The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Greenson’s Diagnosis

Dr. Ralph Greenson is not a popular figure in Marilyn Monroe history. Born Romeo Samuel Greenschpoon in 1910 in Brooklyn, he was one of fraternal twins—his sister was named Juliet. He studied medicine in Switzerland before practicing as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Los Angeles. He was the president of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (LAPSI) from 1951 to 1953 and dean of education from 1957 to 1961. He was also clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Medical School. In his paper “Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytical Institutes,” Douglas Kirsner writes of Greenson:

“The author of a classic clinical textbook, The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis (1967), and over sixty papers and articles, Dr. Greenson was unusual in moving outside the ambit of his analytic colleagues to give many public lectures. His psychoanalytic interests were wide-ranging. He was most concerned that analysts with different theoretical approaches seemed to talk at each other.… Upon graduating as an analyst, Greenson quickly became a major influence in the Los Angeles psychoanalytic scene. He soon became an important figure nationally and later internationally… he wielded a good deal of power and influence within LAPSI. [Greenson] was nationally and internationally well known not only for his numerous psychoanalytic writings but also for his real flair for lecturing and teaching. His institute seminars were especially highly regarded at LAPSI. Hilda Rollman-Branch [a director of LAPSI] felt that although Greenson was ‘a character’ and ‘narcissistic,’ his tactlessness could be forgiven because of ‘his enthusiasm and inspiration. He was without a doubt the best teacher of psychoanalysis any of us have ever had.’ Greenson was a passionate man with strongly held views. Three analysts each reported to me that after a disagreement Greenson did not speak to them for years. He was given to irrational fits of anger. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud’s biographer, aptly described Greenson as ‘a hard-living man of passionate enthusiasm and even flamboyance, a man for whom psychoanalysis was… a way of life.’ ”

Despite his credentials and reputation, Dr. Ralph Greenson has been much maligned in books about Marilyn over the years, and for many reasons, some of which are valid. Most of Marilyn’s friends and associates agree that Dr. Greenson exerted far too much control over her life and career. As these people began to give interviews for biographies of the star, Greenson’s reputation as a psychological Svengali became set in stone. He has practically been blamed for his patient’s mental disturbances, as if there was no chance she might have been genetically predisposed to such problems.

What has not been clearly stated in the past is that Dr. Ralph Greenson had very specific opinions about Marilyn’s mental problems. At first, he had described her in a letter to Anna Freud as a “borderline paranoid addictive personality.” He wrote in his letter that Marilyn exhibited “classic signs of the paranoid addict,” including a fear of abandonment and also a tendency to rely on others too heavily (Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg) to the point where she refuses to allow these people to live their own lives. Also, those suffering from this disease are prone to wanting to commit suicide. It was very difficult to treat such problems in patients, let alone someone as famous as Marilyn. He also said he was working behind the scenes to get her off of some of the drugs she was taking, but that it was an uphill battle. “Short of searching her person every day, it is impossible to know what she is taking and when,” he wrote in a different letter to Freud. “I’m not sure how to monitor someone like her. She’s very crafty.” Indeed, when a person would turn his back, she would pop a pill just that fast.

Dr. Hyman Engelberg added to Greenson’s diagnosis in an interview in 1996. He stated that he and Greenson had also diagnosed Marilyn as having been manic-depressive. “It is now known as bipolar personality,” he said, “but I think manic depressive is much more descriptive. Yes, she was definitely manic depressive. That’s just one of the many things we were up against.”

Apparently, there was more. After Dr. Greenson began to treat Marilyn more intensively, he started telling colleagues that she’d begun to exhibit strong and growing signs of borderline paranoid schizophrenia, just like her mother and, possibly, her grandmother before her. Three psychiatrists interviewed for this book, who requested anonymity since all are still treating patients in Los Angeles, say that when they were younger and studying in the city Greenson shared with them (on separate occasions) his concern about borderline paranoid schizophrenia in the case of Marilyn Monroe. “He was very specific,” said one of the doctors. “He was concerned, very much so. He felt it would get worse as she got older unless it was treated in a specific way. He also said that Marilyn knew and that she was looking into ways to treat it herself, and that he was trying to discourage that. He didn’t want her out there medicating herself, but he suspected that this is what was going on behind his back.”

It’s not known if Dr. Greenson shared his views of her different problems with Marilyn. In notes regarding her case, he is specific about being careful to give her information “only in small portions.” He wrote that, in his view, telling her “too much, too soon” could only lead to “other more significant problems.”

What also comes from fresh research for this book is Marilyn’s determination to get the drug Thorazine, which was used to treat paranoid schizophrenia. “Dr. Greenson had prescribed it to her,” said one of the psychiatrists. “I know for a fact that he did because he told me that he had. However, he wasn’t sure he liked her reaction to it. For some reason, he changed his mind about Thorazine. He said, however, that she wanted more than he wanted to give her and that he was afraid she was going about the business of getting it from other doctors. A major frustration for him was that he knew he was not the only one giving her drugs. She was such an expert doctor shopper toward the last couple years of her life, there was no way to be sure what she was taking, what she was mixing.”

According to what Dr. Greenson would later remember in his papers stored at UCLA, he had insisted that Marilyn “get rid of her unhealthy connection to the past.” Her half sister, Berniece, her business manager, Inez Melson, and many others were convinced that therapy—not her mental state—was ruining Marilyn Monroe. In a letter to Greenson, Melson wrote that she was concerned about Marilyn spending “too much time thinking about her problems.” She added that she didn’t see how it was doing Marilyn any good and, in fact, “I think quite the contrary. It is not my place to tell you how to treat your patient,” she wrote, “but, truly, I am concerned that she is languishing in her misery.”

Part of Marilyn Monroe’s sickness had to do with her paranoia. However, complicating things was that, in many ways, she had actually good reason to be paranoid. As we’ve seen, she was being followed and she was well aware of it. Consider this story, from Diana Herbert, daughter of the man who wrote Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! She and Marilyn stayed in touch over the years, and she encountered Marilyn in New York during this period. “I was coming up out of the subway and there she was,” recalled Herbert. “Dressed very casually, she was stunning, in a coral beige ensemble. She looked a little lost, but she perked up when she recognized it was me. We went to a little health food sidewalk cafe in Midtown. She spoke about how much she loved New York and the Actors Studio, but she told me something bizarre. She said, ‘I’m so uncomfortable here in New York because I am being followed.’ I said, ‘Well, Marilyn, that’s because you are a star, you are beautiful, of course people are following you.’ She said, ‘No, that’s not it.’ Her voice became lower, whispering, ‘I’m being followed by the FBI.’ I thought, ‘Well, she’s totally flipping out!’ Marilyn said, ‘I’m being followed because of my connections with the Communist Party.’ She told me she was very proud of herself because she became adept at losing the FBI agents. She said she started figuring out how to evade them when she became a movie actress and learned how to ‘become invisible.’ ”

While the FBI’s episodes of surveying Monroe did happen, there were also times when she was not under their watch yet still concerned about a plot to know her every move—and at times, she believed, her every thought. Maureen Stapleton was a contemporary of Marilyn’s at the Actors Studio. In an interview in 1995, Stapleton recalled that while she was dining with Monroe one evening, an odd thing happened. “[Marilyn] thought the waiter was reading her mind. At first, she said he was a secret agent or something, she said, ‘He’s one of the bad guys,’ and then she said, ‘He knows what I’m thinking now, we have to leave.’ Now, you have to keep in mind we were all [New York actors] a little loopy back then—but that was particularly strange.”

Others in Marilyn Monroe’s life at the time were more categorical. “I think Marilyn was a very sick woman, a classic schizophrenic,” said Johnny Strasberg, son of Lee and Paula. “She was dedicated to love. It’s a thing schizophrenics talk about, love. They’ll do anything for love and, additionally, they are totally infantile; they have no ego, no boundaries, as the rest of us have. The amazing thing about her is that she survived as long as she did. There was enough capacity for life that had she been lucky enough to find a therapist who could treat her problems, she might have… That’s the tragedy. People loved her. But nobody could say no to her. No one would or could take responsibility for her. They had to cut her off or abandon her, which is the thing she expected. With Marilyn, you’re dealing with an abandoned infant who’s not an infant anymore.”