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Abstract
Psychology’s boundaries consist of a network of methods, categories, and institutional practices. Strategically important, these markers distinguish the field from common sense and popular psychology. Although psychologists have attempted to define themselves in terms of natural science, gender considerations have also been woven into the fabric of the field. This article examines psychology’s gender identity through a consideration of the career of Abraham Maslow. Trained as an experimentalist, Maslow is widely known for his attempt to expand the discipline’s boundaries into humanistic domains. He was convinced that psychology had become too masculine for its own good, yet he struggled to find a way to “soften” psychology without completely undermining its “rigorous” foundation. His work highlights the connection between masculinity and science and the difficulty of redrawing psychology’s boundaries without undermining its credibility.
In recent years, historians of psychology have become increasingly sensitive to the ways in which the discipline has been shaped by competition from rival forms of psychological know-how. Like all academic disciplines, psychology has made a series of claims to a particular domain of expertise and, like other fields, its claims have not gone uncontested. Common sense, popular psychology, spiritualism, and other academic fields have encroached on the discipline’s claims and threatened its professional authority, financial support, and institutional recognition (Coon, 1992; Gieryn, 1983; Morawski & Hornstein, 1991). The field has responded to these threats by constructing an intellectual and professional boundary using the methods and language of natural science (Burnham, 1987; Romanyshyn, 1971; Toulmin & Leary, 1985). In so doing, psychologists have endeavored to position themselves as objective observers of psychological nature while portraying their rivals as self-interested amateurs mired in custom and mysticism.
Although not entirely unsuccessful, the use of the idiom of natural science as a boundary has created difficulties for a discipline committed to examining the psychological complexities of human nature (Ash, 1992). The pursuit of scientific objectivity has often been done at the expense of human interest, and in the past the field has sacrificed a great deal of cultural...