Functionalism, Darwinism, and the Psychology of Women A Study in Social Myth

The psychology of women is acquiring the character of an academic entity as witnessed by the prolifera-tion of research on sex differences, the appearance of textbooks devoted to the psychology of women, and the formation of a separate APA division, Psy-chology of Women. Nevertheless, there is almost universal ignorance of the psychology of women as it existed prior to its incorporation into psycho-analytic theory. If the maxim "A nation without a history is like a man without a memory " can be applied, then it would behoove the amnesiacs in-terested in female psychology to investigate its pre-Freudian past. This article focuses on one period of that past (from the latter half of the 19th century to the first third of the 20th) in order to clarify the im-portant issues of the time and trace their develop-ment to the position they occupy in current psy-chological theory. Even a limited overview leads the reader to appreciate Helen Thompson Woolley's (1910) early appraisal of the quality of the re-search on sex differences: There is perhaps no field aspiring to be scientific where flagrant personal bias, logic martyred in the cause of sup-porting a prejudice, unfounded assertions, and even senti-mental rot and drivel, have run riot to such an extent as here. (p. 340) The Functionalist Milieu Although the nature of woman had been an aca-demic and social concern of philosopher psycholo-gists throughout the ages, formal psychology (it