Expert: DK - 1/1/2009

Question
Hello Daniel,

I am currently writting a paper on jim morrison for school. I have conducted a lot of research on the topic, but have little information on whether or not jim morrison had any mental disorders. Can you please help me out?

Thankyou

Answer
Hi Natalie,

Jim Morrison did not have any mental disorders.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, William Blake, Brendan Behan, Poe, Byron, Dylan Thomas….the mad ones, the doomed ones, the writers, poets, painters, the artists stubbornly resistant to authority and insistent on being loyal to their true nature, at any cost – this was the lineage with whom Jim Morrison most passionately identified, and it was to their standard he aspired. To be a poet, to be an artist meant having a vision and the courage to see that vision through.

Morrison was fascinated by the conflict of Apollonian-Dionysian duality in art, as is written in Friedrich Nietzsche' s The Birth Of Tragedy.
He took to heart the typical hero figure so characterised in Joseph Campbell's works that risks the journey to bring wisdom or insight back to his culture. The works of the French poet, Arthur Rimbauld were an inspiration for Jim. William Blake's quote that if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite was the inspiration for Huxley's book, The Doors Of Perception, describing his mescaline-induced seeking; The Doors Of Perception began Morrison's seeking which began The Doors artistic vision.

Jim was a man who would not, could not and did not know how to compromise himself or his art. And herein lay his innocence and purity – his summary blessing and ultimately his curse. To go all the way or die trying. All or nothing. He would not merely entertain, he was brilliant and desperate, he was driven, he was mad – mad to create, mad to be real. And those qualities made him dangerous and conflicted. He sought consolation in the same elements that had initially inspired him and helped to create: intoxicants.

Kind Regards,
Dan.