Warning: This post contains references to abuse, including sexual abuse, and trauma
Michael Jackson “towered over the 1980s the way Elvis dominated the 1950s”1. At the age of 11, with ‘I Want You Back’ he was the youngest ever vocalist to top the ‘Hot 100’ chart in the US. In the 1980s, Michael went on to have nine no. 1 singles – more than any other recording artist – and win 13 Grammy Awards. Michael was known not only for his singing talent but also for his incredible dance-routines – getting recognition from the likes of dancing legend Fred Estaire2.
In part A I looked at how condemnation, together with violent physical attacks and cruelty marked out Michael’s early years in a large family that was controlled in a somewhat cult-like way. There was a denial of his emotional vulnerability and exposure to inappropriate sexual experiences. There may have been overt sexual abuse3. In this traumatic and closed family culture, what opportunities did Michael have to find safety and emotional relief?
Escape strategies: performance, idealisation and facade
For Michael, the only safety to be found - either emotionally or physically - was to be the indispensable lead singer of the Jackson group. His performance in the group was a source of safety, not only from humiliation and condemnation – but from the terror of murderous attacks. This was about physical survival. For those outside, it was ‘how cute! The five-year-old is the most talented one’. But Michael’s ‘wow factor’ – his emotionally moving energy and talent – was also plausibly his way of not getting killed.
In those moments when Michael was performing, his father would be happy. If Michael got it right. He would perhaps then feel safe. How safe? How safe, might depend on how much he could control his performance – and the admiration – the impact on the audience. Imagine being a child in a house where physical attack and condemnation (terror and humiliation) could come at any time, but never when you are performing well. Where do you invest your energy? And how much do you invest?
“Marlon was a good dancer, maybe better than Mike. But Mike loved it more. He was always dancin’ round the house. You’d always find him dancing for himself in the mirror” (Jermaine Jackson)2
But some links between talent and trauma might be even more specific. Tito recalled Michael’s remarkable ability to avoid being hit by his father in particular. If someone ‘swung’ at him, they’d be “swinging at air”, because Michael had learned to be “quick on his feet”2. Is it possible that the energy and agility behind those career-defining dance moves began specifically as escape from physical attack?
The story told about the talent
In the biographies, we can find Michael, two years after the severe beating I described earlier. Michael is performing in front of his school class - singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ from the film ‘The Sound of Music’. His teacher is moved to tears. His mother is moved to tears. Katherine will later say,
“He was just so good, so young. Some kids are special. Michael was special” 2.
Two years before this performance, Katherine had screamed “you’re gonna kill him!”. Now, something that had grown partly out of abuse was being framed by Michael’s mother simply as a passion, a love and a natural gift. Michael’s talent, I think, was more complicated than that. Michael remembered, “my father was so proud…we wanted to please him. I mean that was as important as any contest”2. So, gradually, the small house filled with trophies.
When Motown Records staff heard an early recording of Michael singing ‘Who’s loving you’ by Smokey Robinson, one said “Where did he learn that kind of emotion?”2 I wonder if performing was for Michael a safe place from condemnation and attack, but also a safe place to connect with his emotions – to vulnerability - without this being an unsafe thing to do. Performing, for Michael, must have been a very special place to be.
Adopted by a goddess
Diana Ross with the Jacksons
Already identified as special, Michael’s grooming for stardom was taken to a new level at the age of 10. Motown removed him from his family to live with Motown star Diana Ross, who began to coach Michael alone – in how to be a star. Diana, to Michael, was a kind of heavenly mother – perfect in every way. She would tell Michael “You’re gonna be a big, big star”2. Diana demonstrated having a special power, when she walked in a room, and Michael wanted that.
Whilst on the one hand Michael’s childhood was marked by abuse and shame, on the other, it was marked by the boy being treated as special and gifted. At the same time, particular adults were marked out for him as examples of the ideal and invulnerable. Some of his most intense experiences, of course were of a powerful man who seemed immune to vulnerability – his father. By the time Michael arrived at Diana’s house, his ‘map’ contained only places of great danger, and places of glorious, heavenly safety and power. Michael arrived acutely motivated. Diana’s job was to coach Michael to be a star. But I think, the larger part of her job was already done.
So, Joseph and Katherine agreed to their boy spending time in a stranger’s house – apparently because the adult stranger is famous, and because this will further his career and theirs. This foreshadows episodes in Michael’s adult life as a star, taking in children, that would be hugely problematic.
The map of narcissism*4
Accusations against Michael of child abuse
Later in his life, Michael began to attract accusations that he had sexually abused children at his Neverland Ranch. I do not plan here to conclude Michael’s guilt or innocence as I think this is the job of a court. Given Michael Jackson’s status in American culture, I wonder why a public inquiry to answer this question would not now be in the public interest. The UK inquiry into allegations against TV presenter Jimmy Savile was not only decisive in its conclusions. It also showed just how sophisticated this mega celebrity – (a personal adviser to the future king of England) – was at hiding his prolific sexual abuse of others5. In the absence of a public inquiry, instead of trawling through the evidence available for Michael’s guilt or innocence, I want to look at the apparent role of untruth, lies and split reality in Michael’s life. This might be connected with narcissism in a number of ways.
Escape strategies: Lies, illusion and facade
As a child performer, Michael was quickly taught to develop a persona. As part of the Jackson five’s early nightclub act, the group would perform ‘Skinny legs and all’ by Joe Tex. This was highly sexualised, and Joseph had the young Michael crawling under audience tables and lifting up women’s’ skirts. Despite his embarrassment Michael embellished the act, rolling his eyes ‘wickedly’2. Michael was perhaps learning to separate from his actual feelings as a young boy, in order to adopt a facade. The audience approved. Joseph approved. Michael was safe. On tour, Joseph would demonstrate to his boys how to operate in two realities – sleeping with groupies – and returning to their mother, a devout Jehovah’s Witness2.
The Jackson Five performed at a high-profile party hosted by Diana Ross. The invite referenced Michael as being eight years old. When Gordon (head of Motown Records) and Ross coached the boys about the event, Michael corrected the mistake: “I’m 10”. But within five minutes, Michael had adopted the version of reality required to gain admiration and success. “Got it”, he said; “I’m eight. And we were discovered by the great Miss Diana Ross”. Neither were true2.
As a psychologist, I am not unfamiliar with this split reality as a phenomenon in the histories of abuse survivors. Sadly, this device to protect the perpetrator is sometimes as sophisticated and powerful as any conjuring act. Remember that years earlier, Katherine herself is recorded as having fallen under Joseph’s “spell”2. This seemed to reflect specifically a kind of charismatic and seductive power that he had.
Maintaining selected versions of reality
When LaToya Jackson wrote in her 1992 autobiography accusations of abuse by Joseph, Katherine retorted - specifically by pointing at how high functioning Michael and the others were:
″The whole book is full of lies… Joe didn’t beat the kids. Do you think they could function if we beat them like that? They’re out there singing and dancing and raising families. They couldn’t have gone to school and done all that they did if we had beat them like that.″6
It seems fairly clear that Katherine had witnessed Joseph’s beatings. According to LaToya, she had witnessed more3. And we now know with hindsight, that Katherine’s argument about Michael being high functioning was flawed. Beneath Michael’s ‘singing and dancing’ exterior, lay an internal life that must have looked very different. Katherine was perhaps relying on the main paradox of narcissism – that we see only the solution to the pain – the idealised, performing façade.
Before the hotel and stage experiences that required the young Michael to be dishonest or fake a persona, there would have been a more vital need for denial of truth. Abuse can rarely be maintained in a household without some device or control – for maintaining two different versions of reality at the same time. This would have been vital to stop the children rebelling or speaking out. It would have been vital if Joseph was going to stay out of prison.
As is often the case, there is a separation of two contradictory parts of the abuse perpetrator so that only an idealised and powerful facade can be acknowledged. It is impossible for those around them to see both parts together. What each individual victim does with that experience will vary hugely. Most do not become abusive or dishonest. But as an experience of the use of illusion – as a strategy to avoid vulnerability – it can be a powerful one. In his description of narcissism developing in the child, psychoanalyst Mitchell describes how,
“Illusions are already addictive for the parent and now become part of relating to the child…illusions become the necessary price [the child has to pay] for contact and relations [with the parent]”7
So, both the trauma of overt abuse and the trauma that leads to narcissism will usually involve illusion. Did Michael break away, or did he take up this ‘smoke and mirrors’ strategy of lies? In his 2003 interview with journalist Martin Bashir, Michael spoke of his relationship with children – expressing shock at the idea that he would be exploitative. There seems to be no room at all for acknowledging risks or the ambiguity. He positions himself far away from these things:
"My greatest inspiration comes from kids…It's all inspired from that level of innocence, that consciousness of purity."8
I hope that in time we can clarify whether or not Michael was hiding abuse from interrogators such as Bashir, or not. One child witness, Wade Robson, who testified in a 2005 court that Michael was innocent of child abuse charges, later said that he lied as a consequence of the grooming process9. If he was groomed to lie in court, this would be an example of the strategy (lying) being passed on again, until this particular victim, perhaps, decided to terminate the process of trauma being passed from one generation to the next. That would have been a courageous and non-narcissistic thing to do.
Michael at the Neverland Ranch in 2004
Narcissism, truth and lies
As narcissism becomes more severe, the range of strategies narrows to: performance, power, appearance and idealisation. Truth and honesty become optional servants to the maintenance of these strategies. Deception itself must be carefully hidden from those of us invited to admire. We must be, in this particular way, as an audience, seduced.
In psychological circles, the word seduction is used to refer to this kind of control - which is not necessarily sexual but implies being led into a role of investing too much confidence and trust in the other person. And how much the charmer/seducer/love-bomber is consciously aware of their strategy, is a matter of varying degree. We can see here how narcissism at some point of severity, might start to look a lot like psychopathy. I will write about this in a future post.
The mess and the greatness
If we ask, in our entertainers, for the ideal, those who can and want to offer the ideal might be motivated by their relationship to the very opposite of ideal. The severity of the trauma is reflected in the speed of the flight. And we select, in our stars and our leaders, the very fastest. Before he was 10 years old, brothers and sisters were standing and admiring the speed and the agility of the flight of little Michael Jackson.
Reading about some of the details of Michael’s early life, shows some origins of his adult sensitivity to judgment or condemnation. Any fall from idealisation, might provoke a strong reaction. Selling ‘only’ two million copies of Thriller may not have actually been dangerous, but it may well have felt for Michael as if it were actually dangerous. Most who have been traumatised, are not narcissistic. Many who have been traumatised, who are narcissistic, are not abusive. But who gets selected to be an icon? It is Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Charlie Chaplin, Michael Jackson. Their need for fame, idealisation and power, is the greatest.
I was a fan of Michael Jackson. While Michael was big, we believed there could be no other side to him. As he fell further and further from grace, we could only fall into two camps: saying either that he was always only great (the accusations were false), or that he had always been a mess. The third option is difficult not only for his mother but for all of us: that he was always both, and that the mess was responsible for provoking the greatness.
In the next post in two weeks, I will look at psychopathy and some other concepts that overlap with narcissism – the neighbours of narcissism.
References
1. Rolling Stone, Michael Jackson Immortalized: The King of Pop on Rolling Stone’s best-of Lists. June 5th, 2010.
2. Taraborrelli, J.R. (2004). Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story. Pan.
3. Jackson, L. (1992) La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family. Penguin.
4. Ryle, A. & Kerr, I.B. (2002). Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Wiley.
5. Davies, D. (2015). In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile. Quercus.
6. Kennedy, D. LaToya Jackson: I Just Want to Break the Silence. AP News, September 10th, 1991.
7. Mitchell, S.A. (1986). The wings of Icarus. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 22, 107-132.
8. Bashir, M. (2003) Living with Michael Jackson. Directed by Julie Shaw. Granada Television
9. Reed, D. This New Michael Jackson Biopic Will Glorify a Man Who Abused Children. The Guardian, 5thFebruary 2023.
*Ryle did not apply this approach only to narcissism. If this mapping approach has been used in your own therapy, this does not mean that you have narcissistic difficulties.