The development of my father’s career in psychology, and how the field changed during the 20th century from being male-dominated to female-dominated
In a recent attempt to write a biography of my father I was given a snapshot of how the job of a psychologist evolved across the 20th century, and why the study and practice of psychology has become the modern-day preserve of women.
My father, John Lindsay, was born in 1910, educated in 1928, in an American community college where he took a psychology major. In 1945, he studied for a PhD in Psychology at University College London under Sir Cyril Burt, who ran a department shaped by the father of Experimental Psychology, statistician Charles Spearman. A group photo of my father at University College London, with him sat next to his fellow student Hans Eysenck, reveals about an eighth of the group were women.
After working with Anna Freud in Hampstead, London, in 1950 my father became one of the first-ever psychologists to be employed by the brand spanking-new NHS. In the post-war period of 1945-51 the psychological skills he peddled were born of the war-effort, with their roots in Spearman’s transformation. My father’s core-competence, alongside a bag of tricks such as hypnosis, was psychometric testing, something that during WWII came to prominence as a way of allocating work to conscripted people in the armed forces, as well as civilians.In the days before Welfare States, European Nations had small Governments, and women were mostly banned from working in them. But during WWII, civilian workers - both men and women - could be conscripted just like soldiers to work for the country far away from their homes. Great hordes of civil servants were employed to control all of this (and some would say we have forgotten to demob them) increasing in numbers from pre-war levels of 40,000, when the British Empire managed one-third of the world, to 400,000 during the war. Most of these civil servants were women.
Psychometric testing by the UK’s Wartime Government had three levels of practitioners; Technicians, (usually women), who did the actual testing, Psychologists, who did the supervising of the technicians, and Senior Psychologists, who collated, reported and developed further tests. Having already moved to London, my fatherfound jobs were only available for Senior Psychologists, which required a PhD. So he began to study part-time while working a multitude of jobs; selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, night watchman of bombed out buildings, and working as an assistant to a doctor in Harley Street.
“At some point the Hospital Psychiatrists decided my father should be given something more to do, and so, for the first time, a Psychologist was given responsibility for ‘talking therapies.’”
The break for John Lindsey and his wife came with the formation of the Socialist State by a new Labour Party Government, who set up the NHS. Under the new 1948 Government things had quickly spiralled out of control. Every possible fancy had been pursued, increasing the budget for the psychiatric Hospital where my father worked ten-fold in a year. One of these expenditures was by Dr J Atkins, Senior Medical Officer, for the psychometric testing of all inmates, and for this my father was employed.
Short and insignificant as this work was, it also marked the fulfilment of Spearman’s dream, and the beginning of steady work for my father in the new role of a ‘Clinical Psychologist.’
At some point the Hospital Psychiatrists decided my father should be given something more to do, and so, for the first time, a Psychologist was given responsibility for ‘talking therapies.’ This new role was first confined to a dedicated building where he practiced something akin to Occupational Therapy - reintroducing those due to return to the world after recovering from severe mental illness, to what we now call ‘life skills.’ Later, group therapy sessions, as a means to a cure, were sent his way, and finally, full-on one-to-one talking therapy, or what most modern NHS (Clinical) Psychologists now do. This last shift in accountabilities was a consequence of a change of NHS dictates, which for the first time allowed the public to self-refer to ‘mental hospitals’, without the need for a GP. Inundated, Psychiatrists used my father to lighten their load from this onslaught of outpatients, and a new breed of self-referred inmates, housed separately from those committed to the asylum.
Sadly, my father had to self-learn the skills he needed on the job, as little training was given. The consequences were severe. One of his patients believed she had fallen in love with him, and my father, with no warning of this phenomenon in therapy, believed she had. My father and mother consequently quickly split-up, and much later divorced. My mother soon found work in a Local Authority, helping them allocate children into the post-war education-baskets of Secondary Moderns, Grammar Schools and Technical Colleges. She ended her life in Suffolk, working in the new, nearly-exclusively-female, career stream of Educational Psychology.
The NHS forcibly pensioned-off my father as he approached his late 60s. He ended his days self-employed as a psychologist for the Home Office, working in the original Borstal, near Chatham, Kent. He was much liked by the prison officers, most of who seemed to come from Scotland, and liked his protestant morality. Behind him the large Victorian Asylums in which he had worked were being dismantled, along with the Psychiatry patriarchy that for centuries had cared for the chronically mentally-unwell in the UK.
Briefly joining my father on his journey
In attempting to walk in my father’s footsteps, in 1977, I won a place on an undergraduate course at University College, Oxford, reading Philosophy and Experimental Psychology, which I commuted to Experimental Psychology, inspired by Spearman at University College London, who’s stated aim was to transform psychology from a philosophy, into a statistically-based science that would be useful to psychiatry.
“Unlike the men she was dressed casually, in a denim-jean skirt and jacket, something I remember my father brought-up because the warders had complained, as all the men either wore uniforms or suits.”
While an undergrad, I went with my father to his last place of work and found he had in tow two students going through a long and tiresome training course to become modern-day psychologists. One was a man of Arabic descent, and the other a blond-haired woman. Nothing unusual you may think in this even-split of trainees by gender, except in those days women made-up 17% of the workforce. Morning salutations went on for an age, and soon I realised that my dad had little to occupy him, this day or any other it seemed, and not much to teach. The woman rattled out with enthusiasm all of the things she had found to do of her own accord, in between espousing metaphysical theories to explain various inmate’s behaviour. Clearly she enjoyed what she was doing, of being special in a male environment - unaware perhaps that always ten feet behind her was a burley warden making sure she was not attacked - and if there was any slack or vagueness in the work, it did not concern her. Unlike the men she was dressed casually, in a denim-jean skirt and jacket, something I remember my father brought-up because the warders had complained, as all the men either wore uniforms or suits. I guess they would have preferred her in tweeds, a pince-nez and a bun. Yet despite her junior position, all of this was dismissed with ease. When she left the room my father smiled and said to me “she’s engaged”, mistaking my interest in the situation.
Somehow I sensed I was witnessing a shift in the order of things. I remember the male student dragged a wastepaper basket across the floor with his foot and sullenly began to peel a large grapefruit for his breakfast. Clearly waiting for his orders, he looked as bored as could be. Soon after, I gave up all aspirations of being a Clinical Psychologist.
“post-war maintenance of an enlarged Civil Service […] led to a strong presence of women [in the NHS]. […] clinical psychologists were allowed to practice ‘talking therapies,’ for which women arguably have a natural aptitude, [so] the floodgates for women in psychology were fully opened.”
It seems likely that women have always been drawn to study the branch of philosophy called ‘psychology.’ This gender-bias was clear in Secondary Modern Schools where I taught A-level psychology classes packed with girls. In the past, this natural predilection may have been exacerbated by psychology not offering a viable career path for men, and so making it easier for women to enter courses at a time when other subjects were preserved for men. Even today the general usefulness of a psychology degree is limited, at least for men, as some recruiters may regard it as ‘lacking rigour.’ I would argue that wartime changes to Local and Central Government demographics, and post-war maintenance of an enlarged Civil Service, are also significant; as this led to a strong presence of women in the governance of State endeavours such as the NHS. It also seems that once the old patriarchal institutions for mental healthcare were dismantled, and clinical psychologists were allowed to practice ‘talking therapies,’ for which women arguably have a natural aptitude, the floodgates for women in psychology were fully opened.
The insights from my father’s career described in this article may, or may not, be right or acceptable, but it is undeniable that nowadays the vast majority of salaried, practicing Psychologists in the UK are women. It is worth reflecting on the drivers of this , and consider how much the profession and our society benefit – or not – from this large imbalance.
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