- Title
- Psychobiographical study of Daisy De Melker
- Creator
- Moodley, Kerisha
- Subject
- Psychobiographical study
- Subject
- Antisocial
- Subject
- Personality dynamics
- Date Issued
- 2023-12
- Date
- 2023-12
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/62913
- Identifier
- vital:73067
- Description
- Daisy Louisa C. de Melker, born on 1 June 1886, was a qualified nurse who is famously known to have poisoned two husbands with strychnine in order to receive life insurance money while living in Turffontein, Johannesburg. Later on, she poisoned her only son with arsenic for reasons which are still unclear, and he passed away soon after. She is notoriously known in history to be the second woman to have been hanged in South Africa due to receiving the death penalty. The primary aim of the study is to explore the life of de Melker to gain an understanding of her personality development, with the aim of acquiring insight into the motivation behind her behaviour. The secondary aim includes exploring apparent Cluster B personality traits. The study is exploratory-descriptive in nature and the subject was chosen through purposive sampling. The study uses a qualitative, psycho-biographical, single-case research design to study De Melker, in order to explore and describe the personality development of her from the theoretical perspectives of Kernberg’s Object Relations Theory. This specific theory was chosen as it allowed the researcher to explore Daisy de Melker’s early childhood and upbringing that impacted the formation of ‘internal representations’ of herself and other people. The theory suggests that when there is a lack of integration of object relations, which is made up of internal and external representations, it may result in the development of a personality disorder, as it places a focus on relationships being more crucial to personality development than individual drives and abilities. Data was collected by triangulating multiple sources of information. Miles and Huberman’s (1994) strategy were used to analyse the data according to three steps, which include data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. The significance of doing a psychobiography study lies in merging of personality psychology and historical evidence which represents a growing field in the realm of biography and provides insight into personality development through a theoretical framework.
- Description
- Thesis (Ma) -- Faculty of Health Science. 2023
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (123 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Health Science
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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Collections
NMU School of Clinical Care Sciences
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Moodley, K.pdf | 5 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |