Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton The Beginning
Posted: Monday, February 22, 2010
by Renee Kimberly Root
Ring of Fire Evangelistic Ministry
Hillary Diane Rodham was born on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in Park Ridge, Illinois by her parents, Hugh and Dorothy Rodham. Park Ridge, Illinois, is a suburb located 15 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. Hugh Rodham was a prosperous fabric store owner. He was the father of Hillary and two sons, Hugh Jr. and Anthony. Hillary was the older sister since Hugh Jr. was born in 1950 and Anthony was born in 1954.
Hillary was a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff in the spring of 1974. This inquiry panel advised the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal. President Nixon resigned in August, and Hillary became a member of the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville. Bill Clinton was teaching there; he was her boyfriend and Yale school classmate. She married Bill on October 11, 1975. The wedding took place at their home in Fayetteville. Clinton secretly purchased a small home that Hillary had commented she liked. So, after the acceptance of the marriage proposal, he revealed to her about the purchase of the house. Hillary had her only child, Chelsea Victoria, on February 27, 1980.
Hillary worked on Jimmy Carter's successful presidential campaign in 1976, and Bill was elected Attorney General of Arkansas. She was the governor's wife during the period from 1979 to 1990. In 1977 Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, and then was appointed to the position of part-time chairman of the legal services corporation by President Carter. During her years as first lady of Arkansas, she chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, co-founded the Arkansas advocates for children and families, and served on the boards of the Arkansas children's hospital, legal services, the children's defense fund and Wal-Mart. Hillary was named one of the 100 most powerful lawyers in America by the National Law Journal. In the 1992 campaign for President by her husband, she became a dynamic and valued partner of her husband. She was named to head the Task Force on National Health Reform in 1993 by her husband, President Bill Clinton. This commission produced a plan that was complicated and never made it to the floor of either house and was abandoned in September 1994. It was during this time that Bill and Hillary Clinton put money into the Whitewater real estate project. The Morgan Guaranty Savings & Loan, which was the project's bank, failed, and this cost the federal government $73 million. So Whitewater was the subject of congressional hearings and an independent counsel investigation.
In 1998 Hillary was faced with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Hillary supported her husband publicly but privately gave consideration to leaving her marriage. Her husband was impeached, but because the U.S. Senate did not convict him, he remained in office. Hillary sought the U.S. Senate seat from New York held by Daniel Patrick Moynehan. He retired after four terms. Hillary won the election by defeating Republican Rick Lazio. The margin of victory was 55% to 43%. She was the first wife of a President to seek and win public office and the first woman to be elected to the Senate from New York. She was re-elected in 2006. Then, in 2007 Hillary announced she would be the first woman to run for President. She did not win the nomination in the 2008 Democratic primaries and conceded defeat to Barack Obama. Obama was elected, and he nominated Hillary to be Secretary of State in his 2009 Cabinet. She was officially given approval by the Senate on January 21, 2009.
"The central idea of the psychoanalytic perspective is the unconscious. Simply put, this concept says that people are not aware of the most important determinants of their behavior" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 23). There are many variations in psychoanalysts' theory, but they share these characteristics assumptions: personality is influenced strongly by unconscious determinants, the unconscious is dynamic or motivational and conflicts with different aspects of the unconscious and with consciousness, and the origin of the unconscious is in the early experiences. So, in the case of Hillary Clinton, I believe her biography shows that she had high goals of success and that she had a positive role model from her father, a successful businessman. She also stood by her man during the scandal, I believe, because of the role model of her parents and for political reasons. She was a strong person to deal with the humiliation of finding out her husband cheated on her and then to stand by his side during the impeachment hearings. "For Freud, childhood experiences shapes personality. A strong ego, capable of umpiring the unconscious, must develop gradually, protected from psychic trauma and supported by nuturant and guiding parents in areas it can master" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 26). The neo-analytic theory is an approach to personality psychology that is interested in the ego, which is the individual's sense of self as the personality core. In this theory the person doesn't have a free will in making choices and their destiny is set. In the case of Hillary I think her personality was set because she was determined to succeed and became inspired for service by Martin Luther King's speech.
The psychoanalytic central idea is the unconscious. "Simply put, this concept says that people are not aware of the most important determinants of their behavior. Self-understanding is quite limited and often incorrect" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 23). So, personality is influenced by determinants that are unconscious. The unconscious is motivational and conflicts with other aspects of the unconscious and with consciousness. Early experience is where the unconscious originates. "Various psychoanalytic theories describe the unconscious differently. Sigmund Freud proposed that the unconscious consists of sexual and aggressive wishes that are unacceptable to the conscious personality. For Carl Jung, the unconscious is not primarily sexual; it consists of more general motivations, which have spiritual content" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 23). Klein and Sullivan described the unconscious as consisting of primitive concepts about self and relationships with other people. This is shown as the first other baby encounters.
The psychoanalytic perspective on personality is the belief that much of human behavior can be explained in the hidden part of the unconscious and the result is how the person negotiates desires that are deep-rooted and instincts that conflict. The overlap with the learning theory is that the early years of development make a critical contribution to the adult psyche, which depends on how various psychosexual stages are resolved. The neo-analytic theory places emphasis on self as it struggles to cope with emotions. The self drives on the inside and what others demand on the outside. The emphasis of this theory is the importance of the positive and goal-oriented nature of humanity. The neo-analytic theory acknowledges individuals' impact, the impact on society and the culture on personality. It attempts to give an explanation to the structure of the healthy and unhealthy psyche and gives the assumption development continues throughout the individual's life cycle. The psychoanalytic theory has the drawback of no scientific evidence. The drawbacks of the neo-analytic are that it is not concerned with biology and personality structures that are fixed, difficult to test empirically, may consist of a mix of different ideas from different traditions, and relies on abstract or vague concepts. "Erickson based his understanding of development on the epigenetic principle that anything that grows has a ground plan, and that out of this ground plan the parts arise, each part having its time of special ascendancy, until all parts have to form a functioning whole" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 128). This applies to physical development of fetuses before birth and psychological development of people throughout life. So, for a person to develop a healthy ego, several parts must develop at the same time. These parts are the ego strengths, and Erikson identified them in stages, and in each stage in development there is a focus on that stage. The person experiences a crisis at each stage, which is resolved in the context of society. The eight stages are trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, intuitive versus guilt, industry versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus identity confusion, intimacy versus isolation, generatively versus stagnation, and integrity versus despair. The ninth stage is gerotranscendence. So, in each stage, culture influences development and individuals influence culture through the way they develop at each stage and this is emphasized through their identity development. "Erickson claimed that biological factors strongly influence sex differences and he supported his point with observations of children's play structures" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 147). The drawback to this theory is that Erickson did not separate his values from his theory. The advantages of this theory are that it did take into account that psychological processes are affected by culture and gender differences are dependent upon cultural context and most likely will not be universal. Gordon Allport focused on these themes: personality consistency, social influences, and the concept of self and the interaction of personality with social influence in determining behavior. Personality is defined as "the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to the environment" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 259). The trait is the primary unit of personality and can be studied as individual traits or common traits. The evidence of traits comes from these sources: language behavior, document and questionnaires. He emphasized that subject matter should take priority over methodological issues. Cardinal traits have persuasive influences and occur in only a few people. Central traits have broad influences and everyone has them. Some people have secondary traits that influence a low number of behaviors. Traits become functionally autonomous from their developmental origins and so the study of personality should focus on contemporaneous issues. The characteristics of Allport's theory of a healthy mature adult were extension of the sense of self, warm human interactions, emotional security, realistic perceptions, self objectification, and a unifying philosophy of life. "Personality development, the development of the unifying proprium, proceeds through stages: bodily sense, self-identity, ego-enhancement, ego-extensions, self-image, rational agent, appropriate striving and the self as knower" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 260). I think the advantage of this theory is the definition of a healthy adult and the drawback would be his theory on prejudice. "Allport studied prejudice, which he said was more frequent among extrinsically religious individuals and less frequent among intrinsically religious individuals" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 260).
The cognitive social learning perspective focuses on the cognition that people learn in experiences of life. This cognition determines life choices such as striving or giving up. Learning is the way personality develops. Behaviors are learned and then we learn what to expect while behaving a certain way. In Bandura's theory one important way to learn is by observing models of behavior. Behavior is also learned by the way people react to our behavior.
Bandura and Mischel did not list traits; they described the cognitive constructs of a person by categories that were detailed. These include what a person believes they can or cannot accomplish and expectations about what would be reinforced. "Mischel and Bandura use the term self-efficacy in a particular domain of behavior, performance will be limited" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 373). So, a behavior does not ensure a certain behavior will occur. It also must be expected to lead to a desired outcome. The advantage of this theory is that our beliefs determine behavior. The drawback is what a person believes about themselves and the expectations as a result of the behavior are things that cannot be grasped or will give a definition of personality.
The theory proposed by Carl Rogers was "a theory in which the person actively seeks higher development, motivated by the actualizing tendency rather than being passively determined by external forces" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 426). The drawback to this theory was that he focused on personality change instead of development or structure of personality. The advantage to this theory is the concept such as free will and life's meaning should not be ruled out of the discipline that has a goal to study human nature.
A personality test's reliability is measured by seeing whether subparts or equivalent parts of a test yield the same results. In order to measure a person's personality, I would use the self-report tests or Q-sort tests. The examples of the self-report tests are Minnesota Mutiphasic Personality Inventory, Affective Communication Test, Million Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, NEO-PI, Personality Research Form and Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Examples of the Q-sort tests are self-concept, self-esteem, family therapeutic and generativity. The advantages of the self-report tests are they are straightforward to standardize, easy to give, reliable, and give a good view of self. The drawbacks are that they are limited in richness, can be faked easily and depend on self-knowledge. The advantages of the Q-sort are the respondent is more involved than with questionnaires, will give ranking of characteristics and be used to rate targets differently. The drawbacks are that a person can fake answers and depends on a person's knowledge of self. These are the two tests I would use as a counselor. Here are some other testing options: ratings by others, biological, behavioral observations, interviews, expressive behavior, document analysis, projective tests, demographics and lifestyle. The ratings by others give an unbiased perspective by the self-reports of the person and will clearly show visible traits. This method may be used to rate children but can be biased because of the extent that raters lack knowledge. The biological test may reveal a person's reaction without depending on self-report or judgment of the rater, but they can be difficult and expensive to use. There is not always a simple pattern in the relation between biological substrates and complex behavior patterns. Behavioral observations will capture what a person does, but interpretation can be hard to determine as personality and may not represent the whole range of a person's behavior. Interviews may probe deeply, and follow-up questions are a possibility with the benefit of flexibility. However, there can be bias by the interviewer or person, and this type of test is expensive and time-consuming. Expressive behavior will capture the actual unique behavioral style which includes subtleties and emotions. These can be difficult to capture, code and interpret. Document analysis would be used to assess a person across time, may be full of details and objective, and can be used if a person is dead, but the drawbacks would be it would show only certain aspects of a person and may not show complete honesty and provide information for important times or events. Projective tests go below the surface and touch areas that the person may not be able to self-report; it may give insight for future study. The drawbacks are problems of reliability and validity. Demographics and lifestyle show the framework and grouping of functions that are individual, such as age, gender, culture, and occupation. The test itself can give little information about the person as an individual. I would use the test-retest reliability factor to make sure the test I chose to use was reliable and accurate. The test results should give a similar score if retested at a later time. So, "when internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability are high, we know we are measuring something real, we have a reliable personality" (Cloninger, Allen, Friedman, & Schustack, 2008, p. 474).
References
Cloninger, S., Allen, B., Friedman, H., & Schustack, M. (2008, 2004, 2000, 1996). Theories of personality: Understanding persons. In Past and present views on personality. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing.
Hillary Clinton Biography. Retrieved from http//www.biography.com/articles/Hillary-Clinton-9251306
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