Honoring Women Pioneers in Mental Health

Mamie Phipps Clark doll study
 

Reflecting upon some of the early women leaders in a field of growing importance

Women in medicine have always faced hardship and sexism in their pursuit of knowledge. Fortunately for us all, many had the dogged determination to push through barriers and make far-reaching and groundbreaking discoveries.

Below are just a few of the many women who deserve recognition for their contributions to the field of mental health:

Melanie Klein: Using Play to Understand a Child’s Inner Life

Austrian-British psychoanalyst and author Melanie Klein had dreamed of studying medicine. However, a sudden loss of her family’s wealth derailed that plan and Klein found herself married at 21 with the first of four children arriving soon thereafter. The marriage was an unhappy one, and led Klein to seek treatment for depression from psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi—an associate of Sigmund Freud. Serendipitously, her treatment sparked her interest in psychoanalysis. Klein spent hours observing her own children and, in 1919, she published her first paper on the subject of play, and how it could be used to understand the unconscious behavior of children—a very Freudian assertion. 

Shortly after that, Klein was invited to join the British Psychoanalytical Society, where for 30 years she remained both controversial yet highly influential. Her theories about how a child’s inner life developed transformed psychoanalysis and continues to influence the field today.

Leta Stetter Hollingsworth: Challenging Assumptions about Women’s Capabilities 

To call American psychologist Leta Stetter Hollingsworth a pioneer is an understatement. Hollingsworth was the first woman to use scientific research to upend the belief that women were inferior to men—especially the notion that they were ‘incapacitated’ during menstruation. A feminist and active member of the Women’s Suffrage Party, Hollingsworth published several books. She developed the first-ever course on teaching gifted children, pushed for curricular change in schools, wrote several papers on the psychology of women, and advocated for certification requirements for applied psychologists. 

Perhaps her biggest accomplishment was being one of only 14 women included in Robert Watson’s publication, "Eminent Contributors to Psychology" (Benjamin and Shields, 1990). Though she died in 1939 at the age of 58, Hollingsworth’s achievements in the field of women’s psychology still resonate today.

Karen Horney: Taking on Freud at All Costs

German-born psychoanalyst Karen Horney, MD began her scientific journey studying medicine. However, her interest shifted to psychoanalysis and she left medicine to study with Karl Abraham—one of Sigmund Freud’s colleagues. Dr. Horney ended up departing from Freud’s basic principles by suggesting that both social and environmental factors played a role in personality disorders. She then took her findings and worked with psychiatric patients in Berlin before becoming a founding member and teacher at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1920.

In 1932, she moved to the United States to become the Associate Director at Chicago’s Institute for Psychoanalysis. While there, she produced two revolutionary theoretical works: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939). In these works, she argued that Freud was wrong: it was environmental and social conditions—not instinct or biology—that caused both personality disorders and neurosis. This refusal to support Freudian theory led to Dr. Horney’s 1941 expulsion from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Refusing to be deterred, Dr. Horney formed the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, and its teaching center, the American Institute for Psychoanalysis. She also founded the association’s American Journal of Psychoanalysis and served as editor until her death in 1952.

Mamie Phipps Clark—Shedding Light on the Impact of Segregation

Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but raised in Harlem, psychologist Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD was one of the first African-Americans awarded a doctoral degree in psychology from Columbia University. Prior to that, Dr. Clark earned a master’s degree from Howard University (where she also studied as an undergraduate) and, as part of her thesis, worked with children in an all-black nursery school. This sparked Dr. Clark’s deep interest in understanding self-identification in black children—a focus that ultimately led to her now-famous doll experiments, which not only exposed internalized racism, but shed light on the negative effects of segregation. 

Along the way, Dr. Clark met and married fellow psychologist Kenneth Clark, and the couple built a 46-year marriage and strong professional collaboration. Though she left academia behind in 1973, Dr. Clark received the American Association of University Women achievement award for her contributions to the field of mental health. Ten years later, she received the Candace Award for humanitarianism from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. 

Without your continued support, these stories would not be possible. Please donate to The Foundation to keep our collective legacy as women in medicine alive.

The Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation WIMLF