Margaret Floy Washburn was a brilliant student ahead of her time, her kind character and perseverance earned her the friendship of many fellow psychologists of the time, although her admission to university was prohibited. She will always be remembered as the first woman to earn a college degree. doctorate in psychology.
Whenever we think of the pioneers of psychology, such important names as Sigmund Freud, Piaget, Jung come to mind, they are certainly very important authors, however many women, also pioneers in the history of psychology, have stayed in the shadows. overshadowed by men.
- The collective imagination has many prejudices about the most important figures of psychology.
- In this science the same thing happens in any other field of study: we do not know the role of women in the studies in which she was present or acted as the main protagonist.
- Their stories and discoveries were often overshadowed by the male characters around them.
- Making it difficult to get them out of the shadows of history.
Psychology, like other disciplines, had women who made a significant contribution to their scientific development, however, they must overcome great barriers to be recognized in the face of the ideas of their colleagues who, far from helping them, persist in demonstrating the physical, moral and social inability of women to generate scientific knowledge.
A very clear example is Margaret F. Washburn he he he he he, who was not admitted as a student at Columbia University because she was a woman, had to overcome great obstacles in order to practice psychology in academia, just as she went through exclusion. of scientific societies, such as that of experimenters, led by Titchener.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, women were excluded from the university, as well as from many occupations that required education, in this case we must add the occasions when their stories have been erased or their contributions stolen.
“Men’s opposition to female independence is perhaps more interesting than independence itself. “-Virginia Woolf-
Margaret Floy Washburn was born in 1871 in New York City, was an only child and changed residence quite frequently, as her father was pastor of the Anglican Church and was occasionally sent to different parishes.
She was a brilliant student and decided to study psychology at Columbia University in New York, as was Professor James McKeen Cattell, considered one of the most important psychologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Representative of the so-called Americana. de School of Psychology, he helped make psychology a “reliable” science. Until then, many considered it a pseudoscience.
Despite his brilliant academic record, Columbia University has not admitted any students. Therefore, Washburn can only attend classes as a “listener”. When Cattell saw her student’s interest, he encouraged her to enter Cornell University, where she had the opportunity to work. under Titchener’s direction.
He conducted an experimental study of the methods of equivalence in tactile perception and obtained his master’s degree in this work. He developed his doctoral thesis on the influence of visual images on tactile distance and directional judgments. This work was presented by Titchener and published in Philosophische Studien. (1895) In 1894, she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in psychology.
In 1908, Margaret Floy Washburn published her most important and best-known book, “The Animal Mind: A Book on Comparative Psychology?”(Free Translation), in which he collected research on experimental work in animal psychology. Range of activities of the senses and perception. Washburn had support and recognition in his work, but at the cost of ignoring and seemingly indifferent to the gender discrimination to which he was subjected.
Because of her conciliatory character, she became one of the first two women to be admitted to the “experimenters” club, after 25 years of exclusion from women and after the death of Titchener, its founder.
Dr. Washburn’s life is undoubtedly exciting, she fought to the end to achieve the goals that had been proposed, moreover, while her merits have been recognized by her colleagues, history has not yet given her the relevance and social recognition she deserves.
“Anyone who knows a little history knows that progress would be impossible without the female figure. “Karl Marx