Essay on COMPARISON AND CONTRASTS OF MOTHER TERESA AND FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE PERSONALITIES USING SOCIAL COGNITIVE, PSYCHOANALYTICAL, PSYCHOSOCIAL AND TRAIT THEORIES
Introduction
I’ve chosen two iconic figures in the world’s history of virtue and self-sacrifice: Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale for this comparison.
One can say they are much alike, both outstanding personalities and world famous humanitarians, helping poor and ill, but there are some differences in their attitudes towards society, absolutely different backgrounds, personal lives and relationships with their families, religion courses and in their occupation (for example, an attitude towards the methods of medical treatment, pain and analgesic treatment etc).
First of all I will give a general overview of these personalities in accordance with their official biographies. And then in the relevant sections I’ll make an analysis of their personalities using the mentioned psychological theories.
Let’s start with Mother Teresa (her real name is Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu). She was born in 1910 in Albanian family in Republic of Macedonia. Teresa left home at the age of 18 to join the missionary and she has never seen her family again (that is quite an interesting fact that will be mentioned in the sections 2 and 4). Teresa arrived in India in 1929 and was disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. Later she adopted Indian citizenship and get a medical training.
She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948 and in 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in Calcutta.(Clucas, 1988).
In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for struggling with poverty. In the end of her life, there was 610 established missions in 123 countries operating, including hospices and homes for people with hard conditions, soup kitchens, children’s programs, personal helpers, orphanages, and schools. The beatification of Mother Teresa took place on 19 October 2003, thereby bestowing on her the title “Blessed”. (Vatican news release, n.d.)
Famous English nurse and author, Florence Nightingale, was born in 1820 in Florence, Italy. On the contrary to Mother Teresa’s origin, Florence was born into a rich, upper-class British family. She announced her decision to enter nursing in 1844 and in that way she has rebelled against the expected role for a woman of her status. The usual expected role for women was to become a wife and mother.
Florence Nightingale’s most famous contribution came during the Crimean War. Nightingale also wrote her great work Notes on Nursing, which was published in 1859.
She spent the rest of her life promoting and development of the nursing profession and organizing it into its modern form. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King’s College London. The annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday. (Bostridge, 2009)
The fundamental difference between these prominent women’s ideas can be noticed in their attitude towards the medical treatment and their views on people’s suffering.
Both of them were religious but Mother Teresa thought that pain would bring people closer to Jesus and she didn’t approve the pain relief. According to Mother Teresa, “it was a beautiful gift for a person to feel the sufferings of Christ”. She was criticized for a poor living conditions and the lack of doctors in her Missionaries and an approach to illness and suffering that precluded the use of many elements of modern medical care. Her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment. (Loudon,1996).
On the opposite, Florence Nightingale was a leader of professional nursery and truly cared about the sanitary conditions in the hospitals. Experience of Crimean War has deeply influenced her views. At first she believed that the high death rates were caused by poor nutrition and overworking of the soldiers. But later the official evidences that most of the soldiers at the hospital were actually killed by poor living conditions were collected by her. This conclusion effected Florence Nightingale’s career and she believed that sanitary living conditions is of great importance.
- Social cognitive theories
The founders of the social cognitive theories are Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel. This theory is interesting for its deep analysis of person’s behavior. The main concept is that people learn by watching others, with the environment, behavior, and cognition all as the chief factors in influencing development. (Santrock, 2008).
The original idea of this theory is a concept that people are ruled not only by internal psychical forces and do not react exceptionally to environment. The reason of person’s functioning should be searched within the frames of constant interaction of behavior, cognitive sphere and environment.
For example, a father’s ideas may determine the environment in which his children are raised. This may be confirmed by the character of relationship between Florence Nightingale and her father and his influence. William Edward Nightingale was a wealthy landowner. In Victorian days, women of Nightingale’s class did not attend universities and did not dream about professional careers; their main purpose was to have a family. But on the opposite to the common order, Nightingale’s father believed women should be educated, and he personally taught her Italian, Latin, Greek, philosophy, history, writing and mathematics.
Bostridge (2009) indicates that taking into account the social restrictions for women in Victorian England time, Nightingale’s achievements are considered extremely impressive.
People may change their behavior based not only on external influence, but based on their own experience and on the other people’s experience.
I presume that Florence Nightingale’s and her followers’ notable legacy may have somehow influenced Mother Teresa’s decision on helping poor and these who suffering.
- Psychoanalytical and psychosocial theories
Psychoanalysis consists of as many as 22 theoretical orientations about human mental state and development. I would like to use not the points of original psychoanalysis theory by Sigmund Freud, but influenced by him German psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory which is very close to it. Erikson broadened the scope of personality in his theory to incorporate society and culture, not just sexuality.
He accepted many of Freud’s theories, including the id, ego, and superego, and Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality. But Erikson rejected Freud’s attempt to describe personality solely on the basis of sexuality, and, unlike Freud, felt that personality continued to develop beyond five years of age. (Davis, Clifton, 1995). I absolutely agree with Erikson on this point.
Erik Erikson defined three aspects of identity:
- the ego identity (self),
- personal identity (the personal distinguished features),
- social/cultural identity (the collection of social roles a person might play)(Davis, Clifton, 1995)
According to Erikson childhood, parents and society are the main external influences on personality.
Let analyze first Mother Teresa childhood – she was raised in traditional Catholic environment and she definitely wasn’t influenced much by her family members. The main reason of her turn to the missionary work wasn’t the rebelliousness, but her religious beliefs.
Florence was also religious, but we may conclude that the basic effect on her decision to become nurse was a challenge to upper-class rules and traditional women’s roles.
In regards to the sexuality, they both were unmarried, although Florence had the admirers, and I would make a conslusion that their sexuality was purposively suppressed and sublimated to concentrate on their social lives.
- Trait theories
The trait theories’ approach differ from the other theories of personality by its concentrated attention on differences between personalities. Trait theory is focused on identifying these unique personality characteristics and their combinations.
According to Gordon Allport’s Trait Theory there are:
- Cardinal Traits that dominate an individual’s whole life and the person becomes known for these traits. (Cattell, 1965).
Florence Nightingale’s Cardinal Traits are: famous “Lady with the lamp” nickname; the status of the first professional nurse in the whole world; her prominent medical skills and experience that she has shared gladly with others.
For Mother Teresa the Cardinal Traits are: the given name “Teresa of Calcutta”; the Nobel prize received for her missionary work; faith and beautification by Catholic Church.
- Central Traits which are the general characteristics that form the basic foundations of personality.(Cattell, 1965).
For example, the general public’s opinion of Florence Nightingale is that she’s caring, professional nurse, but also a woman with a strong “man’s” character.
People consider Mother Teresa as self-sacrificing woman, very efficient in spreading of the Catholic faith all over the world, saint but also permanently doubtful about God’s existence.
- Secondary Traits may appear under specific circumstances or in certain situations and they are mostly mean the attitudes or preferences.(Cattell, 1965).
As an option of secondry trait I will compare Nightingale’s and Mother Teresa’s attitude towards women’s movement and feminism. While Teresa had conventional views, Nightingale was linked with the English feminist movement. She protested the helplessness of the women, such as Nightingale saw in her mother’s and sister’s thoughtless comfort.
Summarizing the points made by using the trait theory, we can make a conclusion that the perception of Florence Nightingale’s personality is rather solid because she wasn’t criticized as much as Mother Teresa. Her image is well established. Mother Teresa’s philosophy and implementation have been heavily criticized, for example some people said that Mother Teresa limited herself to keeping people alive and to spreading the faith rather than tackling poverty itself.
