The Legacy of Transformational Moments in Feminist Psychology

Abstract

Important turning points in the history of feminist psychology can sometimes be traced to particular moments—specific publications or situations in which an individual or group sparked advancement of the field. Just as there are national milestones (e.g., formation of the American Psychological Association’s Division 35, the Society for the Psychology of Women and formation of the Association for Women in Psychology), there are also transformational moments with a local flavor, that is, events specific to a city, college/university, or specialization within psychology that play a role in the development of our field. In this article, I report the initial findings of a project aimed at collecting feminist psychologists’ first-person accounts of local events or activities (late 1960s to the present) that contributors believe have influenced, or are influencing, the development of feminist psychology, especially the scholarship of feminist psychology. Thus, this ongoing project focuses on the experiences of psychologists who organized, participated in, or benefited from the development of feminist psychology. Feminist psychologists in all phases of their careers in the United States and internationally are invited to participate by visiting the Division 35 website. The archive comprising these accounts complements existing archives of the history of psychology and individual biographies and autobiographies.