FREE ESSAY ON MARY WHITON CALKINS

MARY WHITON CALKINS

INTRODUCTION
Mary Whiton Calkins, is best known for two things: becoming the first woman president of
The American Psychological Association and being denied her doctorate from Harvard.
However, these two aspects only make up a small portion of what she accomplished in her
life. Her entire life was dedicated to her work, especially the development of her
Psychology of selves. She founded an early psychology laboratory and invented the
paired-associate technique. She passionately dove into the new field of Psychology but
also was highly active in the field of Philosophy. She was not deterred by being a woman
and used her struggles to gain a voice to speak out against women's oppression. (5)
EARLY LIFE
Mary Whiton Calkins was born on March 30, 1863 in Buffalo, New York. Her father was
Wolcott Calkins and a Presbyterian minister. She was from a close knit family, especially
to her mother, and the eldest of five children. In 1880, when she was seventeen, she
moved to Newton, Massachusetts where her family built a home that she lived in the rest
of her life. Her father, knowing the education that women received, decided to design and
supervise Mary's education. This enabled her to enter Smith College in 1882 with advanced
standing as a sophomore. However, in 1893, an experience that permanently influenced her
thinking and character, was the death of her sister, Maude. The following academic year
she stayed home and took private lessons. She reentered Smith College in the fall of 1884
as a senior and graduated with a concentration in classics and philosophy (7). 
In 1886 her family went to Europe for sixteen months. This is where she broadened her
knowledge of the classics. Upon returning to Massachusetts her father arranged an
interview for Mary with the President of Wellesley College, a liberal arts college for
women that was a few miles from their home. She was offered a position there as a tutor
in Greek and began teaching in the fall of 1887. Mary remained in the Greek Department
for three years. However, a professor in the Department of Philosophy noticed her talent
of teaching. He discussed with Mary the position needed to teach the new field of
Psychology, which was still a sub-discipline of Philosophy. Due to the scarcity of women
in that area, it made it realistic to see her potential and offer her the position. 
EDUCATIONAL SETBACKS
The only requirement that the professor had, was that Calkins study for one year in a
Psychology program. However, she faced two problems meeting this condition. The first,
being that there were few psychology departments in 1890. Secondly, getting admitted to
these places that did offer the program was highly unlikely since she was a woman. Her
first consideration was to study abroad. An instructor at Smith told her that her best
chance was to try obtaining private instruction in psychology and philosophy at any of
the German universities outside of Zurich (6).
However, another instructor told her that would be a good idea if ladies had been allowed
the same privileges as men (6). Calkins formally dismissed going to Germany when she
received a letter from a woman student attending the University of Gottingen which
stated, I wish I might encourage you; but past experience has proved to me the utter
uselessness of trying to enlighten the authorities, at least, in our generation.
Once Calkins started looking at the United States, she discovered that the University of
Michigan, where she would be studying under John Dewey, and Yale, where she would be
studying under G.T. Ladd, were promising. However, she received a letter from another
woman student that dissuaded her. The letter stated, Personally, I should be immensely
glad if you would come. We might be able to get some delightful work together...By the
way Prof. Ladd thinks you ought to have some lady with you at the lectures. If there were
only one or two other girls who would come to join us, we could get a tremendous
amount...(4). She decided against both universities, most likely because they were
further away from home that she would like and they did not have a psychological
laboratory.
However, one of the few universities that did have a laboratory was Harvard. Two
professors there, William James and Josiah Royce, had sent Calkins letters inviting her
to sit-in on their lectures on a strictly informal basis. When Calkins requested that she
be allowed to sit-in on these lectures, President Eliot refused stating that her presence
at these lectures would receive an angry reaction from the governing body at Harvard.
However, Calkins' father wrote a petition to Harvard requesting that his daughter be
granted admission to these lectures. In addition, the President of Wellesley College
wrote a letter stating that Calkins was a member of their faculty and that this program
suited her needs.
On October 1, 1890 Harvard approved the petition. Calkins was permitted to attend the
seminars of James and Royce; however, it was noted in the university records that by
accepting this privilege Miss Calkins does not become a student of the University
entitled to registration (4). Calkins began attending her first lecture with James that
fall. When she arrived to her lecture she was fortunate enough to be the only person left
in the class, therefore giving her a private tutoring session of sorts. In addition to
taking classes with James and Royce, Calkins began studying experimental psychology under
Dr. Edmund Sanford of Clark University.
In the fall of 1891, Calkins returned to Wellesley College as an Instructor of Psychology
in the Department of Philosophy. In that same year she established a psychological
laboratory at the college (7). At this time she was already planning on furthering her
studies in Psychology and asked James, Royce and Sanford where they felt she should look
into attending. Dr. Sanford made it clear in his correspondence that neither Clark nor
John Hopkins University were not prepared to offer fellowships for graduate education to
a woman. William James wrote that Calkins' best opportunity would be served learning
under Hugo Munsterberg at the University of Freiburg who had had a woman student a year
ago (6). He informed her a month later, that Munsterberg would be coming to Harvard the
following year. Once again another petition was submitted, by Calkins, asking for
permission to attend Professor Munsterberg's laboratory. In 1892, President Eliot of
Harvard wrote, once again, that she would be permitted in his laboratory as a guest; but
not as a registered student of the university. 
During this period Calkins had been writing and conducting several experiments within the
field of psychology. At this time she invented the paired-associate technique. This was a
suggested classification of cases of associations. In her research Calkins originated a
technical method for studying memory, later referred to as the method of paired
associates. G.E. Muller refined the technique, and later Titchener included it in his
Student's Manual, taking full credit for it. She continued to conduct research under
Professor Munsterberg until October of 1894. At this time Munsterberg wrote to the
President and Fellows at Harvard requesting that Calkins be admitted as a candidate for
the Ph.D. On October 29, 1894, Harvard considered Munsterberg's request and refused (1).

In the spring of 1895, Calkins presented her thesis, An experimental research on the
association of ideas. At the examination, held May 28, 1895, before Professors Palmer,
James, Royce, Munsterberg, Harris and Dr. Santayana, it was unanimously voted that Miss
Calkins satisfied all customary requirements for the degree (6). In Harvard's records
this communication was noted but not considered.
RESEARCH & ACHIEVEMENTS
In 1895, Calkins returned to Wellesley College where she was made an Associate Professor
of Psychology and Philosophy and was promoted to Professor in 1898. She wrote hundreds of
papers divided between the two disciplines. Calkins' writings encompass more than a
hundred papers in professional journals of psychology and philosophy. She wrote four
books, including, An Introduction to Psychology (1901); The Persistent Problems of
Philosophy (1907), which went through five editions; and The Good Man and the Good
(1918).
Throughout this period Calkins did work in both the fields of psychology and philosophy.
For example, in the same year she published an analytic and experimental essay on
association, she also published an article on the religiousness of children. Three years
later her contribution to research on the attributes of sensation was published, along
with a philosophical treatment of time as related to causality and to space. Her most
influential work in philosophy, The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, appeared at the
same time as some of her important psychological articles on the self (3).
After 1900, Calkins' major contribution to psychology was the development of a system of
self-psychology (2). Her own work in the field dealt primarily with such topics as space
and time consciousness, emotion, association, color theory and dreams. Her theory held,
in contrast to behaviorist views then in the ascendant, that the conscious self is the
central fact of psychology. In the field of philosophy she acknowledged Royce's idealism
as the chief influence leading her to her own system of personalistic absolutism.
In 1905, Calkins was elected president of the American Psychological Association and the
president of the American Philosophical Association in 1918. Her achievements brought her
a number of honors in addition to the presidencies. In a 1908 list of leading
psychologists in the United States, Calkins was ranked twelfth of the list (2). Columbia
University bestowed a Doctor of Letters degree on her in 1909 and Smith College a Doctor
of Laws degree in 1910. Both Columbia and Smith also offered her positions on their
faculty, which she declined, partly because of the responsibility she felt to remain with
and look after the welfare of her parents (2). 
In 1929, after a teaching career spanning forty-two years, Calkins retired from Wellesley
College with the title of Research Professor. She planned on devoting her retirement to
writing and enjoying the companionship of her mother, but less than one year later she
was dead, the victim of inoperable cancer (2).
SELF-PSYCHOLOGY
Two underlying forms of psychology in vogue at the time were atomistic psychology and the
science of selves. Calkins was the first to discover the psychology of selves. She called
it reconciliation between structural and functional psychology. Her first basic
definition of her psychology is as follows: 
All sciences deal with facts, and there are two great classes of facts-Selves and
Facts-for-the-Selves. But the second of these great groups, the Facts-for-the-Selves, is
again capable of an important division into internal and external facts. To the first
class belong percepts, images, memories, thoughts, emotions and volitions, inner events
as we may call them; to the second class belong the things and the events of the outside
world, the physical facts, as we may name them... The physical sciences study these
common and apparently independent or external facts; psychology as distinguished from
them is the science of consciousness, the study of selves and the inner facts-for-selves
(3).
Calkins felt that her psychology could relate, if not directly but indirectly, within
other current models of psychology. As Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis gained
notoriety, she felt that self-psychology could interpret all the facts discovered by him.
She wrote, Self-psychology is finally at the core of every one of the psychoanalytic
systems. Not only does the conscious ego play a role, if only a minor role, on the
psychoanalytic stage, but even the unconscious closely studied turns out to resemble
nothing so much as a dissociated self (3). 
As psychological views moved on, Calkins theory became dissolved and rather dated.
However, in
1937, Gordon Allport wrote Personality: A Psychological Interpretation. In this book he
gave considerable credit and notoriety to Calkins' ideas and self-psychology. However, in
the third revision of his book, he dropped all references to Calkins. Since then most of
Calkins' ideas and much of her work has been swept under the rug.
WOMEN'S ISSUES
At the time in which Calkins was struggling to get her education, she faced many setbacks
because she was a woman. These experiences shaped many of her views on women's rights and
cultivated her into somewhat of an advocate. In the 1890s, for example, she challenged
the work of a colleague, Joseph Jastrow. In his study, he asked college students, both
male and female, to write down one hundred words as fast as possible. He found that women
repeat one another's words more than men and there is less variety among women than among
men (2). After analyzing these lists he concluded, that the feminine traits
revealed...are an attention to the immediate surroundings, to the finished product, to
the ornamental, the individual, and the concrete; while the masculine preference is for
the more remote, the constructive, the useful, the general, and the abstract (2).
Calkins was infuriated by his findings and responded that if sufficiently extended,
establish characteristic differences in the interests of men and women. However, she
maintained that it was futile and impossible to attempt a distinction between masculine
and feminine intellect per-se...because of our entire inability to eliminate the effect
of the environment (6).
Another area that she opposed differentiation was the right to vote. In an address to a
National Suffrage Convention at Baltimore, she maintained that: the student trained to
reach decisions in the light of logic and of history will be disposed to recognize that,
in a democratic country, governed as this is by the suffrage of its citizens, and given
over as this is to the principle and practice of educating women, a distinction based on
difference of sex is artificial and illogical (2).
The most profound action against sexist attitudes that she rejected was her refusal to
accept the offer of a Radcliffe Ph.D. In 1902, she and three other women who had done
graduate work at Harvard, but were not eligible for a Harvard degree on account of their
sex were recommended by Radcliffe and approved by Harvard as candidates for the degree of
Ph.D. from Radcliffe College. Although she was urged by several colleagues to take the
degree, she declined. She writes,
I sincerely admire the scholarship of the three women to whom it is to be given and I
should be very glad to be classed with them. I furthermore think it highly probably that
the Radcliffe degree will be regarded, generally, as the practical equivalent of the
Harvard degree. Finally, I should be glad to hold the Ph.D. degree for I occasionally
find the lack of it an inconvenience; and now that the Radcliffe degree is offered, I
doubt whether the Harvard degree will ever be open to women. On the other hand, I still
believe that the best ideals of education would be better served if Radcliffe College
refused to confer the doctor's degree. You will be quick to see that, holding this
conviction, I cannot rightly take the easier course of accepting the degree (2). 
To this day Harvard has not issued any degree in honor of Mary Whiton Calkins and feels
that there is no reason to award the degree