at this institution made her an expert in family therapy and in 1959 she developed the first family therapy training series for psychologists. Because of the newness of this approach to psychology, Satir developed hundreds of workshops and training sessions for therapists all over the nation.
Dr. Marsha Linehan
Dr. Marsha Linehan is a highly awarded psychologist who was committed to an inpatient institution and treated for severe social withdrawal as a teenager. A combination of shock therapy, isolation and medication worsened her suicidal behavior, but once she was discharged she went on to study psychology, receiving her Ph.D. in 1971. Her own challenges with mental illness motivated her to work with extremely suicidal people, and she developed a treatment known as dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). This is a type of speech therapy that helps individuals accept themselves and their intense emotions, while simultaneously identifying unhealthy behaviors that need to be changed. Currently, this treatment is directed toward patients who struggle with eating disorders, bipolar personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and more. Linehan’s work is especially inspiring because she used her hard-fought battle with mental illness to deliver hope to thousands of people who felt the same hopelessness she experienced.
Dr. Reiko True
Dr. Reiko True was born in Japan in the ’30s, where she was taught to lead a quiet and submissive lifestyle. When True moved to America and began her career in psychology, she was dissatisfied with the lack of mental health resources Asian Americans had access to and believed they deserved more. She abandoned her misogynistic upbringing and took to activism, calling for local governments to provide mental health services that addressed cultural and linguistic differences. This resulted in the creation of California’s first mental health center specifically for a minority group. As a therapist, True helped Asian women who could not speak English and were wrestling with their husband’s subservient expectations. True’s advocacy for a group that had been previously ignored permanently altered the level of psychological care Asian Americans received.
Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein was another child psychologist who helped children using play therapy, a critical practice used to study the unconscious emotional well-being of young children who cannot verbally communicate. Klein discovered that children who engage in playtime with toys experience relief when they’re able to express their anger, desires or anxieties freely, away from their primary caregivers. Today, Klein’s work is used by psychologists to compare the internal well-being of a child to their external environment in order to understand which mental difficulties they may be struggling with. Klein gave the voiceless a voice, and through this nonverbal communication, psychologists can observe an indirect reflection of a child’s environment or level of care.
These women paved the way for females to infiltrate a previously male-dominated field. Today, over 75 percent of graduate students studying psychology are women. The future of psychology looks bright, illuminated by the promise of more revolutionary breakthroughs discovered by women.
Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Pinterest!