Marilyn Monroe Personality

Marilyn Monroe was the iconic Hollywood star: she encompassed both a childlike innocence, as well as a sensuality and promiscuity that had men and women both checking their blood pressure. However, many people do not know the events leading up to her alleged suicide aside from her appearances on the big screen and in photoshoots. Her childhood and family history led to many of the problems she dealt with in her adult life, which was also far from uneventful. Her outward personality was charismatic and enticing, though she often felt incomplete and miserable. She was both praised and ridiculed for her sexual exploits and other actions, which further confounded her. She detached from her personal reality and instead conformed to what others expected her to be, complying to their desires to receive affection. She kept her distance from people, even those whom she desired to connect with. A short biographical account is required to fully understand her personality development, after which we will apply a couple theories to her personality: Karen Horney’s theory and Erik Erikson’s theory, specifically his psychosocial stages of development.

Marilyn Monroe was born as Norma Jeane Mortensen on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Gladys Monroe Baker Mortenson, was an unmarried film cutter. Her father has never been positively identified (Henriksen). Her mother was psychologically unstable, and within two weeks of her birth she was placed into the foster care system. Her mother was eventually institutionalized. During her childhood she suffered mental, physical, and sexual abuse. At 16 years old, she married her first husband James Dougherty. This marriage compelled her to drop out of high school, and while James served i...

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...tage that Marilyn was “allowed” to go through was the seventh stage of generativity versus stagnation. This stage is evident in Marilyn’s life through her desire to have a child. Generativity, in the sense of this stage, is the ability to be productive and creative in life and especially in the actions that are carried out that ensure the maintenance and enhancement of the culture for the generations to come. Marilyn desired to be generative and have a child of her own, but she could not. This caused her to become stagnant, and she did not show any type of outreach as a person other than her entertainment to the public. In most cases, she was quite selfish, though it may have been that she didn’t feel like she had much to give in the first place (Howard & Shustack, 2009). Aside from her extensive fame, she found no meaning in her life and gave very little to others.