About the project
This historico-philosophical research project aims to investigate an important but significantly understudied American pioneer in modern psychology: Mary Whiton Calkins (1863 - 1930). Its focus is Calkins’s philosophical thought regarding the foundations, methods and implications of psychology, and its role in the development of modern psychology at the turn of the twentieth century.
Understanding Calkins’s “self-psychology,” [...] is crucial in developing a deeper insight into the history of psychology
Who was Mary Whiton Calkins?
As president of both the American Philosophical Association and the American Psychological Association, Calkins was particularly concerned with the philosophical aspects of the discipline of psychology. Her central argument was that psychology should be a study of “conscious selves in relation to other selves and to external objects” (Calkins 1910, vii). Understanding Calkins’s “self-psychology,” as distinct from predominant schools in early psychology, such as atomism and behaviorism, is crucial in developing a deeper insight into the history of psychology. But it merits attention also because of the pattern of ignoring women’s accomplishments in the history of science, and the resurgent interest in relational psychology by contemporary psychologists and philosophers of mind (Chalmers 2015; De Haan 2020).
Aims of the project
The project will provide the first comprehensive overview of Calkins’s philosophy of psychology and its role in the development of modern psychology. It aims to describe: (1) Calkins’s philosophy of psychology in relation to her experiments at the Wellesley psychological laboratory and her philosophical framework of personalistic idealism; (2) the contextualization of Calkins’s philosophy of psychology vis-à-vis early psychological schools, and; (3) the legacy and contemporary relevance of Calkins’s philosophy of psychology.
Supervisors: Professor C.H. Lüthy (Radboud Universiteit), professor M.V.P. Slors (Radboud Universiteit), . professor A. Harrington (Harvard University)
