In his new book, “The Events of the Last Two Years of Marilyn Monroe’s Life,” French writer and psychoanalyst Michel Schneider attempts to redraw the features of the beloved Hollywood legend, from a psychoanalytic perspective, based on real characters, conversations, letters, and interviews.
In his exciting book, published by the Spanish Alfigura, Schneider focuses on the last sessions that Monroe received during the period between January 1960 and August 4, 1962, for treatment at the hands of the most prominent psychiatrist in Hollywood, the mysterious Ralph Greenson.
The book, which appeared in Spanish last week and took up a large amount of space on television programs, raises questions about the role of this doctor in Monroe’s death, and why the most famous and beautiful actress in the world wished for death.
It is noteworthy that this is not the first time that this author and psychoanalyst who won the Medicis Prize in 2003 for his novel “Imaginary Dead” has resorted to building the characters of his novel on the basis of real events and people and on documented documents.
But this time, he chose a character who was as magical as he was surrounded by controversy and excitement. Her life, its details, and even the handkerchief she used once are still among the issues that preoccupy people. For many, she is still a legend.
During his research, the writer discovered the story of her meeting with the crazy Ralph Greenson, and decided to cover it in the context of a book. Regarding this meeting, he says: “The story of Marilyn and Grenon is like a point of contact between two worlds that were not supposed to meet, and their meeting caused a mutual distortion of thinking that is difficult to imagine.” He added, “I wanted to recreate him, but I soon realized that in order to understand the contradictory facts and discover the secret of this relationship that brought together the most prominent actress in the world and the largest psychiatrist in Hollywood, the novel seemed the only way to achieve this.”
He added, “Everyone knew that Marilyn was addicted to drugs, alcohol and medication.” There are many published testimonies and stories that confirm this.” He believes that Marilyn, the simple country girl, who was previously known as Norma Jeane, used the image of the stupid blonde to protect herself. Although she was not educated, she was very intelligent and loved reading a lot, especially books by Kafka, Rilke, and Dostoyevsky. She married playwright Arthur Miller. But Marilyn used to resort to this to escape from the image she was creating of herself because it was not comfortable for her at all, and perhaps it was the main reason for her elimination, so the writer admits that he uses a lot of mirrors and glass in the novel, “an indication of the constant reflection of one’s image.”
Schneider resorted to what the actress recorded before her death to Greenson in order to write his novel, as Monroe could not bear to go to him and talk to him when she approached the end, so she preferred to record what she had on two tapes. Schneider admits that he doubts the authenticity of these two tapes, because in his view they “are consistent with what Ralph Greenson is trying to prove, that is, that Marilyn did not commit suicide or be killed, but rather an interaction occurred between the medications that Greenson prescribed for her and the drugs and medications that she was secretly taking.”
Schneider continues that his book does not answer a question related to the truth, but rather enters into the concept of fate, in a tragic way, as Marilyn died, while it seemed outwardly that she had solved all her problems during the last days that preceded her disappearance. For him, Marilyn’s death was “a crime without a killer,” and was caused by an involuntary rush toward the death that resided in her.
As for Greenson’s relationship with her death, in his view, the latter was very generous with the actress and gave her a lot, but at the same time he loved money, fame, and power, and Marilyn was the most famous woman in the world. The writer describes this relationship in particular as a “love story without love.” Despite the discord between them, one could not separate from the other. In the end, Marilyn saw her doctor seven days a week, and he no longer had any other patients.
The writer analyzes the phrase “love without love” as meaning the absence of any relationship between the two, even though Marilyn was constantly seducing him and talking to him about her lovers and the details of her life. While some assert that “psychoanalysis was what killed Marilyn,” Schneider believes that, on the contrary, it contributed to prolonging her life by four years, because she had tried to commit suicide earlier.
But at the same time, he does not rule out the idea that her psychological illness may have turned her into madness, as she was unbalanced and addicted, and Greenson was a narcissist concerned about his image, and the meeting between these two patients generated great madness. Schneider’s book is like a warning about the dangers of psychoanalysis, as it stresses the idea that this type of treatment does not allow for solving problems, and that a person knows his true self, and does not need to visit a psychotherapist for several years in order to discover it.
