Diversity, inclusion, and representativeness havebeen important issues in the psychology ofwomen and feminist psychology. Second-wavefeminism has been justifiably criticized as exclu-sively representing the concerns and outlooksof women at the center—generally heterosexual,White, middle-class women—and ignoring thecomplex intersections of gender with race, eth-nicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status,and other important identity categories

Miller’s ideas developed intoa relational–cultural theory of psychologicaldevelopment that places the ability to sustainrelationships as central to human growth andsees disconnectedness as a threat to psycholog-ical well-being. According to this theory andthe therapy that has been developed from it,disconnectedness can arise out of power imbal-ances that impel one member in a relationship tohide or distort authentic feelings for fear of be-ing ridiculed or invalidated. Although the powerimbalances between women and men are oneexample, relational disruptions can also occur asa result of racism, classism, heterosexism, andother discriminatory societal practices that affectpower relations. These ideas have been devel-oped by many other scholars at the Stone Centerat Wellesley College in Massachusetts, whereMiller worked until her death in 2006

After women won the right to vote inthe United States, feminism as an organizedpolitical movement largely dissolved. The GreatDepression of the 1930s and the onset ofWorld War II left feminists little time orenergy for mass, gender-based activism, withsome exceptions. The post–World War II periodwas characterized by a particularly markedretrenchment to traditional gender stereotypesand roles, despite continued increases in women’sparticipation in the workforce throughout the1950s.

“Little Albert,”the most famous baby in the history ofpsychology. The handsome psychologist was 42-year-old John B. Watson, the founderof the school of thought called behaviorism. His assistant was 21-year-old Rosalie Rayner,a graduate student who drove to the Johns Hopkins University campus in her StutzBearcat, the hottest and most expensive sports car of the time. Together they changedpsychology and, in the process, ended Watson’s brilliant academic career.

Albert reacted fearfully, apparently for the firsttime in his life. This gave Watson an unconditioned emotional response with which towork. He wanted to find out if he could produce in Albert a conditioned emotionalresponse—such as fear of a white rat that he had not previously been afraid of—by pairingthe sight of the rat with the loud, startling noise. In no more than seven pairings of thewhite rat with the noise, the child showed fear every time he spotted the rat, even whenthe bar had not been struck behind his head

Watson demonstrated his theory of condi-tioned emotional responses in his experimental studies of eight-month-old Albert, whowas conditioned to fear a white rat, something he had not feared before the conditioningtrials. From that research Watson concluded that all adult fears, aversions, and anxietieslikewise are conditioned in early childhood.

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), shefounded the National Woman Suffrage Associa-tion. Women’s suffrage became a defining goalof first-wave feminism. In 1851, at a women’srights convention in Akron, Ohio, SojournerTruth (1797–1883), a former slave, gave herfamous speech ‘‘Ain’t I a Woman,’’ in which shedemanded that her experience as an enslavedBlack woman be recognized in both the suffrageand the abolitionist movements.

feminist women psychologists (and a fewfeminist men) waged their own battles withintheir chosen discipline, demanding that andro-centric theories be acknowledged and reformedand that sexist institutional practices be elimi-nated

One of these psychologists was NaomiWeisstein (b. 1939), an ardent socialist femi-nist and one of the founders of the ChicagoWomen’s Liberation Union

Watson was intelligent, articulate, handsome, and charming,and it was these qualities that made him a celebrity.

Albert reacted fearfully, apparently for the firsttime in his life. This gave Watson an unconditioned emotional response with which towork. He wanted to find out if he could produce in Albert a conditioned emotionalresponse—such as fear of a white rat that he had not previously been afraid of—by pairingthe sight of the rat with the loud, startling noise.