Naomi Weisstein
American vision psychologist and feminist activist
Vision researcher whose essay Psychology Constructs the Female criticised psychology for theorising about women without evidence. She also co-founded the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.
Why this person matters
Weisstein's essay argued that clinical theory about women lacked evidence and ignored social context. She combined this with laboratory work on visual perception, and with colleagues she helped found the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.
Main contributions
Psychology Constructs the Female
The essay argued that psychology failed to understand women, relied on theory without evidence, especially in clinical psychology and psychiatry, ignored social context and favoured biologically based explanations. A 1993 version in Feminism and Psychology carried a longer title.
Vision research
With Charles Harris (1974) she found that a line segment was detected better as part of an apparent three-dimensional object than as a plain line. With Victor Klymenko (1986) she showed that spatial frequency can shape which region is seen as figure.
Feminist organising and music
She helped found the Chicago Women's Liberation Union in 1969 and the Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band, active from 1970 to 1973, which released the album Mountain Moving Day in 1972.
Context and limits
Sources give 1968 and 1971 for the essay, so its dating is unsettled. Feminist Voices reports that Harvard denied her access to its equipment and that she completed her vision research at Yale. She left the University of Chicago in 1966; Feminist Voices attributes her move to Loyola to anti-nepotism rules, while a reference article says she was fired and could not become a full professor because of the nepotism rule. Later responses to the essay were not read.
In your introductory course
History and research methods.Weisstein appears in history and methods, where the essay is used to discuss bias in theory and in who is studied. Students may also meet her in perception research on figure and ground.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 1.2. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1964
Received her Harvard PhD.
- 1968
Wrote the 1968 version of Psychology Constructs the Female.
- 1969
Helped found the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.
- 1974
Published visual detection research with Charles Harris in Science.
Sources
- Psychology's Feminist Voices, Naomi WeissteinSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Naomi WeissteinReference work. Reference article inspected.