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Example research essay topic: Prominent Women In American Psychology - 3,667 words

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... reduced by feeling unsafe, unloved, and unvalued, by disowning their spontaneous feelings and developing elaborate strategies of defense. According to Horney, people try to gain safety, love, and esteem through dependency, humility, and self-sacrificing goodness. This can take one of three forms: the narcissistic, who is full of self-admiration and believes in their own greatness; the perfectionist, who strives for excellence in every detail; and the arrogant-vindictive, who have a need to retaliate for injuries received in childhood (Paris). She is perhaps best known for her neurosis theory. She saw neurosis as an attempt to make life bearable, as a way of interpersonal control an coping.

Horney stated the neurotic needs as follows: 1. need for affection, approval, to please others and be liked by them 2. need for a partner; idea that love will solve all of ones problems 3. need to restrict ones life to narrow borders, to be undemanding, satisfied with little, to be inconspicuous 4. need for power, control over others 6.

need for social recognition or prestige 9. need for self-sufficiency and independence 10. need for perfection and unassailability Horney also identified three coping strategies: 1. compliance: includes needs one, two, and three 2. aggression: includes needs four through eight 3. withdrawal: includes needs nine, ten, and three Horney cited many other reasons a person might develop neurosis including parental indifference, called the basic evil by Horney.

This indifference is characterized by a lack of warmth and affection in childhood. According to Horney, even abuse, physical or sexual, can be overcome if the child feels wanted and loved. The key to understanding parental indifference is that it is a matter of the childs perception and not the parents intentions (Boeree). The greatest difference between Karen Horney and Sigmund Freud might be her belief that everyone is redeemable. She also stressed self-analysis, a theory that received little respect from the psychological community. In fact, she wrote one of the first self-help books.

It is easy to see the influence that Karen Horney had on many later psychologists, both men and women. Perhaps her beliefs can be best described by her quote, The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization (be). Another member of the Zodiac Five, Clara Thompson, was also quite influential in her time. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1893, she became a progressive figure in American psychoanalysis in the 1940 s. She attended Pembroke, the womens college affiliated with Brown University, from 1912 to 1916. Thompson received her M.

D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1920 and taught at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute from 1933 to 1941. Thompson also expanded the theory of penis envy to include cultural influences by pointing at the general competitive tendencies in our culture, which stimulate envy and the tendency to place an inferior evaluation on women. Much like her colleague, Karen Horney, she was highly criticized for making comments against the great Freud. She was influenced by the likes of Harry Stack Sullivan, Sandor Ferenczi, William Alanson White, Karen Horney, and other neo-Freudians. In the famous schism in the American psychoanalytic community, she helped establish the William Alanson White Institute in 1943 and served as its director from 1946 to 1958.

She made more of an influence on psychology through her students and colleagues than through any of her theories. Her best known book, Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development focused on women and sexuality (bio). Also influenced greatly by Freud was Margaret Schoenberger Mahler. She was born in Soon, Germany and studied medicine at the German universities of Munich and Heidelberg.

She received her M. D. in 1922 from the university of Jena. Mahler founded the first psychoanalytic guidance clinic devoted specifically to children in Vienna. She married Paul Mahler in 1925 and they settled in New York City in 1938. She was best known for her pioneering work on childhood schizophrenia, the individuation process, and her theory of development (search).

Mahler determined that there are four basic stages of pre-Oepidal development: normal infantile autism (birth to two months), symbiosis (two months to five months), separation-individuation (five months to ten months), and rapprochement (fifteen to twenty-one months). In addition to these four stages, there are also many substage's (Emmanuel). Margaret Mead was born December 16, 1901, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of five children (gwu). Her mother was a pioneer in child psychology and her father taught economics at the Wharton School but she had to beg her father to send her to college. She enrolled at DePauw University but after one year, entered Barnard College, Columbia University. She received her B.

A. degree in 1923 and completed her M. A. degree, in psychology, in 1924, from Columbia. She completed her doctoral thesis in 1925 but did not receive her Ph. D.

from Columbia until 1929. In latter years, she received honorary degrees from Wilson College, Elmira College, and Rutgers University (Mead). Although Mead is best know for her pioneering work as an anthropologist, her understanding of other cultures has given us a new outlook on such issues as adolescence and sexuality. She argued that adolescence is not inevitably a time of stress and conflict. She also was quite critical of American society for shrouding sexuality in secrecy (great). All total, Margaret Mead wrote forty-four books and over 1, 000 articles that have been translated into virtually all languages.

She wrote on subjects as vast as mental and spiritual health, ethics, and overpopulation. She was also the first to conduct psychologically-oriented field work (Tribute). In her own words: I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples -- -faraway peoples -- -so that Americans might better understand themselves (and). Margaret Mead died in 1978 (2001). Leta Stetter Hollingworth was born on May 25, 1886. Her father was, among other things, a peddler, a teamster, a rancher, a trader, and a bar owner.

She was the first-born and her mother died soon after the birth of her third child. She inherited a journal that her mother had recorded the first year of Leta's life in and she continued this tradition well into her life. When she was twelve years old, her father remarried and took the children from the home of their grandparents where they had been stationed to the home of the new stepmother. This proved to be a horrible experience. When Leta was sixteen, she enrolled in the University of Nebraska and comprised an impressive four-year academic record. She also became engaged to Henry Hollingworth during this time.

In 1906, she received her B. A. degree along with a State Teachers Certificate. After moving to New York to marry Hollingworth in 1908, she specialized in education and sociology and received her Masters in Education at Columbia University in 1913. Leta completed her Ph. D.

at Columbia University under Edward L. Thorndike in 1916. She was then offered a position at Columbia Teachers College and remained in that position for the remainder of her life. Hollingworth's greatest contribution to psychology was her study of womens issues. She wrote on topics such as male domination of social order, suffrage, and the female menstrual cycle, the last of which was the subject of her Doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Thorndike. She also did much work with mentally deficient and mentally gifted children (Hochman).

Dorthea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the first child of Joseph and Mary Dix. Her father was a Methodist preacher and her family life could be described as abusive. Her mother was not in good mental health and her father was an alcoholic. She once commented, I never knew childhood.

During the War of 1812, the family was forced to take refuge in Vermont. Her father taught her how to read and write; this developed a passion for reading and teaching. She later taught her brothers how to read as well. She was sent to live with her grandmother, along with her two children, at the age of twelve.

Her grandmother was quite wealthy and demanded that Dorthea acquire the interests of a wealthy girl. During one episode, she was punished severely for giving food and her new clothes to the beggar children who were standing at their front gate. From there, she was sent to live with a great aunt and stayed with her for nearly four years. It was with her aunt that she met her second cousin, Edward Bangs, an attorney and fourteen years her senior.

He convinced her to start what he called a little dame school. At the age of fifteen, she taught her first twenty pupils. When Dorthea was eighteen, Edward told her that he had fallen in love with her. She immediately closed down her school and returned to her grandmothers.

However, Edward followed her to Boston and proposed marriage. Dix accepted his proposal would not agree to a definite date of marriage. After her fathers death in 1821, she returned the engagement ring and devoted the rest of her life to teaching. Upon entering a jail in 1841, she noted the horrible treatment of the mentally ill. When asked why these conditions existed, her answer was the insane do not feel heat or cold. She immediately took these matters to the courts and eventually won.

She traveled throughout every state on the east side of the Mississippi River and over half of Europe inspecting jails. In all, she played a major role in founding thirty-two mental hospitals, fifteen schools for the feeble minded, a school for the blind, and numerous training facilities for nurses (Dix). Another woman who claimed many firsts in psychology was Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, to David and Isabella Thompson on November 6, 1874. Her father was a shoe manufacturer and her mother was a homemaker. Both her, and her two sisters, all attended college.

After graduating from college, she enrolled at the University of Chicago. She completed her undergraduate degree in 1897 and her Ph. D. in 1900. At the University of Chicago, she conducted the first major research concerned with the differences between men and women. She also conducted research on University of Chicago students in areas including: motor ability, taste and smell, skin and muscle senses, vision, hearing, affective processes, and intellectual faculties.

She published her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of James Angell. Woolley influenced other female psychologists, including Leta Stetter Hollingworth. After leaving Chicago, she studied in Paris and Berlin. Upon returning to the United States, she began teaching at Mount Holyoke College. She became director of the psychological laboratory and professor of psychology in 1902. She became engaged in 1905 to Dr.

Paul Woolley and moved with him to the Philippines. In 1908, she and her husband moved back to Nebraska, perhaps because of the birth of their first child. Helen became involved in child welfare reforms, African American rights, and suffrage issues. In the mid- 1920 s, she accepted a position in New York as a professor of education at Columbia University's teachers college, while her husband was in California. This move apparently solidified their separation.

In 1926, after a series of stressful events, she became emotionally incapacitated and in 1930, was asked to resign from teaching (Woolley). Psyche Cattell is perhaps more well known for being the daughter of James Mc Keen Cattell rather than her own psychological career. She was born on August 2, 1893. Her mother was Josephine Owen Cattell and while book after book as been written about hr father, almost nothing has been written about her mother. It is quite easy to say that her father had a great influence on her.

Psyche and her five siblings lived in a huge house overlooking the Hudson River. Their father insisted that they be home-schooled and hired only the best teachers. Psyche suffered from dyslexia and when she expressed her desire to attend college, her father would not support her. He felt that she would not be able to perform at the college level.

Despite this lack of emotional and financial support, she forged ahead and got a job as a research assistant in order to pay her own tuition. She began her undergraduate work at Sargent School of Physical Education and received her M. A. degree from Cornell University in 1925. Following that, she went to Harvard University and received a Masters of Education degree followed by a Doctorate of Education degree in 1927. Psyche Cattell was a research assistant both during and after her graduate studies at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

She took a similar position at Stanford from 1925 to 1926. In 1931, she adopted a son, Hudson. Despite the difficulties for a single woman in obtaining an adopted child, she adopted a daughter, Join, in 1940. In addition to her research assistant jobs, Psyche was also an instructor in mental testing. She realized that the tests of her time needed and improvement and did just that.

Her infant intelligence test is still in use today (Psyche). Grace Helen Kent was born on June 6, 1875, in Michigan City, Indiana. She was born to a minister who followed in the steps of three generations of clergymen. Kent's father was quite liberal for the time and was one of the first white pastors for a Negro church. After attending high school, she attended Grinnell College for two years. She then transferred to the University of Iowa and received her bachelors degree in 1902.

In 1904, she received her masters degree from the University of Iowa under Carl Seashore. In 1905, Kent moved to the East coast to work on her graduate work with Hugo Munsterberg at Harvard for about two years. Her major work was done on associationism at Kings Park State Hospital on Long Island. There, she worked on the famous Kent-Rosanoff Association Test in conjunction with Dr.

A. J. Rosanoff in 1910. She later worked with Dr.

Shepard Ivory Franz at George Washington University. In 1911, she received her Ph. D. from the same university in psychology. One contemporary psychologist is Sandra Ruth Lipsitz Bem. She was born on June 22, 1944, to Peter, a postal clerk, and Lillian, a secretary, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Sandra was one of three girls in a class of twelve at Hillel Academy, a Jewish school in Pittsburgh. It was during this time that her future became evident, when she began to show concern for gender differences. One such incident has her being expelled for wearing pants to school. She received her bachelors degree in psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1965. She found that she preferred hypothesis testing rather than experimental testing here. She also found her future husband, Day Bem, and married him after a few months.

She decided to study child psychology and attended the University of Michigan. She received her Ph. D. in developmental psychology at the tender age of twenty-three.

Her teaching career began at Carnegie-Mellon as an assistant professor where she remained until 1971. Later that year, Stanford University offered a one-year position to both her and her husband. Sandra remained at Stanford until 1978, when she did not receive tenure. Once again, both the Bem's accepted positions at Cornell University.

In 1971, she created a measurement that she called the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). This instrument allows a person to rate both masculine and feminine traits. At the age of thirty-one, Sandra received the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology for her studies of sex roles, androgyny, and the ontogeny of psychosexual identity and maturity (Bettis). Contemporary psychology cannot be talked about without giving a quick mention to Joyce Brothers. She was born in 1927, to parents who believed that nothing was more important than hard work, achievement, and family. She demonstrated a photographic memory early in life.

She received her bachelors degree, with honors, from Cornell in 1947. She then received her Masters degree from Columbia in 1949. A week later, she married. She gave birth to her daughter, Lisa, the following summer.

Because of the meager income being brought in by her husband, Joyce decided to appear on the $ 64, 000 Question TV quiz show. She was introduced on the show as a psychologist who was an expert on boxing. She memorized a boxing encyclopedia for the show and appeared on air for five weeks straight, answering every question. She became one of the biggest winners in quiz show history, winning $ 130, 000. She gained instant celebrity status and went on to host a television show on sex, love, marriage, and child rearing that ran for twenty-one years. She also has a daily newspaper column, a monthly column in Good Housekeeping, and a daily call-in program.

She has also published seven books, two of which became best sellers (Brothers). When a person speaks of sex today, only one name comes to mind -- - Dr. Ruth. Karl Ruth Siegel was born on June 4, 1928, in Frankfort, Germany. She was the only child of a privileged Orthodox Jewish family. Her father was a prosperous notions wholesaler and her mother was the daughter of cattle rancher.

Ruth often crept into her fathers library to read his books. It was this experience that first piqued her interest in human sexuality. When the Nazis came into power in 1933, the SS came to take her father. Ruth was sent to a Swiss school that evolved into an orphanage for Jewish refugee girls. She never saw her family again. She now believes that they perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Ruth suffered immensely and was forced to act as maid for the Swiss Jewish girls. She also often found herself in trouble by sharing her knowledge on taboo subjects, such as menstruation, with other girls. After the war, she moved to Israel, then Palestine and became a Zionist. It was here that she changed her first name to Ruth and joined the Haganah, the Jewish underground movement that was fighting for creation of a Jewish homeland.

On June 4, her birthday, she was wounded when a bomb exploded outside of the home where she lived, taking off the top of her foot. Ruth frequently worried that she would never marry. She wrote in her diary, Nobody is going to want me because Im short and ugly. However, in 1950, an Israeli soldier proposed and she immediately accepted. They moved to Paris where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne. The marriage ended after five years.

Ruth later sailed to New York using the 5, 000 marks (about $ 1, 500) she received as restitution from the West German Government with a French boyfriend. She received a scholarship to the New School of Social Research and gave birth to a baby girl, Miriam, after arriving in New York. She later divorced the Frenchman, whom she had married to legalize the pregnancy, and worked as a housemaid to support her daughter while attending English lessons and evening classes. In 1959, she graduated with a Masters degree in sociology and received a position as a research assistant at Columbia University. She fell in love with her current husband, Manfred Westheimer, while on a skiing vacation with her boyfriend. Nine months later, they were wed.

Ruth gave birth to a son, Joel, and became an American citizen soon after. Ruth took a job at Planned Parenthood in Harlem, New York City, in the late 1960 s and in 1967, she was appointed project director. She worked toward her doctorate degree in family and sex counseling through Columbia University evening classes and became an associate professor of sex counseling at Lehman College in the Bronx early in the 1970 s. She then moved on to Brooklyn College and was promptly fired.

Her career took a fortunate turn when she lectured to New York broadcasters about the need for sex education programming. She reasoned that such programs would dispel the silence around such issues as contraception and unwanted pregnancies. Ruth was offered twenty-five dollars a week to do Sexually Speaking, a fifteen-minute show every Sunday that would air just after midnight. The show was an immediate success and so was Dr. Ruth. Producers soon expanded the time-slot to one hour and opened up the phone lines to allow live callers.

By the summer of 1983, Sexually Speaking was attracting a quarter-million listeners weekly. It was clear that fans adored her frank and non-judgmental approach to their sexual queries. She was criticized by many but insisted that she was providing a much-needed educational service to her listeners. She has now expanded her services to include newspaper columns, a column in Playgirl magazine, The Dr. Ruth Show, and several books including Sex for Dummies. In 1996, she launched a web site featuring daily sex tips and advice.

She continues her private practice in New York (Ruth). It is very obvious that many women have made significant contributions to the area of American Psychology, both directly and indirectly. Their accomplishments have been great and deserving. The obstacles they were forced to overcome may not be the same today, but they are certainly still present. As the field of psychology widens and develops, we are sure to be shown many more prominent women in American Psychology.

Bibliography: Prominent Women in American Psychology 1 w: What is Karen Horney's approach to psychoanalysis? : web 2001: Margaret Mead: An Anthropology of Human Freedom: web and: web Mead / mead . html be: web Bettis: web bio: web record. pi? iu- 200 // Boeree: web Brothers: web But 1: web Code: web Darwin: web Dix: web Emmanuel: A developmental model of girls and women: web geocities: web great: web gwu: web Harrington: Where Have All the Women Gone? : web Hochman: web Mead: web monadnock: web Paris: web Psyche: web Ragsdale: web Ruth: web record. pi? id- 22991 search: web record.

pi? id- 1 / 26 / sonoma: web Tribute: web Wooley: web


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