Marilyn Monroe Voiceover

Hello, this is Emma Bain.

And I chose to do my final project for Theories of Personality on Marilyn Monroe.

So who was Marilyn Monroe before she was Marilyn Monroe.

So she was Norma Jean Mortenson.

And so she

was a Mortenson, which was

her father's maiden name.

And so she ended up

taking her mother's maiden name, which was Baker later on.

But then she switched her name to Marilyn Monroe once

she kind of got into the whole Hollywood world.

And so she was born June 1st of 1926 and she

only lived to be 36 because she died of an old overdose

in her home

um on August 4th, 1962.

And so she was a Hollywood actress and model known as the blonde, blonde bombshell.

Um She was very famous for

wearing very revealing clothes, being very confident, attractive, a very sensual

woman

who was very confident in her sexuality.

And so before her rise to fame,

she had actually brown hair freckles and she barely wore makeup.

She dressed very modestly, kind of like

country stylish.

And so, but then after she became

set on Hollywood, she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe dyed her hair,

platinum blonde

and started wearing a lot of makeup. And so she added her famous mole in her

um

bottom of her right cheek.

And then she began wearing very revealing

clothing and Jewy that accentuated her figure.

And so

she

um what I found most fascinating was

just how her rise to fame really affected her mental health

and how we kind of have an account

of yet another person who was

um just really

affected by

the normalization of just kind of suppressing

these feelings you were having and um not being able

to deal with being in the spotlight like she was

and also the normalization of like doing drugs

and alcohol consumption and stuff like that.

And so she was in and out of many marriages throughout her years as an actress,

which I find very interesting.

Um

just because of her upbringing

and her mother had histories of needing and spending time in psychiatric care,

which I also found very interesting.

Um And I wonder if that has a genetic role in

um Marilyn's mental health issues.

And um I personally wanted to know how she felt

when she was referred to as a sex symbol.

I wanted to know her thoughts on that.

So life summary she was in and out of foster care. She

kind of settled on one good family. They were very religious

and she stayed with them for, I think

6 to 8 years.

But then her mother would kind of come in and out of her life and be like, oh,

let's go do this.

And then she'd never show up and she was very inconsistent and very

um uninvolved

and like, like it says, sporadically visiting.

And so her mother had a friend named Grace who planned to adopt Norma.

But um Norma did end up in an orphanage after Grace's husband,

um,

sexually assaulted her as a child.

And so that was a lot. And then she was in an orphanage and then

she was back with her mother and then she was

kind of with Grace and it was just very chaotic.

And so she ended up marrying

at 16, her first marriage tw 20 year old and she divorced in 1946 at age 20.

And so from 1950 to 1955 she started making movies, gaining attention,

getting more into the Hollywood scene.

And then she ended up marrying Joe DiMaggio in 1954.

But they were sadly divorced after nine months.

Um amid rumors that he was abusing her.

And so then she ended up marrying Arthur Miller in 1956

and they stayed together for five years.

And then in 1962

uh she bought her home making it the 40th place she had ever lived,

which is very crazy.

Just all the displacement that she experienced

throughout her life is very traumatic.

Um

And

so then

in the later years of her life, she started struggling with the pressures of stardom

and she was experiencing a lot of panic attacks

and she was seeking out psych psychiatric care.

She actually went to a facility

um for a couple of weeks.

And so then she stopped showing up

to rehearsals filming screenwriting stuff like that.

And she ended up being fired from her final film that she was

um pursuing.

But then, um sadly on August 5th,

in 1962 she was found dead um face down on her bed in her home

in I believe, Los Angeles from a drug overdose,

which is very unfortunate.

And so her personality traits,

she was a 1950 sex symbol. She gained fame for her glamorous and sensuous image.

Um

despite her pub public face, she had a lot of personal struggles,

um a lot of chaos that happened in her childhood,

a lot of instability, hard time in relationships, stuff like that.

And

um she was an actress, she was a singer

and

um she was very charming, very self assured, very confident in public. And she

gained the

the love of both men and women for those qualities.

Um And she symbolized both femininity and beauty

um in private, she again faced many mental health concerns,

um struggled in her relationships and she also had substance abuse problems.

Um

just things that

were behind the scenes that people didn't really see.

And so sh her rise to fame was because of some certain movies,

some like it Hot Gentlemen prefer blondes and the seven year itch.

And so she became a Hollywood star as a result to those performances.

And so her marriages were very glamorous,

very fast, very, just

thrown into these kind of situations with these men.

And so

because of that, they attracted a great deal of public attention.

And so throughout her life, she struggled with

mental health problems um which

ultimately resulted in depression and anxiety and then her suicide.

So my theories

um or that in her phallic stage,

um her thoughts on intimacy and relationships were definitely impacted

um

by tensions um that were brought off one by the sexual

advances of Grace's husband that she experienced as a young child.

And then also um not really having

any family

to really base

intimacy and relationships off of

and having no real role models for stuff like that.

And so then her um impulse and pleasure seeking character

um definitely contributed to her quest of fla fame, pleasure and relationships

and her ego served as a bridge between

her eye and reality seen by her skills in

navigating the complexities of Hollywood in her relationships.

And so then her super ego

um

which was like her self esteem issues and mental health

issues resulted in the social pressures that she faced,

particularly in those related to her physical attraction, her body,

her sensuality, stuff like that.

And so my theories continued

um

were that her attachment style definitely was shaped by her early

experiences being uprooted and receiving

that inconsistent care and devotion from

just all these different people in her life

and never really having anybody stable and supportive,

um

unreliable and consistent people. And so her

just kind of whirlwind of marriages,

definitely indicated that she had

trouble building and maintaining solid relationships

and kind of seeking out the correct behavior and

qualities for someone you get into a relationship with since she

didn't have any real bonds or relationships throughout her childhood.

And so her background of being moved around in between homes, neglected,

sexually abused were definitely indicators of her insecure attachment style.

So her early relationships

and instability

definitely worsened her fear of being abandoned,

which might have been why she was relying on

sort of her fans for um

to support and maybe recognition, but also in her marriages and stuff like that.

And so in the articles that I chose,

um they talked a lot about personality disorders,

narcissistic personality disorder and bipolar were all speculated

disorders that she possibly could have had.

So my first article

um is an analysis into whether she had narcissistic

tendencies based on her childhood experiences and sexual trauma

and being so uprooted,

um

which were highlighted by her beauty when she fell into fame

and just how much admiration and praise she was receiving.

Um

and then

having those feelings of self doubt, the depression, the anxiety kind of seep in,

um, it is wondered that

if she had narcissistic personality disorder, if that,

um,

was really

a factor into why she, um, committed suicide.

And so, um, the article also looks into,

um,

her damaged relationship with her mother and

how that really affected her during adulthood

in her relationships.

And then the article indicates that it was

possible because based on her nervous breakdowns,

like I just said that she had narcissistic

personality disorder or a different personality disorder.

Um And then the second article

um is an analysis of her suicidal traits and tendencies through verbal language,

which I thought was really interesting.

So they did a analysis

conducted data on her speech um

throughout her life and then up until she died.

And so,

um there was a decrease in longer words right before her death

and also a decrease in negative emotional words.

Um But then at the same time, there was an increase in personal pronouns.

So,

um the article talked about how it could have been a sign of emotional suppression

and he

uh heightened focus on her own thoughts and feelings and

experiences during a time where she was very critical,

very overwhelmed, very um

self involved in ways like that because she had so much

anxiety and she was having those panic attacks and experiencing such

depression and substance abuse and stuff like that.

And so while there was also a decrease in the longer words,

which can be associated again with the depressive symptoms.

And so then article three

um

dove more into

the mental health aspect of being in fame and

experiencing um potentially

um bipolar disorder

um for her case um brought about by again, chaotic early life and career

um

chaos and just the whirlwind that her life really was in such a short amount of time.

And so it goes into a lot about her coping

mechanisms um which were drugs that it is amphetamines,

opiates and alcohol.

Um which just,

it shows a lot about

the pressure of the entertainment industry to be the best

and fulfill um

the hopes of everybody who's really rooting for you.

Um And so it highlighted the difficulties that people do continue to experience

um regarding mental health problems and sexual abuse and drug misuse.

Um

And so it really kind of

dove deep on

like her fragile relationships and how

she kind of covered that up by her rise to fame and how she kind of fabricated this

um different person out of herself and kind of left

that other life behind.

And so the conclusion,

um so

because of her

chaotic life and upbringing and her really fast rise to fame,

um It raised a lot of questions regarding possible personality disorders,

maybe bipolar.

And so her problems with mental health um

were definitely

accentuated um

in her early years,

which were characterized by a lot of moves and tense relationships in her life.

And also that sexual abuse that she experienced.

And so she had a lot of difficulties as a result to um

her rise to fame.

And um she was praised for both her beauty and sexuality

um which brought along even more problems. And so these included difficulties um

with her marriages and fame

and then just

the toll that it really took on her life

and how she didn't really have any support or anybody to turn to,

to talk about that again because it just, it wasn't normalized and it was more

normalized to kind of keep that to yourself.

Um especially as a woman and especially as this person that everybody looked up to,

she couldn't really speak out about stuff like that.

Um

And so her personality problems

um because of her life and her

early childhood provide a psychological view through which

you can see her complicated journey and

its long lasting consequences on her thoughts,

relationships and ultimately her life

and yeah,

that's all.

Thanks. Bye bye.

Marilyn Monroe Voiceover

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