Women Psychologists

Anna Freud was a British psychoanalyst. The daughter of Sigmund Freud, Anna followed in the footsteps of her father and made important contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. Alongside Melanie Klein and Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, Anna Freud is counted among the founders of psychoanalytic child psychology. Her work and contributions were featured in a documentary titled The Century of the Self.

Remembered for her pioneering work on feminist psychology, Karen Horney studied medicine at a time when women weren’t allowed in universities. Going against Sigmund Freud’s concept of penis envy, she suggested the idea of womb envy. She believed psychological differences weren’t rooted in gender but rather depended on the socio-cultural influences.

American-Canadian developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth is best remembered for her contributions in developing the attachment theory. She devised the Strange situation procedure during the 1970s to observe early emotional connect and relationship between a caregiver and child. She was ranked as the 97th most cited psychologist of the 20th century in a 2002 survey of Review of General Psychology.

Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst. A key figure in the development of object relations theory, she is best known for her work in child analysis. She began her studies by observing her own children’s behavior while they were growing up. As a woman in a field dominated by men, she was also a feminist icon. 

Renowned psychologist Carol S. Dweck has taught at both Columbia and Harvard and is now a professor at Stanford. She is best known for her research on fixed mindset and growth mindset and has also penned popular books such as Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality and Development.

Better known as Carl Jung’s wife, Emma Jung was the daughter of one of the most affluent businessmen in Switzerland. Though she initially wished to study natural sciences, being a woman in her time, she couldn’t. Later a co-owner of a luxury watch company, she helped her husband financially in his career.

Carol Gilligan is an American psychologist, ethicist, and feminist. She is renowned for her work on ethical relationships and ethical community. She also serves as a professor of Applied Psychology and Humanities at New York University. Considered the chief architect of the ethics of care, Gilligan was named in the 25 most influential people list by Time magazine in 1996.

Denied formal education for being a woman, Toni Wolff later became one of psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s closest collaborators. She entered Jung’s life as a patient of depression after her father’s death. She later headed the Psychologischer Club Zürich as its president and is often described as an intellectual rival of Jung’s wife.

Apart from being a renowned psychologist, Alice Miller became an international sensation with her debut book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, a bestseller. A Holocaust survivor, who had lost her father in a Jewish ghetto, she analyzed child abuse, including education, violence, and parental abuse.

Eva Justin was a German anthropologist who specialised in scientific racism. Justin, who was active during the Nazi era, contributed to the crimes of the Nazis against the Roma and Sinti peoples. Eva Justin was tasked with studying children, who were then sent to concentration camps. At least 35 children studied by Eva Justin were killed in the gas chamber.

Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz met Carl Jung when she was 18 and was at once engaged in intellectual exchange. She later penned books such as Number and Time, which analyze Jung’s research on the unus mundus and archetypes, which he, in his later years, had handed over to von Franz.

Considered a pioneer in her field, centenarian neuropsychologist Brenda Milner is known for her immense contribution to clinical neuropsychology. Especially known for her work on memory and cognition, she has contributed immensely to the study of temporal lobe. Her papers on the frontal lobes in problem-solving and the lateralization of hemispheric function in language are also highly regarded by scholars.

May-Britt Moser is a Norwegian neuroscientist and psychologist. She also serves as a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is best known for winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2014 for her work pertaining to the grid cells in the brain's entorhinal cortex. She shared the award with her then-husband, Edvard Moser.

A Holocaust survivor, Bloeme Evers-Emden was deported to Auschwitz on the same train as Anne Frank’s family. She grew up to be a prominent child psychologist and lecturer and devoted herself to the research related to the “hidden children" of World War II. Her books include Borrowed Children.

Born to a Jewish family in southern Lithuania that was well-respected among the community, Bluma Zeigarnik grew up to be a renowned psychologist. She is best remembered for discovering what is known as the Zeigarnik effect, or the phenomenon of remembering incomplete tasks better than complete ones.

Born to German-Jewish immigrants in Argentina, Esther Vilar studied medicine before she moved to Germany to study psychology and sociology. After taking up scores of odd jobs, she soared to international fame with her bestselling book The Manipulated Man, which argues that women aren’t oppressed but control men in relationships.

Wife of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, Lisbeth Palme was also a children's psychologist in her own right, serving as the chairwoman of the Swedish UNICEF committee for about twelve long years and as its international chairwoman for one term. A witness to her husband’s assassination, she later identified the murderer, but experts believe he identified the wrong man.

Apart from being an educator and an author, Joan Erikson was also a dance ethnographer and believed that art therapy could heal a lot of psychological ailments. She also established a theater and art program to help patients develop psychologically. She also spoke about the importance of “play” in adult life.