Michael Jackson was certainly one of the most famous musical entertainers of the twentieth century.
In 1964, he made his debut with his four of his brothers in the musical group known as The Jackson 5. He was six years old at that time, and by 1971 Jackson had broken into what was to become a solo music career that had him referred to on the Hollywood scene as the “King of Pop”. What seemed like a glorious and fasinating life to the world was, for Jackson, a life of supressed memories of physical abuse and a lonely childhood. According to George Boeree (2006), Freud used what is described as a five stage psychosexual theory.Freud suggested that personalities are developed by one’s childhood experiences, and that people become fixated on certain areas of their lives. This would, perphas, explain Michael Jackson’s fixation on what he considered his lost childhood and the physicial abuse suffered at the hands of his father.
During a 1992 interview conducted by Oprah Winfrey at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, Jackson he stated that when he was a young boy he was tutored for schoolwork for three hours each day, after which he would go to the recording studio to record music with his brothers “until it was time to go to sleep.He recalled a park across the street from the recording studio and stated that he would see children playing in the park and would cry because he was resentful that other kids were allowed to play while he had to work (Lewis-Jones, 2005). He also revealed resentment for the fact that he did not have friends while was growing up, and said that “his brothers were his friends” (Lewis-Jones, 2005). Jackson stated several times during the interview that he “never had slumber parties”, and that he was “lonely during most of his childhood” (Lewis-Jones, 2005).These statements display Jackson’s failure to progress past these childhood events where he seems to have become “fixated” on this period in his life, which eventually lead him to the controversial “sleepovers” he held at his home at Neverland Ranch for personal fans and child celebrities such as Emmanuel Lewis and McCauley Culkin.
Jackson was publicly accused of sexually abusing a 12-year old boy who had participated in a sleepover at his house where the boy’s parents tried to sue him.Freud’s view on sexuality would tie into Jackson’s personality here since Freud felt that everything in a person’s personlity stemmed from “the expression or repression of the sex drive”. (Boeree, 2005). Even though Jackson denied the allegations brought by the parents of the 12-year old boy, he did admitted that he had slept in the same room and in the same bed as the child, something normal “children” would do at a sleepover or slumber party.
Finally, Freud’s Oedipus complex theory can be attributed to Michael Jackson’s personality since Jackson was admittedly estranged from him father, quoted as saying that “I love my father, I just don’t know him. ” He is also quoted as saying “my mother’s wonderful. To me, she’s perfection”. Jackson was raised to recognize his father’s superiority by fearing him, an attribution that pushed him closer to the other “available” parent – his mother. (Lewis-Jones, 2005).
