Absent Minds

About the show

A bold new history of psychology that uncovers the lost legacies of the women who shaped our understanding of what it is to be human, but have not been given the credit they deserve – until now.

According to one article, eighty per cent of psychology undergraduate students are women. The same article reports that eighty per cent of clinical psychologists are also women. But when we think about the history of psychology, who springs to mind? Jung, Freud, Pavlov, Piaget. Where are the women? What of Mary Whiton Calkins, who was never awarded a doctorate because she was a woman despite her contributions shaping contemporary psychology; or Mamie Phipps Clark, whose research went on to inform the court case that ruled racial segregation illegal in the US; and power couple Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson who set up the international journal Feminism and Psychology and petitioned for the right for same-sex couples to marry in England. Absent Minds rightly seals women's place in the history of psychology.

Join Dr Madeleine Pownall at Bromley House Library as she uncovers lost legacies, documenting how women shaped the discipline and provided alternative, creative and more critical ways of thinking about the human experience.