SOURCE: "Florence Nightingale: Toward Psychohistorical Interpretation," in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. VI, No. i, Summer, 1975, pp. 23-45.

In the following essay, Allen provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of Nightingale.

Florence Nightingale's life and career pose one demanding question above all else: How did a woman in midand late Victorian England achieve such formidable power and influence in so many areas of public administration? History is in large part the story of change, and the changes effected in this "age of reform" in public and private sanitation, in nursing, in the care and provisioning of the military, in the construction of hospitals, in the mighty War Office, and in the administration of India—to name only Florence Nightingale's major preoccupations—were often due directly to her efforts. Her public life, and a good part of her private life, have long been open to the public gaze; indeed, it would...