Divergent Perspectives on the Significance of Self in the Psychology of Mary Whiton Calkins and William James

Abstract

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863 – 1930), an American pioneer in modern psychology, was one of the few to conduct doctoral work with William James (1842 – 1910) at Harvard. Recent studies by Bella (2022) and McDonald (2006) propose that Calkins’s conception of psychology as the study of conscious selves is drawn from James. This article marks Calkins’s proposition for self-psychology as a departure from James’s thinking instead, on the basis that Calkins’s and James’s understandings of the nature of self are irreconcilable. Interpreting Calkins’s proposition for self-psychology as her point of deviation from James’s psychological thought is systematically accurate, and contributes to recognition of her self-psychology as an independent and fully-developed psychological school.