The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

A Second Opinion

Fresh research now establishes that Dr. Ralph Greenson was not alone in his belief that Marilyn Monroe was probably suffering from borderline paranoid schizophrenia. Rather than work in a vacuum, Dr. Greenson obtained a second opinion by consulting psychologist Dr. Milton Wexler.

Born in San Francisco in 1908, Dr. Wexler trained as a lawyer before switching to psychology. After taking a doctorate at Columbia University, studying under Theodor Reik, a disciple of Freud, he became one of the country’s first nonphysicians to set up in practice as a psychoanalyst. Also a member of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society, Dr. Wexler would go on to become a pioneer in the study and treatment of Huntington’s disease, forming the Hereditary Disease Foundation. Wexler also felt strongly that Marilyn Monroe suffered at least from borderline paranoid schizophrenia after sitting in on three sessions with her in Dr. Greenson’s home. “Yes, I treated her,” he said in 1999. “I won’t discuss that treatment but will say that I agreed with Dr. Greenson that she presented borderline symptoms of the disease that had run in her family. I found her to be very proactive in wanting to treat those borderline symptoms, as well. One misconception about her treatment is that it was Dr. Greenson’s idea that she move in with his family. She never moved in with the Greensons. Instead, it was my suggestion that she spend as much time there as possible in order to create the environment that she lacked as a child. That was my theory at the time and Dr. Greenson agreed. Also, I felt it would alleviate her separation anxiety if she knew she had a place to return to.”

All of these many years later, to ignore the findings of these two doctors or act as if those findings did not exist makes no sense. It’s certainly not what Marilyn Monroe did over the years. In the year and a half after Greenson’s and Wexler’s diagnosis, Marilyn did everything she could to perform beyond her illness. She always had. She’d always soldiered on, even knowing that something wasn’t quite right with her.

Dr. Greenson’s different opinions of what Marilyn was dealing with in her life have been, it would seem, purposely overlooked in Marilyn Monroe history for many years. Some biographers have written that his findings were egregiously misguided and couldn’t possibly have been true. As one put it, “[Greenson] even spread lies about his patient to the professional community, including the unsubstantiated report that she was borderline paranoid schizophrenic.” It would seem, though, that if a psychiatrist treats a patient—in Monroe’s case, just about every day of the week—and comes to a conclusion about that person’s state of mind, it is not an “unsubstantiated report.” It’s a diagnosis.

Unfortunately, Dr. Greenson would become so zealous in his treatment of Marilyn, and thus so overbearing in her life, that he would lose credibility, especially with the passing of the years. Historically, he seems like a quack because he invited Marilyn into his home, had her sleep over, integrated her into his family. It was felt that he had lost all perspective where Marilyn was concerned. However, in the 1950s and 1960s, all sorts of vanguard treatments for mental illness were being tested. In fact, in Greenson’s opinion, welcoming Marilyn into his home was the only alternative to putting her in a mental hospital. In his notes about the case, he is specific that he was trying to figure out any way he could to keep her from being “committed once again, for I know she will not survive it a second time.” Douglas Kirsner confirms, “Greenson decided to offer his family as a substitute for the family Monroe never had because she would have killed herself sooner if he had committed her to a mental hospital.”