‘Those Catalytic Women Teachers:’ Mary Marvin, Margaret Maguire and the Social History of the First University-Based Psychological Clinic, 1870-1920
The beginnings of clinical psychology are usually traced to Lightner Witmer’s establishment of the country’s first psychological clinic in the University of Pennsylvania in 1896. This institutional innovation was in turn sparked by the requests and assistance of Philadelphia teachers Margaret Tilden Maguire (1874 - 1941) and Mary Eva Marvin (1869 – 1933). Nonetheless, the historical record is fundamentally silent about both teachers’ lives, backgrounds and careers., which has contributed to historians either willingly or unwillingly portraying them as incapable or neophyte instructors working in a professional vacuum. By resorting to heretofore overlooked primary sources this talk aims to provide (1) novel factual data concerning Maguire and Marvin’s backgrounds and early careers and (2) a contextual interpretation of their pioneering forays into clinical psychology. I will argue that neither Maguire and Marvin were undertrained or unskilled professionals, but thoroughly educated individuals and dedicated workers who were actually handicapped by the deep and sudden changes experienced by the public school system in the United States between 1870 and 1920. Those changes were the crucial context in which the rapprochement between early 20th-century psychology and education took place— a rapprochement which Maguire and Marvin undoubtedly spearheaded.
Location: Behavioural Science Building, rm 164 (Endler)