Theoretical Perspectives of John Lennon

John Lennon is world renown for being the founding member of one of the most influential bands of the 20th century, The Beatles. John Winston Lennon was born on October
9th, 1940, in Liverpool, England while German Nazis were raining bombs on the city for the third month in a row during World War II. John would grow up knowing very little about his parents,
Julia Stanley and Alfred “Alf” Lennon.
John Lennon’s early childhood was anything but stable. His father, Alfred, was a sea merchant who was rarely home. While he was at sea, Julia took a halfhearted approach to raising her son as well as to her marriage vows. She became well known as a “good time girl” in the local pubs and with the sailors who were in and out of the Port of Liverpool. She would often bring men home and sleep with them with John in the house, sometimes even in the same bed (Riley, 2011). John was often shuffled around between aunts and uncles.
After a long series of unfortunate events that caused an extended time away from his family with no contact, Alfred was able to make it back home to Liverpool only to find Judy pregnant with another man’s baby. She claimed to have been raped and soon after birth, put the baby girl up for adoption. The marriage of Judy and Alfred Lennon diminished shortly thereafter and eventually ended. John was five years old at the time and was cruelly forced to choose between the two parents. Initially he chose his father but soon panicked and stayed with his mother only to be separated from her again shortly afterward. He didn’t see Alfred again until he became famous at the age of eighteen (Riley, 2011).
Soon thereafter, Julia and John moved in with her boyfriend, Dykins. She never officially divorced Alfred or married Dykins. She quickly settled into a domestic life and had

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two daughters. This did not sit well with Julia’s sister, Mimi, who was often very possessive of
John. It was said that she always felt John belonged to her. She alerted Liverpool Social
Services telling them that her sister was an unfit mother. Julia handed John over to Mimi for the last time. At the age of six, John was unofficially adopted by Mimi and her husband George
Smith. Although he benefitted from Mimi’s predictable schedules and reliable husband, he’d also landed in the home of a dominating woman who could not have been more different from his mother.
Even though John did not live with his mother, he kept in contact with her regularly and remained extremely fond of her. He seemed to always yearn for the mother figure he never had.
She lived only five or ten miles away from him but Mimi never told him. As he got older, he realized she lived near and began to spend quite a bit of time with her. It was Julia who introduced him to music and ignited a lifelong passion for it. She taught him how to play the banjo and bought him his first guitar. This created a long battle between the two sisters stemming from jealousy. Mimi did all the work and Julia had all the fun. Once, John “ran away” to his mother’s home for a few days. Upon returning, his punishment was Mimi euthanizing his dog, Sally (Riley, 2011). Music and art became an outlet for him.
Tragically, when John was only seventeen years of age, his mother was killed by a drunk, off-duty police officer while she was walking down the street to the bus station. John had a very difficult time with his mother’s death. It wasn’t long after her passing that he spiraled downward into a world of music, booze, and womanizing. And the Beatles soon were born.
With the success of The Beatles during the 60s came about many experiences with drugs, women and fame. Eventually he married his college sweetheart, Cynthia Powell in 1962. They had a son, Julian, who was born in 1963. After a long series of adulterated affairs involving

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many women that included Yoko Ono, Cynthia and John divorced in 1967. He met Yoko Ono in
1966 and three years later they married. After the breakup of The Beatles in 1969, he along with
Yoko pursued a prosperous solo career producing classics such as “Imagine”, “(Just Like)
Starting Over” and “Happy Xmas (The War Is Over If You Want It)” among many others. His marriage to Yoko produced their only child together named Sean Taro Lennon in 1975. After the birth of his son, John took a four year break from the music industry to raise his son.
Tragically, John Winston Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of his apartment building on December 8th 1980.
Psychoanalytic Perspective
The psychoanalytic perspective stemmed from one of the most famous psychologists in history today. This theory is based on the assumption that our behavior and feelings are affected by our unconscious motives and are based on our childhood experiences. It is based on the belief that our behavior is made up of three parts: id, ego and super-ego. It is stated that parts of the unconscious mind (the id and superego) are in constant conflict with the conscious part of the mind (the ego). This conflict creates anxiety that is combatted by the use of defense mechanisms. Freud assumes that our personalities are also shaped by events we experienced during our childhoods (Boeree, 2000).
It was John’s lack of stability early in his life by being constantly shuffled around that would later cultivate his issues for controlling his id impulses. The id is the impulsive and unconscious part of our brain. His artistic desires were a display of his inability to control his id.
Mimi, however, desperately tried to control John’s determination for pleasure that results from satisfying our id impulses and was able to do so on occasion. Our ego is the decision making part of our personalities. It works within the reality principle attempting to discover realistic

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ways of satisfying the id’s impulses. The superego is thought to control the id’s impulses such as sex and aggression that does not fit within normal society rules. Mimi served as his introduction to the reality principle and she ultimately reinforced John’s ego and superego in a dominating manner. Although Mimi gave him stability, it was up to George to provide John with affection.
Uncle George became the steady father figure that John desperately needed and he loved him dearly. John’s primary home was Mimi’s, however Julia was never far away and Mimi permitted Julia to visit John often. Julia seemed to play the role of an Aunt or a sister rather than a mother. No matter how much time was spent together, it would not fill the empty void in
John’s life of never having a proper mother figure. The relationship between Mimi and her nephew was always lacking intimacy. Freud would probably suggest that the lack of this vital figure would leave John a maladjusted adult unable to fully reach the genital stage. This is the stage that Freud claims when an individual develops a strong sexual interest in people outside of the family.
During the time he was a student at Dovedale Primary School, John was praised for his intelligence and artistic abilities. Although his initial interests were toward drawing, painting and reading, music came him naturally. Aunt Mimi, however, never encouraged his talents and would constantly nag him to focus on his education. This clearly demonstrates that while John’s id was eager to come out, Aunt Mimi often became the reality principle in his life.
The teenage years for John consisted of many behavioral curiosities that have been examined by Freud. For example, after the death of the only paternal figure his life, Uncle
George, John grieved by breaking into hysterical laughter. This again demonstrates John’s id attempting to take over his superego. John was also curious to test the moral bounds of his

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superego and that of his mother’s. Unfortunately John would never get the opportunity to nurture a healthy relationship with his mother before her untimely death.
The methods that John counted on the most in his life were a combination of repression, displacement and transferal. After essentially failing out of high school, Mimi was able to somehow get him accepted into Liverpool College of Art. This is where he met Stuart “Stu”
Sutcliffe. Stu became the target of John’s constant abuse despite being his closest friend. This relationship best demonstrated how John transferred his anguish, pain and frustration at the loss of his mother onto Stu.
Years later, John revealed the frustration of not having a meaningful relationship with either of his parents in the song “Mother.” Despite losing his mother and not having a substantial relationship with his father for many years, it took John until the age of thirty to come to terms with these feelings of isolation and abandonment. In the song Lennon writes, “Mother, you had me but I never had you/I wanted you but you didn't want me…Father, you left me but I never left you/I needed you but you didn't need me” (Lennon, 1970). John used these repressed emotions to transfer them into a song.
Behavioristic Perspective
Behaviorism is mainly concerned with behavior that can be observed instead of internal ideas like thinking and emotion. It implies that a person’s environment determines their behavior; our minds are born as a blank slate; learning patterns between humans and animals is essentially the same; and that behavior is a result of stimulus – response.
Within this perspective, John Lennon adult life was simply a product of his upbringing.
John’s artistic capabilities and his talent for music could easily be thought of as a learned ability

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from his mother. She loved music and he wanted to be close to her. Because of her love for music, he could have simply adapted to what he thought would please her.
His rebellious behavior that he continuously displayed throughout his entire life can be attributed to his mother’s behavior in her early years as well. Julia rebelled against her parents when she was young and also against her husband, Alfred, during their marriage so it would not be absurd to assume this was also a learned behavior. This also relates to John as an adult and his tendency toward adultery and womanizing. Within this theory, these mannerisms could very well be a direct result of witnessing the many men his mother was known to have entertained while his father was away at sea.
Toward the end of his first marriage, John essentially abandoned his wife, Cynthia, and his son, Julian. This closely relates to him being abandoned by his father at the age of five. It is rumored that the marriage ended because of his affair with Yoko Ono. Again, the similarities of this reaction and that of his mother leaving his father for another man resemble that of learned behavior. He also began to drink heavily at one point in his life just as his Uncle George had done. Humanistic Perspective
The humanistic approach in psychology was essentially developed in contrast to the limitations of behaviorist and psychodynamic psychology. It begins with the existential assumptions that the study of the structures of experience and consciousness are central and that people have free will. Personal agency is the humanistic term for the exercise of free will.
Personal agency refers to the choices we make in life, the paths we go down and their consequences. It emphasizes the personal worth of the individual, the centrality of human

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values, and the creative, active nature of human beings. The approach is optimistic and focuses on noble human capacity to overcome hardship, pain and despair (McLeod, 2007).
This theory explains John Lennon’s behaviors and achievements. John’s struggle in life was his need for a mother figure. He had to find his own meaning of life within his turmoil of longing for a mother. He had to find a means to be true to himself also, and continue to handle his need for a mother figure. Through the humanistic approach existentialism is found.
Existentialism focuses on each individual’s subjective existence, or phenomenology, and on the way the individual comes to terms with basic issues, such as meaning in life and mortality
(Kowalski & Westen, 2011). One must form their own identity and form a set of values or morals to govern one’s life. Therefore, one must self-actualize.
After his marriage to Yoko Ono, things began to change for the better. She provided the classic conditioning that eventually turned John around. After finding his soul mate and learning what it truly means to love, he began to discover himself and change his perspective on life.
Later, after a successful career with the Beatles and a solo career with Ono, he devoted the early years of his son, Sean. He became a “house husband” or a stay at home father which would not have happened in his earlier years. These events are prime examples of self-actualization.
A self-actualized individual is also concerned with solving problems outside oneself, including helping others and finding solutions to problems in the external world (Cherry, 2012).
For instance, John promoted love, peace, unity, and ending wars throughout the world through songs he wrote and through peaceful demonstrations. John Lennon’s aspirations for selfactualization accurately depict his behaviors and achievements.

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As mentioned previously, it was during this time that they began what is coined as the
Peace Movement. Starting with their infamous “Bed-Ins for Peace,” Lennon and Ono turned the tables on the paparazzi that dogged their every move in order to stage their own unique anti-war
“happening.” Using their honeymoon at the Amsterdam Hilton in March 1969 as a beginning for their anti-war efforts, the Lennons invited the worldwide media to join them in their hotel suite, where they sat in bed for two weeks straight, from nine in the morning to nine at night, engaging in discussions about world peace. From a humanist perspective, this was the perfect example of personal agency.
Given all of the facts of Lennon’s life it seems rather obvious that he was waiting for someone like Yoko to bring him to a higher level of maturity: “After all I'm forever in your debt…/For showing me the meaning of success…/Woman I know you understand/The little child inside the man, / Please remember my life is in your hands…” (Lennon, 1980). It was through this relationship and his relationship to music that Lennon became his real self and reached a substantial level of self-actualization.
Within the three psychological perspectives: psychoanalytic theory, behavioristic theory, and the humanistic theory, there are various conflicts as well as similarities. As previously stated, the psychoanalytic perspective relies on the belief that our behavior and feelings as adults are deeply rooted in our childhood experiences. It is stressed that our unconscious mind is in constant conflict with our conscious mind and that our personalities are shaped by various events at different times within our childhood. The behavioristic perspective is based on the assumption that the environment determines our behavior; that we have no free will; and that learning patterns between humans and animals is essentially the same. In clear contradiction to both

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theories, the humanistic perspective supports our free will, personal worth of the individual, the centrality of human values, and the creative, active nature of human beings.
All three perspectives have the belief that our environment shapes our lives as learned behaviors. However the behaviorist and humanist are in direct conflict about free will. The psychoanalytic theory is bases heavily on the mind and our conscious and unconscious thoughts and the behavior theory is based on just that, human behavior. The humanistic theory is based on the whole person and is under the assumption that we are all good and have the need to make the world and ourselves better. There is great value in each perspective with every strength and weakness. No one method is correct in its entirety.
Tim Riley, who wrote Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music – The Definitive Live, of whom was the primary research model, has written the life of John Lennon in immaculate and what appeared to be unbiased detail. Although ethics standards as it relates to biographies are sparse, ethicist Carol Levine defined it, “ethics in biographical writing comes down to relationships with other people, and writers should try to abide by the doctor’s obligation: First, do no harm” (Scutts, 2012). Tim Riley did simply that. He did no harm and painted a painful but beautiful picture of John Lennon for all who read it.
John Lennon is well known for the profound mark he made in the music culture and the political realm. His childhood was most difficult as being laced with insecurity and sadness. He faced abandonment on many levels at an early age beginning with both parents who essentially discarded him when he was very young, the death of his only father figure, Uncle George, and the premature death of his mother. All had great influence on his development. He was riddled with behavior problems in school that began in primary school and carried on through college.
His artistic abilities became his outlet. First with drawings and later with music. From this, the

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Beatles emerged which created its own set of difficulties. John managed to make it through years of fame, drugs, and womanizing until he met Yoko Ono. The world blamed her for the demise of their idols, however this is when the true growing began for John. He developed into what could be known as a philosopher of his time and created some of his greatest work. His peace movement has carried on for decades and is modeled still today. His life ended tragically way too soon but his life purpose has withstood the test of time and has surpassed more than he could have possibly imagined. John Winston Lennon was an artist in the truest form and will live on for years to come.

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References
Boeree, C. (2000). Freud and Psychoanalysis. Retrieved from http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/psychoanalysis.html. Cherry, K. (2012). Psychology. Retrieved from About.com: http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds_2.htm Lennon, J. (1970). Mother. On Plastic Ono Band [Record]. London and NYC: EMI/Apple.
Lennon, J. (1980). Woman [Recorded by J. L. Ono]. On Double Fantasy [Record]. L.A./NYC: Geffen.
McLeod, S. (2007). Humanism. Retrieved from Simple Psychology: http://www.simplypsychology.org/humanistic.html Riley, T. (2011). Lennon: the man, the myth, the music - the definitive life. NYC: Hyperion.
Scutts, J. (2012, December 12). Biographile. Retrieved from www.biographile.com: http://www.biographile.com/debating-the-ethics-of-biography-how-close-is-too-close/10947/ Westen, R. K. (2011). Psychology (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.