A Feminist Companion to Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

Whilst women were barred access to scientific training in psychology’s formative generations, men are now the statistical minority among psychology undergraduate degrees in the 21st century. Why and how has gender come to determine who writes about whose psychology and with what effect? When did the psychology classroom become a female space? Why are men still over-represented among professors in psychology departments? Why does Freud always mean Sigmund rather than Anna? Why is the concept of formal operations attributed to Jean Piaget rather than Barb Inhelder? Do you have to be hysterical if you are a woman who wants more than a footnote in the field’s history? And where did the idea of gender come from anyway?


This Feminist Companion to Historical and Conceptual Issues in Psychology gives students both the space to explore such questions about their chosen field of study and the means to find the tools to find those answers in this space. It will navigate the history of psychology through key moments where conceptual frameworks took shape or were shaken, whilst the meaning of gender was at stake. By so doing, it aims to give opportunities to develop the skills to debug the discipline’s male-centred hardware and rewrite its code.


Students reading this book will dialogue with the field’s foremothers about how their desires to shape psychology got actualized, diverted or forgotten. They will use this dialogue to conceptualize their own present moment as contingent, and as a key moment that can be seized with feminist hands to meet the challenge of creating psychology’s sustainable, inclusive and ethical future.