The Case Files: Marilyn Monroe | The Pursuit of Sassiness

Right before I took my little staycation, a friend pointed out something quite obvious to me about The Case Files posts. I hadn?t written about Marilyn Monroe yet! Well, the time has come to examine someone who has always fascinated me, as I?m sure she has for many of you.

I?m not going to give you a biography of Marilyn, because that?s been done at least 21 times according to her Wikipedia page. What I am going to do is highlight some stuff that I think should be fleshed out because it?s well-known Monroe had mental health issues, but I found little information about her mental health besides brief mentions related to her purported drug use and rocky relationships and affairs. I will touch on some issues that I believe led up to her untimely death and explain her likely addiction and mental instability.

Family

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortensen Baker on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles. From the start, it seems Marilyn was in for a bumpy ride. She was born illegitimately to her mother, Gladys Baker. There are several different reports about Monroe?s father, but suffice to say whomever is was, he was not interested in claiming parentage of the future starlet. Gladys became mentally unstable shortly after Marilyn?s birth and was institutionalized for paranoid schizophrenia. Marilyn?s grandmother had also been placed in the same psychiatric hospital years earlier.

Marilyn & mom at the beach

She was placed in her first foster home by her own mother until she was seven. Her mother showed up and attempted to reclaim her daughter and when Monroe?s foster family refused, her mother locked herself in the house and emerged with Marilyn stuffed in her foster father?s military duffel bag. Marilyn?s foster mother got her out of the bag and dragged her back into the house. Months later, Marilyn?s mother bought a house and she went to live with her until her mother continued to deteriorate mentally ?screaming and laughing,? until she was removed and re-institutionalized.

From this point on, Marilyn ricocheted in and out of foster care and the care of her mother?s best friend. She was sexually assaulted on several different occasions by the men and boys she lived with. She finally released herself from foster care when she married one of her neighbors, James Dougherty at the age of 16 (he was 21).

Relationships

Marilyn was married three times. The first marriage to Dougherty was already mentioned. Marilyn said she was bored and Dougherty said stardom lured her away. The takeaway is that Marilyn?s behavior was already recorded as being unstable ? she tried to commit suicide once in the relationship and threatened (according to Dougherty) to jump off the Santa Monica Pier. By 18, she had already had two suicide attempts. In her autobiography she stated the following:

?My marriage didn?t make me sad, but it didn?t make me happy either. My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn?t because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I was dying of boredom.?

Next on the list was Joe DiMaggio, who was arguably the most significant relationship of Marilyn?s life. They had a volatile relationship from all accounts, considering the first time they divorced was nine months after their elopement on Marilyn?s grounds that she had suffered mental cruelty from DiMaggio. They rekindled their relationship after her marriage to Arthur Miller ended and Monroe was admitted to a psychiatric clinic, where Joe basically rescued her. From there, she continued to deteriorate and DiMaggio became increasingly concerned for her well-being and the people she was involved with. He quit his job and proposed marriage to her on August 1, 1962. She was found dead on August 5. DiMaggio claimed her body and had roses delivered to her crypt three times a week for 20 years.

After her first go-around with DiMaggio, she married playwright Arthur Miller. This was during McCarthyism and Miller was accused of being a communist. Marilyn stuck by his side, converted to Judaism, and lived a relatively calm existence with Miller, until their marriage dissolved after 5 years of marriage. It?s speculated Marilyn had an affair with her Some Like It Hot co-star Tony Curtis during the marriage and became pregnant (and had a miscarriage).

Of course, there have been several rumors and speculation over the years about her relations with John and Robert Kennedy, along with a host of other men she co-starred with over the years. She also dated a Hollywood agent named Johnny Hyde who was responsible for much of her early stardom. Hyde died at age 55 while dating Marilyn, which precipitated her third suicide attempt.

Psychoanalysis

Marilyn Monroe was a student of herself and was under the care of psychiatric treatment for the bulk of her life. A notorious perfectionist, she displayed behaviors over the course of her life that indicated a severe self-loathing. She was also incredibly introspective based on some of her journal writings released in the past few years. She was also aware she had many demons and regularly wondered how good it was for her to sit and stew over what was going on inside her own head.

?For someone like me its wrong to go through thorough self analisis?I do it enough in thought generalities enough.

Its not to much fun to know yourself to well or think you do?everyone needs a little conciet to carry them through & past the falls.?

Add onto that a known family history of mental illness and Marilyn was terrified she was going crazy for the majority of her life. Much of her time spent in psychoanalysis was likely intended to stave off some of what she felt was an inevitable loss of self-control.

The Case File

Part of Marilyn Monroe?s beauty was its tragedy. There?s something incredibly romantic about someone so beautiful both internally and externally, who just doesn?t see what everyone else sees. Unfortunately, we are usually a product of the way we are raised and the messages we receive from our caregivers. Marilyn learned from an early age she wasn?t worth keeping. Even at her birth, she was abandoned by her father ? who still remains a mystery. Shortly after that, her mother left her in unsteady hands. She was tossed through the system and the only time she was deemed ?worth keeping? was because she had been found attractive by her caretakers and sexually abused. Marilyn learned she had nothing to give the world except her body, something she had little control over.

From her journal entries and her professed feelings about her relationships, she also had the irrational belief that others were responsible for making her feel a certain way. This is common in people who are depressed because they feel they truly have no control over their emotions. Marilyn often projected her own issues on her partners, one of them being a fear of infidelity, of which her own is well-documented. Many of Monroe?s extramarital affairs are paralleled with her reported feelings of abandonment in her relationships. It?s clear she had an incredibly externalized locus of control.

For each suicide attempt, Monroe had a trigger. These triggers were all hits to her self-worth. Since Monroe was incapable of loving herself and was convinced there was something wrong with her mind, she relied on the affirmations of others (likely the reason she sought a career in the public eye, she thought a career in film would heal her need to be adored and deemed lovable) to dictate her worthiness. When the foundation on which she relied on this feedback cracked, she did as well. Whenever we rely on others wholeheartedly for our worth, it is always an unsteady foundation because the only thing we can truly change and control is how we feel about ourselves.

It?s no surprise Marilyn had problems with substances, or at least a heavy reliance on sleeping pills. She had trauma in her background (which made it difficult for her to sleep) and from what we know about addiction, we use substances to distract us from emotional pain, which Monroe certainly was not short on.

Lastly, it?s unfortunate that Marilyn Monroe?s mental state was so poorly handled over the course of her lifetime. It?s well-known that psychoanalysis and many of the therapeutic interventions used during her time were ill-conceived and implemented. Being an exceptional therapist is much like being and exceptional doctor (or actor, or poet, or baseball player, etc). Part of it is knowledge and education and part of it is that innate ?thing? some of us have. Many of the therapists Marilyn saw may have had the ?thing? but there was so little education and knowledge in the field of psychology and psychotherapy at that time. When someone is that fragile, they can be swayed easily and it seems like she was pushed around for a long time with little awareness of how horribly she was processing everything.

In the end, she was a lovely person and it?s a shame she didn?t know it herself.

Sources (1, 2, 3, 4)

My ACA Post for the week: There?s a Reason Why We Have Clich?s

About Jen!

Hi, I'm Jen. I'm a mental health counselor residing in the beautiful and humid state of Florida. I strongly believe in the mind-body connection as the cornerstone of my professional ideology, along with the healing possibilities of puppies, a good glass of red wine, the smell of a new book, and the importance of travel. I'm moving to Seattle in August 2012 after I finish my internship. I'm just really excited about my life and what I get to do for a living. I hope you're excited to read about it. Seriously, get excited. Right now.

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