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Women in Psychology

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Women in Psychology

Tamara Walker

University of Phoenix

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Women in Psychology

Psychology is continuously evolving within itself and the practice alone. Even though several men had dominated the field, women began to come onto the seen and began to make significant contributions to psychology. Psychology has been around for a very long time and throughout that time there have been some very influential women. The contributions of women in psychology have also been overlooked in much of psychology’s history. Many women have contributed to the way that people think, live and even their careers that they have chosen. Some of these women include Anna Freud, who was influenced by her father’s theories, but created her own theories in child psychoanalysis. Another woman is Karen Horney, who made contributions to personality theory and feminine psychology. Others include Melanie Klein, Mary Whiton Calkins, and Mary Ainsworth. The one woman who has been chosen that is an influential part of history of psychology is Catharine Cox Miles. She has contributed much to the psychology world including many of the top geniuses IQ’s and has written many books. Catharine Cox Miles
Life
Catharine Cox Miles was an American Psychologist, who was born on May 20, 1890 to the parents of Lydia Shipley Bean and Charles Ellwood Cox of San Jose, California (Simonton, 2010). Catharine was a very energetic child growing up; she loved people and wanted to be around her parents all the time. Catharine was always wondering how a persons mind worked and why people chose the decisions that they made, so this took her into the field of psychology (Simonton, 2010). Catharine was a feminist as well as activist for the children of WWII (Simonton, 2010). She had a very happy childhood where both parents loved her very much. They knew that someday she would be what she wanted. So like many parents they made sure that she was able to go to school. She attended the University of Stanford where she earned a bachelor of the Arts degree in 1911, and her Master’s in 1913 in (American Journal of Psychology, 1986). Later in 1925, she earned her PhD. After receiving her degrees at Stanford, she received a job at the University of Berlin and the University of Jena each for about one year (American Journal, 1986). Soon she became the professor at the College of the Pacific from 1915-1920 (Simonton, 2010). Later in 1927 she married Walter Miles a psychologist, who already had two teenage children. After her book was published in 1936 she began to divert away from what she loved. A decade later she returned to the historic geniuses that were the subject of her thesis. Miles and Wolfe specifically scored the geniuses on early mental and physical health. Their aim was to show that intellectual giftedness was also positively associated with both mental and physical well-being (Simonton, 2010). In the end of Catharine’s life she was very happy with all that she had done throughout her life and her accomplishments with psychology. Catharine died on October 11, 1984 in a nursing home in Sandy Springs, Maryland.
Theoretical Perspective Catharine had many ideas and thoughts about psychology and what it meant to her. As Catharine started her graduate program in psychology, it was around the same time as Lewis Terman was beginning his study of intellectually gifted children (Simonton, 2010). This program did not give what she needed to do her dissertation at the time so she proposed a different perspective. She wanted it to be more. She wanted to do an investigation on the IQ’s that she thought was historiometric and retrospective (Simonton, 2010). Catharine wanted to push herself farther than any women she had known up to that point. She wanted to make sure that her dissertation for school was to stand out and it did. Catharine had many views on what a genius could accomplish so with her book she was able to determine if those that were smart were also able to make other things in their life famous.
Contributions
During Catharine’s life she was able to contribute much of her intelligence to the IQ processing and character traits for the top geniuses (Simonton, 2010). She carefully compiled more than 3,000 biographical resources and the developmental histories of 301 geniuses (Simonton, 2010). In this project she and a team were able to create estimated IQ’s for all 301 geniuses, which was also compared and correlated with achieved eminence. By doing this she was able to show just how smart some of the smartest people are during the time of 1450 to 1850 (Simonton, 2010). Because of the impressiveness that Terman took to her collaboration of the information that she had done he had it published as Volume 2 in his Genetics Studies of Geniuses it is 842 pages of ambitious historiometric investigation ever published (Simonton, 2010). He was very impressed of all the hard work that she had done to prove her thoughts. Not only was this published in his books it also was the only thing that was published without Terman being the author or co-author (Simonton, 2010). Terman and Catharine became a team and published more articles and co-wrote more books. After her dissertation she used the information to create her own book called Early Mental Traits of 300 Geniuses (American Journal, 1986). The top four Geniuses in her book were 1) Goethe IQ=210, 2) Leibnitz IQ=205, 3) Grotius IQ=200, and 4) Wolsey IQ=200 (Simonton, 2010). Later in 1994, it was corroborated that her findings were true (Simonton, 2010). Besides her investigation of IQ’s she also took 100 of those same geniuses and did a 69 character trait test as well. Catharine has had many other books published and articles in the American Journal of Psychology published as well.
Conclusion
Women have been a very important part of psychology today. But as it was written above it has not always been that way. Women have always been thought of as a lesser of a man and would take a lot for women to prove themselves. Women just like many of the things throughout our lives we have fought for it and succeeded. Women have made sure that we are all given the equal chance to prove ourselves. Like always we have proven ourselves to the fullest with our intelligence and our patience to get it done. Without the women of the past we as women today would not be where we are in our ability to vote, go to school, and become just about anything that we want. Hopefully, as time continues so will the growth of what women can accomplish. Catharine along with many other women have paved the way for women today by doing what they did best. So with all that has been said and done women can expect more for their daughters, sisters and even their mothers will know that they if they put their minds to it and stay together anything can be done.

References
American Journal of Psychology, (Autumn, 1986), Catharine Cox Miles: 1890-1984, Vol. 99, No 3, pp. 431-433, Retrieved September 6, 2010, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1422495
Simonton, Dean, K. January 13, 2010, University of California-Davis, Catharine Cox Miles: American Psychologist, Retrieved September 6, 2010, http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/cox.shtml

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