|
Foreward
|
i |
|
Preface - click
to view -
|
iv |
|
Prologue
|
vii |
| 1. |
Living
in the Dead Zone |
2 |
| 2. |
Popular
Accounts and Misconceptions |
19 |
| 3. |
Janis
Joplin - A Woman Left Lonely |
33 |
| 4. |
Reflections
on Destiny : Janis in Therapy |
58 |
| 5. |
Jim
Morrison - Shaman, Poet, Lizard King |
138 |
| 6. |
Reflections
on Destiny : Jim in Therapy |
166 |
| 7. |
Epilogue |
247 |
|
Appendix I : DSM-IV Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder |
|
Appendix II : DSMV-IV Criteria for Major Depressive Disorder |
|
Bibliography |
Preface
No two people
captured the imagination and emotions of the "sixties"
generation more than Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Their dramatic
stories have been told in numerous biographies, in film, and in their
music. They entered a social arena during a decade characterized by
radical social movements, widespread rebellion, and popular unrest. The
distant but deadly southeast Asian war and the historic struggle of
civil rights groups afforded Janis and Jim the opportunity to generate
extraordinary psychedelic sonatas aimed directly at the dissatisfied,
the alienated, and the young. Their early deaths increased the passion
felt by their fans, spurred numerous films, internet web pages and
biographies. Their characters and deaths also guaranteed a consistently
high demand for their music, now technologically enhanced, that endures
even among those too young to have experienced the tumult of the
sixties.
Almost thirty years after their tragic deaths a persistent fascinations
with their lives remains intact. New biographies exploring the life and
times of Janis and Jim were published in 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993. new
releases of their recordings are planned or are already released. Films
of their concerts and interviews are stocked in video stores. Younger
generations of Americans are intrigued by the music of Janis and Jim if
not by the aura surrounding their deaths. Newsweek (7/15/93)
reported that during the first six months of 1993 more than 500,000
Doors records and over 200,000 Joplin albums were sold.
Conversations about Janis and Jim evoke positive and highly emotional
responses. One young sales clerk told us she absolutely loved and adored
Jim Morrison, while wrinkling her nose at Janis Joplin. Another,
noticing that we were purchasing a Joplin tape, volunteered exuberantly,
"She's great, she's super", and asked us if we had read Myra
Friedman's Buried Alive. People in their forties who remember
Janis and Jim and who may have also seen them in concert recall them as
incredible, wild, and then usually add approvingly, "crazy."
Those under thirty think of the two as fantastic and legendary free
spirits whose lives ended tragically.
Why then this book? A number of excellent biographies on Janis and Jim
have been published. Filmed interviews and documentaries are readily
available in video stores along with their music Their lives have been
captured in motion pictures - Janis in a story called The Rose
and Jim in Oliver Stone's The Doors. What new light, then, can we
shed on their lives?
All the publicly available information on Janis and Jim is descriptive,
that is, it describes their behavior, temperament, moods and
personalities, and records faithfully the course of their lives and
careers. What the information doesn't provide is a reasonable
explanation for the dissonant and relentlessly self-destructive behavior
that led to their premature deaths. Serious biographers have been
compassionate and psychologically perceptive in describing the
desperation and torment of each, but have exhibited little interest in
or ability to identify the underlying causes of their disorders. And
that is not surprising.
Determining casualty is understandably complicated and risky when done
from a distance. This has not prevented some from engaging in
unsupported theorizing and speculating, however. Popular explanatory
accounts of their lives reveal less about Janis and Jim than about the
author's lack of familiarity with the dynamics of psychological
disorders. These surface level analyses have typically pointed to their
abuse of alcohol and drugs as if that were a sufficient explanation by
itself. Others blame self-destructive patterns of depression rooted in
early family conflicts, traumatic incidents in their lives, or the
overwhelming pressures created by fame and stardom. But as we hope to
reveal, the root causes of the extended and debilitating despair
suffered by these two tragic talents has simply not been established.
This book has come about by chance. We had planned originally to explore
the lives of several famous people (Joplin, Morrison, Monroe, Hendrix,
Garland and others) for the purpose of uncovering the internal forces
responsible for their widely publicized distress. In addition top these
"stars," we also intended to examine certain characters from
literature and movies. As our research progressed, we became
increasingly fascinated with the accounts of the lives of Janis and Jim,
experiencing a deep sense of sadness as we learned about their greatly
troubled existence. In Janis' case, we were struck by what appeared to
be a deeply felt pain, exhibited in news clips, which captured her
unrelenting hopelessness. In those clips, she behaves as a child who is
alternately angry, charming, confused, and witty, while answering
questions from reporters. We read of her search for love in an attempt
to quiet the internal demons through endless, transient sexual liaisons,
wild partying and alcohol abuse. Like Janis, Jim struggled
unsuccessfully for meaning by avoiding or running from a similar feeling
of hopelessness. His life too was characterized by the aggressive
behaviors, alcoholism, and antics for which he was so well known.
Both presented in public and in private as highly neurotic and
disordered, and as lacking the resources which we all need to soothe
ourselves when alone: the ability to make our existence tolerable, to
experience satisfaction from relationships, and to possess a sense of
ourselves and our continuity. It is this deficit, this missing quality
of their inner world, that was at the root of the persistent and
debilitating hopelessness they both experienced. That is what faces
those unfortunate enough to find themselves living in the dead zone - a
term frequently used by my patients to describe how their borderline
personality disorder feels to them (described in detail in the first
chapter).
Read
More...
To
Order...
