How the Great Become Great… and You & I Don't CASE STUDIES
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Greatness: How The Great Become Great… And You & I Don’t CASE STUDIES Bill Dorris Ph.D. School of Communications Dublin City University Dublin 9, Ireland © 2017 Contents p2 Blog p3 Introduction p4 Hitch Goes to Hollywood p6 Woody Finds His Footsteps p20 Norma Jeane Becomes Her Dreams p40 Notes p61 Hitch Goes to Hollywood – Notes p61 Woody Finds His Footsteps – Notes p66 Norma Jeane Becomes Her Dreams – Notes p76 Sources p84 Blog The book that the 3 massive case studies presented here are related to is entitled: Greatness: How The Great Become Great… and You & I Don’t (2017). A thorough introduction to this book, plus free PDF of it, are available on my Blog: www.greatnessbd.com. You can also send in any questions or comments re the overall Greatness analysis and/or the case studies presented in this book. Introduction The three case studies presented in this book are intended to provide comprehensive demonstrations of the theoretical analysis made in Greatness: How The Great Become Great… and You & I Don’t (2017) by applying this analysis to three very different lives over the course of 20+ years of development. There are several reasons for presenting such extensive case studies First off, while many of us tend to think of various greats with reference to one or perhaps two defining characteristics - Mozart's 'perfect pitch' being the key to his compositions, or Einstein’s 'pure intellect' being the power behind his theory of relativity - in my experience becoming a great in any field always involves the interplay of not one or two but typically five Key Characteristics. Moreover all of these develop over course of two or more decades of intense problem solving which elaborates initial genetic biases into incredibly complex, powerful, and compelling versions of intelligence, personality, and self. It is these Key Characteristics (typically five of them) which are unique to any given great and which allow this person to take on and solve the key problems of a field/ society for a given generation. Thus, for example, the greatest productions of Hitchcock, or Woody Guthrie, or Norma Jeane / Marilyn Monroe are down to not just the obvious intellectual or physical characteristics but to several far less obvious yet equally essential aspects of personality & self such as Hitchcock’s fear of an overwhelming and chaotic world, Guthrie’s terror of intimacy, and Norma Jeane’s perfect self doubt. The three case studies presented here will hopefully allow you to experience the complex developmental processes involved in creating all of the Key Characteristics which were essential to Hitch, Woody, and Norma Jeane / Marilyn. In particular they will demonstrate the unpredictable and often chaotic influences which result in a future great gaining access to The Right Kind of Problems (ie those which are essential to accelerating the development of a particular Key Characteristic - int, pers, or self) over the full course of development, ie 20+ years. In the process it will become evident that obtaining and taking on such opportunities has little to do with our mythical notions of such development being driven by the individual's efforts (struggles, courage, etc) or talent (genius, creativity, etc). What in fact happens in each case is that opportunities to take on The Right Kind of Problems (as well as having the resources and interpersonal support necessary to solve them) come about due to the interplay of influences from what I've come to call The 4 Worlds. That is, it is the interplay between the individual's talents, interests, motivations, etc (personal world) and the 3 more powerful worlds the person is ever embedded within - ie the interpersonal (family, friends, etc), institutional (school, film studio, etc) and societal (political, economic, cultural influences) - which determines what sort of developmental problems the individual is able to take on at any point in time. Given the complexity of this developmental picture, the easiest, clearest, most thorough and compelling way to demonstrate it is through the use of case studies, case studies which will follow the individual great from birth through two+ decades until the person definitely attains a foothold in s eventual field of fame. I chose to do case studies of Hitchcock, Woody Guthrie, and Norma Jeane/ Marilyn for several reasons. I wanted to use greats who would be familiar to a wide audience, individuals who clearly influenced society in the 20th century. In this regard Einstein and Picasso obviously would have qualified, so too would have, eg, Louis Armstrong or Charlie Parker. However, I also wanted to make the case studies easily accessible, in particular the details of the development of the Key Characteristics in each case. This was going to be tough enough for the personality characteristics, no matter whom I chose. I didn't want to add on cram courses in the likes of jazz, European art history, or late 19th century physics, as well. (I ended up doing some of this anyhow as there is an extensive analysis of Einstein in Greatness) Beyond this I wanted to use three individuals whose greatest productions could in no way have been anticipated from their origins and early years of development. This would make it easier to show the interplay of all 4 Worlds in determining access to The Right Kind of Problems over and over again throughout the course of their development. It would also – hopefully - make for a compelling read. Obviously the same analysis would have to be shown to apply to other greats, such as Mozart or Einstein. Hopefully this has been thoroughly demonstrated at various points in the Greatness book. It should be emphasized that the three case studies presented here are not potted biographies. The sort of analyses developed in these case studies has never - to my knowledge - been made before. What I've done in each case was make my own best determination of the Key Characteristics each person (Hitch, Woody, Norma Jeane) would have required to produce their greatest works (this is done at the outset of each case study). The case studies then try to immerse you in the experience of each person as these Key Characteristics develop over the course of two+ decades. In this sense the case studies will read more like stories than traditional psychological case studies. Aside from me flagging the interplay of all 4 Worlds in determining the person's access to The Right Kind of Problems to accelerate the development of each characteristic, I've tried to bring alive the experience of development. That is, for eg, the experience of Hitch developing an active inner life Edgar Allan Poe would have been proud to be bricked up in; of Woody becoming a wordslinger; of Norma Jeane acquiring her survivor morality. While there is no explicit theoretical analysis presented anywhere in the case studies, there are extensive Notes throughout which document the theory and research underlying all aspects of these case studies. The overall developmental analysis which applies to all three case studies is of course presented in the Greatness (2017) book, frequently with reference to examples taken from these case studies. Print versions of both the current book and Greatness: How The Great Become Great… and You & I Don’t (2017) are available on www.lulu.com and www.createspace.com. On either site, just search for “Dorris Greatness”. A free PDF of the Greatness (2017) book is also available on my blog: www.greatnessbd.com Hitch Goes to Hollywood The movies that we associate with Hitchcock have his hands all over them – Notorious, Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho. In Donald Spoto's words, they are "astonishingly personal documents". (1) Or as Albert LaValley puts it, "his themes and interests are indeed almost too obsessively recurrent not to be his own". If we look at these recurrent themes and interests, and the "montage methods" Hitch used to "produce effects he has obviously experienced", we should have a good idea re what Key Characteristics he needed to create the films that are his legacy – the Key Characteristics which were driving, organizing, motivating his work as a film director, creating the films for which Alfred Hitchcock became famous. Perhaps the most obvious place to start is with sexuality, the "murkier side" of sexuality, the kind of sexuality "where feelings of other kinds abound", feelings of "anxiety, fear, murder"; the kind of sexuality that shows up in Strangers on a Train with it's "under- currents of sex and murder, of homosexual threats and attractions, blendings of wives and mothers”. Think of the "perverse experimentation with Tippi Hedren by Sean Connery" in Marnie; the "final images of (Anthony) Perkins against a white wall (in Psycho), mother's voice and skull, Janet Leigh's car rising from the murk…". Think of the sort of sexuality that shows up in Vertigo, where Scottie's "preoccupation with female clothing borders on the perverse"; where Jimmy Stewart spends the first half of the film tracking Kim Novak, and the second half "undressing her". Hitch's sexuality is the sort of sexuality that is driven by fear, "fear of a devouring, voracious mother"; a fear that goes right to the core of the male identity, fear of a "continual threat of annihilation, of being swallowed up", a fear of "being 'swamped'". It's a fear of "psychic obliteration", a fear that drives Norman Bates to "his own ritual of defilement", to the slashing then "meticulous cleansing" of that bloody bathroom. It's the fear that Uncle Charlie knew in Shadow of a Doubt – the fear of a man who "murders wealthy widows", those women "smelling of money", the money their dead husbands slaved for, "… eating the money, drinking the money…" those "faded, fat, greedy women".