Michael Jackson's Personality - Two Contrasting Personality Theories - Term Paper Example

?Explain Michael Jackson's Personality Using Two Contrasting Personality Theories Introduction Michael Jackson is one of the most famous characters ever to have graced the global entertainment scenes. Although he remains famous worldwide and is quite popular among his fans, his life was both intriguing and controversial. Most psychologist and behavior experts find his personality and character quite interesting and a subject of study. Michael’s early life history, especially his relationship with his family, particularly his father, have been highlighted as possible contributing factors to his controversial adult life. One of the best entertainers and musicians, Michael was associated with a particularly expensive lifestyle but an equally shady personal life. His brilliant career was blotted by various occurrences that put his personality into question, ranging from his color change surgeries and divorces to his pedophile allegations. Although some aspects of Michael’s tumultuous life are as of yet clearly explained, and some allegations remain without proof, his personality can be studies from various perspectives to help explain his life as a prominent public figure. Michael Jackson’s personality can be analyzed with the help of several approaches including the psychoanalytic approach and the neo-analytic approach. These two approaches to personality analysis provide the best understanding to Michael Jackson, both as a person and as an artiste. Biography of Michael Jackson Born in Gary, Indiana on the 29th of August 1958, Michael Jackson was seventh child of Joe and Katherine Jackson, in a family that consisted of a total of nine children. Michael had five brothers including Tito, Jermaine, Jackie, Marlon, and Randy, and three sisters including Latoya, Janet and Rebbie (Jefferson, 2010). This was a family rich in music talent and from a tender age Michael displayed a brilliant knack for music, particularly song and dance. His father, Joe Jackson, always had the dream to become a famous musician and although he had not succeeded in becoming one himself, he saw the fulfillment of his dream through his children. According to Jefferson (2010), Joe had been aspiring to be a great guitarist, but was forced to drop the pursuit early to take care of his growing family. In 1964 when Michael was barely 7 years old, Joe formed a band with his five sons, which famously came to be known as ‘The Jackson 5’ (Jefferson, 2010). The groups started their breakthrough following a contract they won with Motown Records. This contract was facilitated by Gladys Knight (a famous actor in Indiana), who introduced them to Berry Gordon of Motown records. This opportunity saw the group record some of their earlier hits like ‘ABC’, ‘Never can Say Goodbye’ and ‘I Want You Back’. They performed under this label up to mid 70s. All through, the Jackson 5 was really a strained group, especially considering that they were at their tender ages. Nevertheless, their father was not deterred by the tender age of his children, but rather continued to encourage them to work harder and aim at attaining nothing less than perfection (Jefferson, 2010). Consequently, their father gave them a strong foundation, which played a significant role in catapulting Michael’s music career to greater heights. The year 1976 was another milestone in Jackson 5’s music career, especially because they got an opportunity to sign a contract with Epic Records. In a strategic move aimed at improving their profile, they changed their name to “The Jacksons”, which made is possible to break away from their Motown, who was still holding the license to their original name “The Jackson 5”. In the course of their contract with Eric Records, Michel also had a chance to make a debut in the film industry, where he played the scarecrow in “The Wiz”. It is also during this time that Michael met Quincy Jones, with whom they collaborated to compose his very first single album dabbed “Off the Wall” (Randy, 2009). To him, this album was a landmark in his career because it is the one that opened him very many opportunities in his music career, especially because it consisted of four singles that topped in the U.S. charts. However, 1982 marked Michael’s greatest breakthrough in his career when he produced a very popular album that was dabbed “Thriller” – in fact, this album became the best selling of all times. This album made Michael to take the world of music with a storm. Later, in 1984, Jackson won eight Grammy awards for his work on Thriller and the E.T. storybook (Randy, 2009). From seventies, there are several other events that happened in Jackson’s life, which caught the attention of the people. For example, in the seventies, he surprised the world by carrying out a skin surgery to change its color and nose. Later in 1984, Jackson was involved in a shocking accident while shooting a Pepsi commercial, which left him with serious injuries and burned hair (Jefferson, 2010). Michael’s private life remained totally reserved, including his marriage life. However, there have been rumors that he had married twice. He first married Lisa Marie Presley, but the married only lasted for two years, starting 1993. Later, in 1995, he married Debbie Row, but the marriage did not go past 1999. Essentially, Jackson’s life was full of controversy. In 1993 and 2005, he was charged with sexually molesting boys, but he was acquitted after a lengthy trial. Michael Jackson finally died on 25th June 2009. His death was associated with cardiac arrest as a result of drugs. Regrettably, this death was very untimely because it came when he was preparing for huge performances in Europe, which was meant to revitalize his music career (Randy, 2009). The psychoanalytic perspective Michael Jackson’s personality can be analyzed from psychoanalytic perspective. In this case, the word personality is used to describe people’s cognizable behavior or how they interact with their environment. For example, a person can be described as having selfish, cheerful, introvert, or extrovert characters. In psychology, personality has varied definitions, which also lead to application of different theories that are used to describe people’s attributes. According to Clarkin et al (1999), personality theory can be used to determine how a person’s attributes are defined by a certain psychologist, and the aspects of an individual’s personality, which are most prominent or emphasized. Ideally, psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud is used in discussing and explaining an individual’s personality is the psychoanalytic theory. Sigmund Freud developed this theory after making observations on his medical patients who exhibited irrational behavior, and linked this behavior to their real life situation (Friedman & Schustack, 2008). Psychoanalysis is divided into two aspects. The first one is the link between the conscious and the unconscious, which portrays the mind as consisting of three subsystems, including the unconscious mind, which means that a person is not aware about something; thoughts that a person is not aware about, but which can be brought to their attention from time to time; and the conscious aspects which means that a person is fully up to their thoughts (Blatt and Lerner, 1983). Freud maintains that the human’s unconscious mind is strongly capable of controlling their conscious and overt behavior. This theory, essentially, provides that the human’s conscious mind represents the unconscious urges, when they are not conscious about it. In view of this, psychoanalysis can be used to describe Michael’s personality. Blatt and Lerner (1983) affirm that humans’ cognitive thoughts have an impact on their behavior, especially on their interpersonal relationship. The manner, in which people think about themselves and other people that surround them, is significantly determined by their early interpersonal encounters (Blatt, 1995). In view of this, the problem with Michael Jackson’s personality can be attributed to his early-years’ poor relationship with other people, including his own father. In most of his interviews, Jackson did not even want to share the ordeals he went through in his childhood, meaning that this could have significantly affected his mind. In fact, any question touching on his childhood experiences went unanswered or sometimes this even tempted him to cry. In one of the interview with Oprah Winfrey, he revealed that his father was a strict disciplinarian, with hard and stern rules. He jokingly stated that a mere look at his father was enough to scare a person (Randy, 2009). Even so, he tried so much to keep off the topic about his childhood experiences, but considering his profile a lot could not be kept away from the public domain. As a matter of fact, his father was known to be harsh and strict disciplinarian. Sometimes he could use threats or even beat his children when they failed to perform well in music. While it could be argued that it is this strictness that shaped Michael’s music career, regarding psychoanalytic theory, it can be argued that it is this harsh background that left a permanent scar in his personality, to an extent of getting involved in unthinkable acts such as child abuse (Jefferson, 2010). What’s more, the association of Michael’s personality with the events that had happened in his life can be analyzed in terms of his Id, Ego and Superego. The Id defines a person’s desires, which one would want to do even if it is not acceptable in the society. The superego constitutes what the society considers acceptable and what is not acceptable. From the perspective of a child, this could be represented by the parental controls. On the other hand, Ego attempts to reconcile Id with Superego. As a child, Michael could have desired to do things that are done by any other child, such as playing games, and going to school, among many others. In addition, he may not have wanted to have “big nose” or “dark skin” or shunned by other children because of his physical appearances. As such, these descriptions could have constituted his most prominent Id. Nevertheless, his father could not allow him to do most of the things he desired. He must have been struggling to do well in music so that when he is able to come out of that kind of captivity he could do things that he desired in life. Besides the trouble he got from his own father, Jackson had to undergo a lot of embarrassment from his friends and family - who used to tease him about his appearance. Consequently, as a child, his Ego would help him cope with all these challenges. Although it was not his best wish, Michael followed his father’s orders, which helped him keep developing in his music career. Furthermore, as a child, he was too innocent and naive to negate his father’s orders. Unlike his brothers, Michael could not master his own balance as a person, to cope with all the pressures of life that he was undergoing. This is the reason why he was struggling, in his adulthood, to accomplish the childhood desires that he never got an opportunity to fulfill. Also, that is the same reason he found a children’s entertainment park at his ranch, where he used to play with kids from time to time. Also, in order to become the kind of a person he desired to be, physically, he went to a greater height by undergoing a plastic surgery – which saw his skin color and facial features altered. His inability to grow from the phallic childhood stage to the latent stage can explain his adulthood’s strange personality. He grew up without fitting to any particular category of sexuality, meaning it was hard to establish if he was gay or straight. His attitude towards himself was egotistical and showy, and it was clear that he loved nobody a part from his children. This personality can be attributed to a sort of disconnect in his childhood life as well as the kind of parenthood he underwent, which totally tainted his character. For example, he has severally revealed in his interviews that their father would not allow them to mingle with girls, which possibly acted as the foundation for the strange sexuality in his adulthood. In addition, it is was clear that in his adulthood he had problems forming any true friendship relationship with friends, which was possibly acquired from parenthood - since their father used to restrict them from forming any friendship because they were warned that such friends would take advantage of their fame. The Neo-analytic Perspective The Neo-Analytic theory is largely concerned with the individual person and his sense of self, which is also referred to as the ego (Bollas, 1989). The theory was developed by a number of psychologists who believed that a person did not have the freedom of choice about his destiny because it was largely already determined. According to Friedman and Schustack (2006), most of the theorists who developed the Neo-analytic approach were previous believers in the psychoanalytical theory, but who departed from it to develop the Neo-Analytical approach. These psychologists departed from Freud’s theory by rejecting the proposition that the personality of an adult is developed by experiences of childhood, particularly the period before 6 years of age. They instead moved towards the recognition of socio-cultural influences in the development of individuals (Erikson, 1950). Basically, the Neo-Analytical approach is entrenched in the feeling that the main instinct in a person’s personality is ‘aiming to be superior’. The approach presents two complexes in which a person’s personality is based - the inferiority complex and the superiority complex. The approach also presents the concept of the “Neurotic Person” versus the “Normal Person” (Clarkin et al., 1999). Most importantly, for this case, the Neo-Analytic approach insinuates that the conscious memories of a person about their childhood life can tell us about the person’s current and future life since the two are determined by the relationships the person has had with family and other people close to them (Hesse & Main, 2000). On approaching Michael’s life from the Neo-analytic perspective, the fact that he was not allowed by his father to do as he wished can be used to explain his adulthood personality. In other words, his father was not only making him to feel inferior to himself, but also to every other person around him. Even though most of his attributes were phenomenal and his achievements were amazing, he did not feel like he was good enough. Michael Jackson can also be said to have had a sense of organ inferiority, particularly his physical appearance and skin color, which he thought were preventing him from being loved by those around him - hence eliciting feelings of inferiority. This may have affected his social life as his father’s strict demands prevented him from forming healthy relationships as a child. As a result, when he grew up to become an adult, it became quite difficult to form more complex relationships. This could explain why the few friends and companions he had were either children or even animals at times. It is clear that he suffered from an inferiority complex; even with the popularity and the fame that came with his career, he still felt as if he was not making everyone happy, including himself. Erikson’s stage theory is another aspect of the neo-analytical approach that can be used to explain Michael Jackson’s personality (Erikson, 1950). His problems would have started in his early childhood. The lack of control over his own life through abuse by his father would have compromised his entire life. At the middle childhood stage, a person usually learn to handle guilt and responsibility, which was not possible for Michael to achieve because his father still controlled most of his actions and made most decisions for him. The late childhood stage is the most important in personality development, since this is where Michael missed the link to define his entire life. He almost entirely spent this stage on the road in performances and not in school interacting with peers. This lack of interaction and comparison with peers could have hampered his connection to other people in his adult life. During his teenage years, Michael had a problem finding his identity because at this time he was surrounded by everything in the middle of stardom that still hampered his freedom. During his early adulthood, Michael found himself unable to establish quality intimate relationships because he had never developed the skills needed to develop this kind of relationships. This is evident from his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley who admitted in an interview that Michael was not quite capable of loving somebody. The last stage in Michael Jackson’s personality development was in his middle adulthood where he seemed to change quite suddenly and exhibit caring and generative qualities. In the 1990s, he came out with the “Heal the World” campaign and also had his children. The most plausible explanation for this could be that that he simply gave up trying to seek an identity and started pretending to be everything he should be. Discussion Michael Jackson’s personality is well defined by both the psychoanalytical and Neo-analytical perspectives, which give great evidence of the real person behind the mask of musical genius and fame. Although over the course of his life, he developed a great career as a musician and performer, this came at the cost of his own life as an individual in society. Due to events in his childhood life as explained by the two theories above, he lost his identity, his confidence, and largely developed into a dormant personality with a great part of his missed childhood experiences dominating his adult life. There is evidence that Michael either consciously or sub-consciously tried to challenge the situation his personality was driving into. The lyrics of songs like “Man in the Mirror” where he challenges the man in the mirror to change his ways, and “Black or White” where he tries to battle racism and show people that there is no difference between people in the world illustrate this attempt. Both theories apportion a large part of the blame of what Michael turned out to be on his father Joe Jackson, not just for his physical and emotional mistreatment of his children, but also for the way he placed them in a situation they would not have ended in (Randy, 2009). In reality, it is evident that Michael just wanted to live a normal life, be happy, be loved, interact with people and make friends, all the things that people often take for granted. This cannot be made clearer than from Michael’s own words; “People think they know me, but they don’t. Not really. Actually, I am one of the loneliest people on this earth. I cry sometimes, because it hurts. It does. To be honest, I guess you could say that it hurts to be me” (Winfrey, 2010). Conclusion Human personality can be explained well through a number of theories developed by psychology. There are no better theories that explain the life and personality of Michael Jackson than the psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund Freud and the Neo-analytic theory developed by his students. Michael’s personality comes out as one suffering from disorders resulting from his abused and deprived early life occasioned upon him and his siblings by their own father in his pursuit for ultimate success. His adulthood is seen as involving an older Michael trapped in his own childhood and a very lonely person. References Blatt, S. & Lerner, H. D. (1983). The psychological assessment of object representation. Journal of Personality Assessment, 47(1):7–28. Blatt, S. (1995). Representational structures in psychopathology. In: Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology, Vol. 6. New York. University of Rochester Press. Bollas, C. (1989). Forces of Destiny. London. Free Association Books. Clarkin, J. F., Foelsch, P. A. & Kernberg, O. F. (1999). The Inventory of Personality Organization. New York. Cornell University. Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society, 2nd ed. New York. Norton. Friedman, H., Schustack, M. (2008). Personality: classic theories and modern research. New York. Allyn & Bacon. Friedman, H.S., Schustack, M. (2006). Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research. Boston. Pearson. Hesse, E. & Main, M. (2000). Disorganized infant, child, and adult attachment: Collapse in behavioral and attention strategies. Journal of American Psychoanalytical Association, 48(2): 1097–1127. Jefferson, M. (2010). Michael Jackson Biography. New York. Rolling Stone. Randy, J. (2009). Michael Jackson: the magic, the madness, the whole story, 1958 – 2009. London. Grand Central Publisher. Winfrey, O. (Interviewer) & Jackson, M. (Interviewee). (2010). Michael Jackson Life. [Interview video]. Retrieved from You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55RdE4DxB4w Read More