The individual I chose to do my life span development and personality paper on is Marilyn Monroe. She was born June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. She is an American icon but did not lead the life of glam and glory that she led people to believe. Inside she was a very troubled, sad and insecure woman. She died on August 5, 1962 at the age of 36 in Brentwood California. Her cause of death was Barbiturate overdose. In this paper I am going to explore the personality and background of Marilyn Monroe from the viewpoint of developmental psychology. In my exploration of Marilyn Monroe’s’ background and how I can point out what impacted the young stars life from the viewpoint of developmental psychology I will focus on the influences of her heredity and environment. As well as what family and social support systems influenced Marilyn Monroe’s’ developmental growth and adjustments. I will also address two different theories of personality I have tied with Marilyn Monroe and lastly I will explain which theoretical approach I believe best explains Marilyn’s’ achievements and behaviors. I believe that the early childhood development, or should I say lack of played a key role in Marilyn Monroe’s’ life and her unhappiness. Marilyn Monroe, who was actually born Norma Jeane Baker was born into a family that had a long line of mental illness. Marilyn’s’ great grandfather committed suicide, her uncle went on a run for errands one day only to never be seen again and her mother who had been married and divorced twice prior to Marilyn left her two eldest children to be cared for by neighbors. When Marilyn was only two weeks old her mother left her in the care of foster parents. Marilyn’s’ biological father is unknown since her mother put false information on her birth certificate, with that she had a half-sister. As an adult Marilyn had memories of her mother who was trying to smother her with pillows in her crib. As Marilyn was growing up, she spent most of her childhood in foster. Marilyn was fostered by a family friend that her mother paid weekly. But about five years later Marilyn ended up back at a foster home where she was sexually assaulted on several occasions, at the age of seven. Marilyn wanted to get out of foster care, but at that time the only way a person could get out of foster care would be marriage. When Marilyn was 16 she married her boyfriend Jimmy Dougherty. Shortly later her husband was a merchant marine and was sent to the South Pacific a couple days after the wedding. While Dougherty was gone, Marilyn started working in a munitions factory, where she was discovered by a photographer. ““My relationship with him was basically insecure from the first night I spent alone with him,” she wrote in this long, undated, somewhat rambling memoir of that marriage, probably written by hand after undergoing analysis and later typed by her personal assistant, May Reis; the archivists suggest it was written when Norma Jeane was 17 and still married to Dougherty, but the emphasis on self-analysis seems to place it later in her life. It’s an intriguing document, peppered with misspellings, weaving the past with the present, at times reliving scenes from the marriage and her jealousy of Dougherty, at times stepping back and analyzing her emotional state of mind. She wrote, “I was greatly attracted to him as one of the [“only” is crossed out] few young men I had no sexual repulsion for besides which it gave me a false sense of security to feel that he was endowed with more overwelming qualities which I did not possess—on paper it all begins to sound terribly logical but the secret midnight meetings the fugetive glance stolen in others company the sharing of the ocean, moon & stars and air aloneness made it a romantic adventure which a young, rather shy girl who didn’t always give that impression because of her desire to belong & develope can thrive on—I had always felt a need to live up to that expectation of my elders.” (Kashner, 2010)

In 1946 (4 years after she was married), her and Dougherty divorced and that is when she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe and dyed her hair blonde. With her breathy voice and hourglass figure, Marilyn became an admired international star, despite her chronic insecurities regarding her acting abilities. She suffered from pre-performance anxiety that sometimes made her physically ill and was the case of her legendary tardiness on film sets, which often infuriated her co-stars and crew.
She had met Arthur Miller years earlier in Hollywood, they then later married in 1956 until 1960 when Miller found a new wife on a movie set. In 1960, Marilyn remained in Hollywood to star in different movies. Feeling shut out of her husband’s affections and esteem, she had an affair with her co-star, causing something of a feeding frenzy in the press. On the recommendation of Dr. Kris, she started analysis in Los Angeles with Dr. Ralph Greenson, a prominent psychiatrist and strict Freudian analyst who treated many celebrities, among them Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and pianist Oscar Levant. Just as she had with the Strasbergs, Marilyn became a kind of surrogate daughter to Greenson, and he often took her into his home as part of an unorthodox form of therapy—or, perhaps, because he too had become infatuated with her. He saw her every day, sometimes in sessions that lasted five hours. The treatment, often called adoption therapy, is very much discredited today. Three months later (after her divorce from Arthur), back in New York, emotionally exhausted and under Dr. Kris’s care, Marilyn was committed to Payne Whitney’s psychiatric ward. What was supposed to have been a prescribed rest cure for the overwrought and insomniac actress turned out to be the most harrowing three days of her life. Kris had driven Marilyn to the sprawling, white-brick New York Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center, overlooking the East River at 68th Street. Swathed in a fur coat and using the name Faye Miller, she signed the papers to admit herself, but she quickly found she was being escorted not to a place where she could rest but to a padded room in a locked psychiatric ward. The more she sobbed and begged to be let out, banging on the steel doors, the more the psychiatric staff believed she was indeed psychotic. She was threatened with a straitjacket, and her clothes and purse were taken from her. She was given a forced bath and put into a hospital gown.
“Even with the revelations and unexpected pleasures of this soon-to-be-published archive, the deep mystery of her death remains. For those who believe that Marilyn’s death was indeed a suicide, there are many indications of her emotional fragility and a description of a past suicide attempt.” (Kashner, 2010)
August 5, 1962 Marilyn passed away. Empty bottles of sleeping pills were found by her bed, there has been some speculation over the years that she was murdered, but the cause of her death was officially ruled as an overdose.

References:
• Marilyn Monroe, (2015). The Biography.com website. http://www.biography.com/people/marilyn-monroe-9412123
• Kashner S., November 2010. Marilyn and Her Monsters http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/11/marilyn-monroe-201011 ,