PSYCHOTHERAPY: THEORY, RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

VOLUME 14, #4, WINTER, 1977

THE END OF JIM MORRISON: A SCHIZOID SUICIDEA PHENOMENOLOGICAL

STUDY IN OBJECT-RELATIONS
WARREN P. HOPKINS

HAROLD J. FINE
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee

University of Richmond
Richmond, Virginia

ABSTRACT: Reviewing the circumstances surround- singer-idols: Jim Morrison, lead-singer of "The
ing the death of pop singer Jim Morrison, the authors Doors", a famous Los Angeles rock group. His
have come to believe not only that his end was death by "natural" causes, as "official" reeffected through suicide, but also that his death was a ports have it, appeared suspect. Moreover,
compelling instance of the schizoid-type suicide de- there exists compelling evidence that a
scribed by Harry Guntrip. Guntrip wrote that the
schizoid-type suicide is more congruent with his
schizoid problemthe persistence through life of a
untimely
death than is a heart attack. Certain
weak infantile ego characterized by anxiety and fear
and caused by inadequate mothering lay deeper in features of his life style, poetry, personal statethe strata of the unconscious mind than the oedipal ments, and friends' observations argue a strong
conflict. Sure enough, Morrison wrote and spoke case for a suicide interpretation. Objectblatantly and wittingly on the subject of his lust for relations theory not only affords insights into
his mother and hate for his father. Despite his Morrison's life, and attributes a certain logic to
consciousness of his oedipal conflict, his schizoid ego his death, but it also seems to have spoken very
weakness festered in him out of his control. This was personally to Morrison as well, for as will soon
evinced in his needs, apparent in both his lyrics and be obvious, he was not unfamiliar himself with
his actions, to lash out at but also escape from the the literature.
outer world. Indeed, many of the details of his
Object-relations theory is probably the most
personal lifehis relationship with his girlfriend,
his fantasies of escape through death and sex, and trenchant development within ego Psychology
finally his death itselfseem to conform to Gun- in recent times (Kernberg, 1972; Stein, 1969).
trip's portrait of the schizoid personality. Morrison s Beginning with Melanie Klein's studies of insuicide, then, was not the final manifestation of the ternalized objects in early infancy (Klein,
inverted, destructive anger found in the depressed 1932), and followed by Fairbairn (1952) and
individual, but rather an expression of the wish to be Winnicott (1958, 1965), the body of clinical
removed to a calmer realm.

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us if at all not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
T. S. Eliot
"The Hollow Men"
Being recently enriched by the new insights
of psychoanalytically-derived object-relations
theory, one could not help but be fascinated by
a piece of sensational, though well-researched,
journalism (Wolfe, 1971) exploring the provocative death of one of the "pop" culture's

and theoretical studies relevant to the area

emerges for synthesis and integration. This
challenge was met with considerable success by
Harry Guntrip (1961, 1969, 1971). Guntrip's
contributions to object-relations theory, especially, have not only broadened the spectrum of
ego theory applications and technique, but also
opened the road to a newer understanding of
early normal and pathological development of
the person. More specifically, he has applied
this integrated object-relations theory to the
intensive, long-term treatment of schizoid personalities. And it is against this background that
the case of Jim Morrison bears particular relevance.
Six days after his death, official Paris police

423

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H. J. FINE & W. P. HOPKINS

reports confirmed the original information: Jim

Morrison died of a heart attack while taking a
bath on July 3, 1971. At age 27, Morrison was
the most flamboyant but least open of "The
Doors", and as lead-singer, lyricist, and poet,
he came to be the symbol for the group. And for
many youth, he represented the crest of another
wave of rock groups. He was riding high; there
was even speculation that he was coming to be
the most potent sex symbol in our "pop"
culture since James Dean and Elvis Presley. His
song "Light My Fire" quickly sold two million
records. And others like "Break On Through,"
"Back Door Man," and most significantly
"The End," had similarly become anthems for
a generation of kids turning inward and away.
In "L.A. Woman" the line "I've been down so
goddamned long that it seems like up to me"
spells out the enjoyment of despair and emptiness.
Sexuality was Morrison's trademark; and it
was an unusual perspective on sex he touted:
sex-death, and a "thing" for oedipality. Even
beyond his lyrics, he was frequently observed to
cup his hands tightly over his genitals while
singing (holding on for dear life?), and once, at
a now famous Miami concert, he exposed
himself to his audience on stage. Morrison's
comment about this incident is just as revealing,
too.
"It's very, very hard to just get up on stage and sing a
song when you're a sex symbol. They didn't come to
hear my mouth; they were all ogling at my pants. The
way they refuse to grant your mouth when they've been
taught you're all below the waist is very frustrating for a
poet. You come forth with your fine words and they keep
on staring at your pants. I decided for once to give them
what'they were in the market for . . ." (Wolfe, p. 186)

The expression of such impotent rage through

genital aggression is not foreign to the psychiatric literature, nor for that matter to the public
place, but what is rare in this case is the
lip-service he pays to this rage on a conscious
level. To wit his celebrated song "The End,"
where parent-killing and parent-mauling are the
central themes. As one of his most emotional
offerings, it is a wild outburst of oedipal passions: pop is mowed down and mom taken over.
Its performance in concert is sensuously described by Wolfe:
"He explains to his 'beautiful friend', his 'only friend',
that this is 'the end of our elaborate plans.' He encourages her to 'ride the snake, to the lake, the ancient lake,'

the reptile being defined as 'seven miles long', 'old,'

'cold.' His growly baritone is almost sweet, almost
down to a love whisper, as he laments (or crows?) that
'I'll never look into your eyes again'; but there's the
rasping edge even when pitched low, the suggestion of a
snarl held back, the mixture of Arctic distance and muted
parody. At the mother's bedroom door, music having
left him altogether (by this time he's visited pop's room
and unceremoniously, with some melody still lingering,
wiped him out), he falls into a toneless, grinding
dirge-slack recitative. On the verge of the ghastly ellipsis, the point at which words as well as music cave in,
his eyes clamp shut, his lips form the unspeakable
syllables, 'I wa-a-a-ant'he screams." (p. 182)

Now, Freud's early assumption held that of

all the layers of the unconscious, the layer of the
oedipal material was the deepest and most
energetically repressed. This position had remained essentially unchallenged until the advent of object relations, and particularly Guntrip's conviction (1969, p. 36) that the oedipal
layer is not as deeply embedded as the schizoid
problem. Already, though, more contemporary
psychoanalysts had seen theoretical problems
arising when, for example, Stendahl in his
autobiographical novel, The Life of Henry
Brulard, dwelled openly and elaborately on
patricidal attitudes toward the father and incestuous urges toward the mother. This circumstance, of course, is also true in "The
End."
How are such phenomena to be reconciled
with traditional psychoanalytic theory? How do
these guilt-laden secrets come to the conscious
surface? Even Morrison's own lyrics make it
clear that he abides the traditional Freudian
position regarding incest as the most awful of
transgressions. How then would he explain
bellowing this straightforward confession in
public? The lengthy quote that follows obtains
from an interview (Wolfe, 1971) in which
Morrison replies to just this question; however,
Wolfe additionaly intimated that this oedipal
display could perhaps be a "smoke screen" to
cover something even more unspeakable. Morrison's quote here is reproduced in its entirety as
a tour de force of what Guntrip (1969, p. 178)
has referred to as "The Basic Emotional Predicament."
"I know what you're working up to. The new orality
stuff. I've read some of Melanie Klein and the others.
The idea that the Oedipal layer isn't as deep as people
used to think, that it gets deposited when the kid goes
into the genital period and a whole lot of stuff has come
together in his head before this, below it, when he was

THE END OF JIM MORRISON

all mouth, and no muscle or genitals. I know the whole
line of thought, man. That there was just oral passive
helplessness and bawling for Big Ma before the kid
began to grow muscles and came to see his genitals as
muscle, and could counter his ache for Ma's shelter with
a little genital aggression, at least in his fantasies. Deny
yearning mouth with blustering phallus. I know this
there's a whiny toddler inside every growling rapist
school.
Sure. By this reasoning it's easy to make a big red
badge of your Oedipality and wear it on your sleeve. It's
closer to the surface and you can dredge it out a lot faster
than the worse Ma-cuddly stuff under it. Use the one to
hide the other . . . Cop out to the Oedipal sin because
it's nowhere as bad as the oral ones that lie deeper. The
crimes of the sucking babe wanting to hold tight to
Mama and go on sucking forever, and feeling abandoned
by the old biddy because first she ejected him, then
shoved him aside, cut him off. Anybody'd rather own up
to fantasy crimes of muscle than those of the blobby and
flabby . . ." (p. 184)

It is hard to conceive of a more vernacular,

yet accurate, statement of the basic schizoid
dilemma. Even a studious reading of Schizoid
Phenomena, Object Relations, and the Self
(Guntrip, 1969) does not communicate so succinctly the qualitative nature of the schizoid
experience. The essence of the statement bears
repeating just once more: being aggressive and
bad (guilty) is not as unbearable to accept as
being frightened and weak (dependent).
Both phenomenologically and chronologically, the whole schizoid problem antedates the
oedipal development. Fairbairn (1952) thus regarded infantile dependence, not the Oedipus
complex, as the fundamental cause of
psychopathology. The schizoid person at bottom feels overwhelmed by the external world,
his weak infantile ego withdrawing in fear. This
state is "basic ego-weakness," though it is
often camouflaged by a false "exterior self".
The fear (and withdrawal) is primarily due to
the inability of weak infantile ego to cope with
external reality, having earlier been deprived of
adequate maternal support. And it is a consequence of this real deprivation that the ego
further experiences a hostile impulse to aggressively strike back at the rejective outer world.
One "hears" the resentment in Morrison's
words when he expresses these very feelings:
"Booze is mother's milk to me, and better than
any milk that ever came from my mother."
These psychodynamics convincingly explain
not only Morrison's aggressive exhibitionism in
public, but also the defensive posture he adopts
with regard to infantile dependence ("the new

425

orality stuff"), especially when he is so "wise

to it." Guntrip (1969, p. 129) has warned that
patients can "use" their conflicts over sex,
aggression, and guilt (". . . and their Freudian
inner world of oedipal conflicts . . .") as a last
resort defense against withdrawal, regression,
and depersonalization, even though the conflicts
may have their own obvious significance on
their own specific level.
This problem of basic ego-weakness was
more apparent, not unexpectedly, in Morrison's
private life than in his public image or poetry.
Morrison had once reflected "that when you're
going on two, everything looks old and big as
hell and feels pretty chilly; you're the one
scared!" People who knew him well, and were
skeptical about the "natural" death, contributed these opinions about his apparently increasing decompensation: " . . . The Jim I
knew had a king-size block as a writer; for him
to get off even a few lines a week might look
like a burst of activity close up . . . " " . . .
During the last two years in L.A., he was
alarmingly lazy, passive, sodden, lumpish, inert, and getting more so all the time . . ." ". . .
I knew him too well to believe there'd been a
sudden surge of life-affirming in him . . . "
On a more intimate level, his love relationships were at an impasse. The "in and out
programme" Guntrip (1969, p. 27) describes as
problematic for the schizoid is well represented
in Morrison's case by the report that in his
relationship with his girlfriend cum-wife "he
kept up his old on-again/off-again style of
living: one apartment with her, one without
. . . " This kind of interpersonal oscillation, so
diagnostic of schizoid conditions, reflects the
need for but fear of close relationshipsalways
needing love but a dread of being tied, rushing
into a relationship for security and urgently
breaking out again for freedom and independence. The central feature of the schizoid personality is the inability to effect personal relationships because of a radical immaturity of the
ego; there exists a complex inhibition of the
capacity to love and be loved.
And on a yet more intimate level, we glimpse
the nature of Morrison's sexual behavior and
experience through the disclosure of a previous
"lover" (Wolfe, 1971). She claims that he was
"mostly impotent, often taking hours," sometimes giving up. And besides the sadomasochistic games he enjoyed (talking dirty to

426

H. J. F I N E & W. P. HOPKINS

her, spanking her, telling her what a bad girl she

was "it excited him"), he would blame her
for his sexual failures, occassionally getting
violent enough to leave bruises after beating and
choking her. She recognized in Morrison the
brute and the baby, co-existing: . . . "a lot of
roughing up, then the sudden collapse, whimpering, 'I need someone to love me, please take
care of me, please don't leave me . . . ' "
Guntrip (1968, p. 153) has challenged the
notion that the deepest roots of psychopathology are sexual and/or aggressive instincts;
rather, as Morrison displays here, they are
secondary to the elements of fear, anxiety, and
flight. These instincts operate in disturbed ways
only in the fear-ridden person as a means of
overcoming devitalization and passivity. Oscillating between fight and flight, the schizoid
manifests outbursts of sexual and aggressive
behavior that function as a manic defensea
frantic attempt to fend off devitalized passivity.
Morrison's "lover" recalled a line of his
poetry: " . . . we seek to break the spell of
passivity with actions cruel and awkward . . . "
Her final remark was, "Kids will remember
him as tough, brutal, bestial, savage. The image
I keep is a different one."

tiredness" caused by the unremitting struggle to

avoid collapse is frequently experienced as a
wish to die. But it exists as an "unrealistic"
conception, for it contains elements of escape to
something else, rather than finality of existence.
To stop living but not wishing to die. The
schizoid suicide is encountered in the very
regressed ego, where the person has utterly lost
hope of being understood and helped. The
longing to die represents the schizoid need to
withdraw the ego from the world that is too
much for it to cope with. From a published
collection of Morrison's poems and notes
(1971) comes this piece: " . . . The theory is
that birth is prompted by the child's desire to
leave the womb. But in the photograph an
unborn horse's neck strains inward with legs
scooped out. From this everything follows:
Swallow milk at the breast until there's no
milk . . . "
Whereas the depressive suicide suggests a
hostile and destructive impulse turned inward
against the self, the schizoid suicide is the
end-product of apathy toward a life that can no
longer be accepted. What is desired is not a
destructive non-existence, but an escape into
warmth, quiet, comfort, a Nirvanaa return to
Jim Morrison was quite obviously a desperate the womb. Did the official report say "while
and despairing young man, and nowhere is this taking a bath?"
reflected more poignantly than in his poetry. He
This is the way the world ends
often adopted the poetic posture of being-onThis is the way the world ends
the-outside looking innot uncharacteristic of
This is the way the world ends
the schizoid condition. These persons often
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
refer to their experience of feeling withdrawn
T. S. Eliot
and cut off from outer reality. Morrison mused
"The
Hollow
Men"
(meaning himself no doubt), "People have the
feeling that what's going on outside isn't real,
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THE END OF JIM MORRISON

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