Psychology: Life and Marilyn Monroe Biography

When you hear the name Marilyn Monroe you probably picture the sexually enticing, curvy, sex-goddess of the 1950’s. She grabbed our attention with her playful and feminine magnetism. “She dominated the age of movie stars to become, without question, the most famous woman of the 20th century. ” (http://www. marilynmonroe. com/about/bio. html). Although most people don’t know that Marilyn Monroe was not always this happy and fortunate person. Marilyn Monroe’s life was filled with hardships and struggles that she overcame to be this powerful woman she is remembered as today.

I believe that Structual-Organisimic Perspective; psychodynamic theory, psychosocial theory, and piagetian theory, greatly explains why Marilyn Monroe turned out to be the woman she is so fondly remembered as. Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Baker. Her childhood was filled with poverty, sexual abuse, and the constant moving in and out of orphanages and foster homes. She did not have a strong emotional relationship with either of her parents.

According to Erikson’s psychosocial theory, Marilyn Monroe’s infancy stage was more than likely affected by the de-attachment from her parents.

This is the reason why Monroe would later in life have a harder time trusting others around her because she never built that strong trust between her and her parents. Monroe suffered many emotional problems as an adult do to the fact that she never had a real stable childhood. This also led to her feelings of being unwanted as a child. Monroe’s mother was determined incapable of raising Monroe due to depression and psychological problems and was put into her first foster home.

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“Norma Jeane spent most of her childhood in and out of orphanages and foster homes. ” (http://www. arilynmonroe. com/about/bio. html) According to the contemporary developmental psychology portion of the psychodynamic theory, Monroe’s lack of emotional attachment early on in her life, especially with the mother, would have a major affect on how she developed her relationships later in her adult life. Monroe looked for security and affection in her adult relationships because of the lack of relationship she had with her mother. “She tried to replace the father, the mother, the family she never really had, through her marriages and by attaching herself to the families of others. (http://www. marilyncollector. com/legend/biography. html) Monroe married her fist husband at the age of sixteen and according to him Monroe was a “sweet, generous and religious girl and she liked to be cuddled. ” (http://www. marilynmonroe. com/about/bio. html). Monroe’s desire to be cuddled all the time is the result of the lack of relationship she had with her mother and the lack of security she was feeling from not having a present mother. The lack of emotional attachment from her mother could also be the reason why Monroe displayed herself as a sexual goddess.

She was trying to fulfill that void in her life through sex. Monroe’s values were greatly influenced by the society and the environment around her. Because of the time that she spent in orphanages she didn’t have any real family values to follow. She had to make up her own values as she grew and developed into an adult. The lack of having any real family values to follow and develop off of according to psychosocial theory would greatly affect Monroe’s ability to move through the adolescent stage successfully.

This is the result of why Monroe had identity issues later on in her adult life because she did not have a good foundation to build on from her adolescent stages of life. She would have a harder time developing a sense of self if she did not have any family values to help her develop her own sense of morals and values. I also believe that the act of Monroe changing her name is also an indicator of possibly having identity issues with herself. Piagetian Theory greatly explains how Marilyn Monroe processed information throughout her adolescent and adult life.

According to this theory a child’s understanding of the world will change in an organized way over the course of their development. I feel that Monroe justified her actions through the process of accommodation. This is where the child modifies their existing knowledge in response to the new input from their environment. A great example that Monroe displays this type of information-processing is her first marriage. She married Jimmy Dougherty when she was only sixteen years old. I believe that she justified this marriage as acceptable because she was faced with the option of either returning to an orphanage or get arried. She was looking to fulfill the empty void of affection that she was not getting from a family and filled it with the marriage to Dougherty. I feel she was adapting to this new problem set in front of her by adapting to this new problem with existing knowledge. Marilyn Monroe’s ability to communicate with people did happen at a very young age. But she also had a small stutter that she had to overcome as a child. Monroe was faced with so many hardships as a child, the only way she knew how to get what she needed or wanted was through communication.

Freud’s psychodynamic theory, he emphasis on how early experiences, especially in the first six years of the child’s life, can greatly influence certain developments in their adult life. Because Marilyn Monroe had to learn how to use the power of language so early in her childhood, I feel it helped her excel and succeed much easier in her adult career. She learned how to “negotiate” her way to stardom. She even changed her name to move her career forward. Marilyn Monroe was not particularly considered an overly “intelligent” child.

But later on in her high school years she was elected secretary of her English class. According to the Piagetian theory the child is actively seeking new information and applying it to their day to day life. It becomes most apparent in their school years where they tend to rely more on logic and they have more of an ability to reason abstract ideas. I feel that Marilyn Monroe’s true intelligence came out in her later adult years. She exhibited a great knowledge of business when it came to getting the movie roles that she wanted.

I think this ability developed as a child when she was going through the cognitive development stage and learned how to logically think things through. She went after everything that she desired and did it with much intelligence because she obtained a great name among the movie producers. She was first portrayed as the “dumb blonde” and soon she got tired of this. She aspired to be an actress of more serious roles and put herself through a high class acting school to help her attain that goal. She even set higher paying standards for actors and actresses to come. Marilyn Monroe had many sexuality issues.

She was subjected to sexual abuse as a child and I think that this plays a role in Monroe’s comfortable attitude towards sexual behavior and the flaunting of her body. Her most famous pose was that of her standing over a sub-way grate while blowing air flew up her dress and she seductively struck a pose while trying to push the dress back down. I think this goes more along with Freud’s psychodynamic theory. This has to do with the latency stage of the child’s life. The child begins to learn the differences of sexuality and starts to discover certain urges of the body.

I also feel that because Monroe was subjected to sexual experiences early on in life, this makes her more prone to display sexual behavior and be okay with it. When she was married to Joe DiMaggio, he had a difficult time “understanding the need to flaunt her body. ” I also think that this was part of Marilyn’s way of getting the attention that she so craved. Marilyn Monroe led a very interesting life. It was filled with movies, Hollywood parties and flashy cars. She was a sexually confident, business smart, seductive goddess. She was known as one of the most famous woman of the 1950’s.

But there was more to Marilyn Monroe than she led on to be. She had a very hard life and she tried to hide the effects of it from the world. But every action and every behavior she made was due to her childhood. Her hardships that she faced as a child shaped the woman she became in her adult life. Work Cited Google ads. “The Legend Of Marilyn Monroe. ” Biography of Marilyn Monroe. 25 Mar. 2009 . CMG World Wide. “Marilyn Monroe. ” Marilyn Monroe Biography. Jan. -Feb. 2006. 25 Mar. 2009 . True History, Bio. “Marilyn Monroe. ” Marilyn Monroe Biography. Summer 2007. A&E Television. 25 Mar. 2009 .