Daydreaming Disorders, Researching Jim & Pam

Frederic Bartlett demonstrated in his book Remembering (1932), no two people will repeat a story they have heard the same way and why, over time, their recitations of the story will diverge more and more. No ‘copy’ of the story is ever made; rather, each individual, upon hearing the story, changes to some extent – enough so that when asked about the story later – they can re-experience hearing the story to some extent, although not very well. This means that each of us is truly unique, not just in our genetic makeup, but even in the way our brains change over time. It is also depressing, because it makes the task of the neuroscientist daunting almost beyond imagination. For any given experience, orderly change could involve a thousand neurons, a million neurons or even the entire brain, with the pattern of change different in every brain. Worse still, even if we had the ability to take a snapshot of all of the brain’s 86 billion neurons and then to simulate the state of those neurons in a computer, that vast pattern would mean nothing outside the body of the brain that produced it. This is perhaps the most egregious way in which the IP metaphor has distorted our thinking about human functioning. Whereas computers do store exact copies of data – copies that can persist unchanged for long periods of time, even if the power has been turned off – the brain maintains our intellect only as long as it remains alive. There is no on-off switch. Either the brain keeps functioning, or we disappear. What’s more, as the neurobiologist Steven Rose pointed out in The Future of the Brain (2005), a snapshot of the brain’s current state might also be meaningless unless we knew the entire life history of that brain’s owner – perhaps even about the social context in which he or she was raised. To understand even the basics of how the brain maintains the human intellect, we might need to know not just the current state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, not just the varying strengths with which they are connected, and not just the states of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point, but how the moment-to-moment activity of the brain contributes to the integrity of the system. Add to this the uniqueness of each brain, brought about in part because of the uniqueness of each person’s life history, and Kandel’s prediction starts to sound overly optimistic. Recently, the neuroscientist Kenneth Miller suggested it will take ‘centuries’ just to figure out basic neuronal connectivity. Meanwhile, vast sums of money are being raised for brain research, based on faulty ideas and promises that cannot be kept. The most blatant instance of neuroscience gone awry, documented recently in a report in Scientific American, concerns the $1.3 billion Human Brain Project launched by the European Union in 2013. Convinced by the charismatic Henry Markram that he could create a simulation of the entire human brain on a supercomputer by the year 2023, and that such a model would revolutionise the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders, EU officials funded his project with virtually no restrictions. Less than two years into it, the project turned into a ‘brain wreck’, and Markram was asked to step down. We are organisms, not computers. The IP metaphor has had a half-century run, producing few, if any, insights along the way. The time has come to hit the DELETE key. Source: aeon.co

It has been suggested that Maladaptative Daydreaming may be a dissociative disorder, a disturbance of attention, a behavioral addiction, or an obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder. Relating to the first possibility, although phenomenological descriptions of MD and the suggested diagnostic criteria of the condition include symptoms that are pathognomonic to MD and different than the characteristics of existing dissociative disorders, MD does indeed seem to contain several dissociative elements. Specifically: (a) detachment from external reality in favor of internal experience; (b) absorption—a state of total attention; and (c) via their daydreams, individuals may temporarily adopt alternative (non-self) identities (while acting out characters' behaviors or dialogues in their minds). Additionally, some individuals have described the initiation of excessive daydreaming during childhood to avoid an intimidating or traumatic social environment. In other words, individuals suffering from an abusive environment or those who suffer from social anxiety disorder may develop MD as a means for escaping from the harsh reality into their safe internal worlds. Indeed, one study found that social anxiety and childhood trauma were correlated with MD. Such findings may point to a stress-diathesis model for MD, whereby individuals who have an innate talent for immersive and fanciful imagery may develop MD if they are burdened with stressful life events. Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

"There is nothing more spectacular as a rainbow/and nothing more mysterious than the absence of color./This other world seems by far the best/till its other jaw reveals incest and obedience to a vegetable law/I prefer a feast of friends to the giant family." -Jim Morrison

Patricia Butler: The stress of the Miami trial, together with a viral infection, had triggered Jim Morrison’s childhood asthma, leaving him with a deep cough that he was making worse by chain smoking. John Densmore has never addressed ex-wife Julia Negron's claim that Jim Morrison didn't phone called him from Paris. Pam's sister Judy had been running the Themis store for quite some time before Pam moved to Paris. Letter to Bob Greene, The Doors' accountant (received on July 3, 1971): Hello Bob, how are you? Paris is beautiful in the sun, built for human beings. Speaking to Bill Siddons a while back I told him of our desire to stay here indefinitely. Will that be possible? Could you write and give me an idea of how long we can stay on living at our present rate, a sort of financial statement in general? Also, a copy of the partnership agreement, if it was ever completed. We have decided to turn the shop (Themis, Pamela's boutique) over to Judy and Tom (Pamela's sister and her husband). Eventually, we'd like to be completely clear of any involvement. Any luck on the credit cards? We could use them made out in both our names. Please send us $3,000 for the bills. Give our best to all, later, Jim. 

Like many of the rumors about Jim and Pam, when you trace them back to their source, they're invariably nonsense. Danny Sugerman did admit to me, shortly after his cancer prognosis, he had concocted part of his story with Pamela. In my knowledgeable opinion Danny and Pam were not friends. All of my sources made it clear that Pamela would no more hang out with some starstruck teenager than Jim would. Of her family, Pam seemed closest to her dad, she often liked to torment her mom, and was often tormented by her sister Judy. In fact she'd had such a major falling out with her sister that she wasn't planning to go home for what turned out to be the last Christmas of her life because she said she couldn't bear to be in the same room with Judy. Pam was declared Jim's legal wife by the State of California in 1973 and was awarded a stipend of 1500$ per month. There's tons of evidence to contradict Kennealy's contentions about Pamela, but she conveniently chose to overlook all of it. Instead Kennealy took the most obscure stories and pumped them up to suit her own purposes. Kennealy is a delusional egotist. Not to mention that her actions pretty much confirm that if Jim Morrison had been just as smart and handsome, but hadn’t been a rock star, she wouldn’t have given him the time of day. Pamela gave Jim attention, care and love when he was an unknown misfit. My agent for about 10 years Jonathan Dolger (Jim Morrison's editor at Simon & Schuster), is still laughing about the nonsense attributed to him. Mr Dolger said that he did receive a telegram from Jim about the cover of his poetry book The Lords & The New Creatures. But he said everything else written about Jim's uncontrollable moods is complete fabrication. No one ever called him asking for the telegram which, Dolger says, is still in the file in New Jersey. Both Dolger and McLure attest of Pam Courson's importance in boosting Jim's poetry talents. Modestly, I think my book is the most comprehensive published work on Jim's and Pam's lives to date. Jerry Hopkins said it was. Despite my exhaustive research, I'm afraid Pam Courson will remain an enigmatic and elusive figure, due to the scarce documentation about her whereabouts. For what I deduced from her psychiatrist, Pam was an unstable woman whose emotional wounds were caused by a dysfunctional home life. When she first met Jim, she felt suddenly connected to a very wounded artist who she could identify with. For Jim, it was fate, and they would only separate by death. And this was not your typical rock and roll publicized affair like Sid & Nancy or Kurt & Courtney. Theirs was a real love story, and for that reason Pam Courson is maybe the only case in the annals of rock and roll who could keep her anonymity and mystery intact alongside Jim Morrison. Diane Gardiner didn't discard the idea of a suicide pact between Jim and Pam in Paris. Nobody can demonstrate such thing, but it's possible Pam decided to wait to be 27 to reunite with her soulmate.

Pamela Courson's white dress she wore in 1968 for The Beard premiere at the Coconut Grove dinner party. -Patricia Butler: During my research I ended up being pretty shocked about how easily some people would lie, and for very little reason or return. There were people with different memories, who had differing impressions and different agendas for how they wanted their place in Jim Morrison's story to be written (or, in many cases, rewritten). About confusing memories, one example that comes to mind is Paul Rothchild, who told me that Pamela had ballooned up to nearly 200 pounds, and that he'd seen her in this condition within six months of her death. Now Pamela was 115 pounds when she died. That would've been one helluva big weight loss (not to mention the gain in the first place) in a short period of time. Then I talked to her friends. While Pamela was certainly heavier than she'd been pre-Paris, she was still at her ideal weight (she'd actually been 20 pounds underweight before Paris). There's a photo of her in my book that shows her in that six month period before her death, and she looks fantastic. I liked Paul Rothchild and trusted him; he had no reason to lie to me. So do I report that Pamela gained 75 pounds or so in the last year of her life, since I have a reliable witness to that fact? No, of course not. Was Paul lying to me? No, of course not. That's just how he remembered it. Somehow over the years that healthy gain multiplied in his head until Pamela was, in his memory, overweight. This example illustrates the main problem with relying on one person's memory of anything, even someone you know to be trustworthy. You cast the net as wide as you can, then try to find that "one true thing" in what you bring back. And it's helpful to find and talk to school teachers, classmates, roommates, neighbors -- all the folks whose names people don't recognize. They pretty much always have interesting things to say, just that no one's ever bothered to ask them. In the case of those things that remain murky, all you can do is present as many sides of the story as you can and let others draw their own conclusions. Try walking those myths backwards, painstakingly, step by step, and more often than not you'll find they'll disintegrate before you get very far.

In the spring of 1973, Pamela Courson was living in San Francisco with a man named Michael Verjaska. She had been friends with Michael for a few years but they became lovers after Jim died. She was also dating Randy Ralston. These images came from a personal home video from one of Pam’s friends in San Francisco. The submitter said “Pamela Courson and her boyfriend in the early 70’s” and asked to remain anonymous. Looks like she was growing out her bob at the time. My sources of information about Pamela not being a heavy heroin user before Jim Morrison's death are: the LAPD report; Pamela's autopsy report; an independent analysis of Pamela's autopsy; January Jensen and Ellen Sander's recollections; Ellen Sander hastened to refute Pamela's rumored heroin addiction while she was in Paris, and after. "When she stayed with me, I did not see her do anything like that. And if she was a heroin addict in Paris -- it's awfully hard to hide it. It's not like you can put it down for a week. I saw no evidence of any kind of hard drug usage while she was at my house, and I was with her almost constantly." January Jensen, who lived in nearby Sausalito and became Pamela's confidante, echoed Ellen's observations. 

"During the time that she was here in Sausalito, she wasn't doing anything but smoking pot every now and then." I know it's human nature to want to believe the worst of these characters, but in this case there just isn't any evidence to support it. It's also doubtful that Pamela would have bothered lying to her shrink, who she had been seeing for many years -- since the time Jim got famous. Due to the professional secret with his patient, to learn information about Pam's mental deterioration was like pulling teeth, but I gathered Pamela, like Jim Morrison, suffered from borderline disorder. Alcoholics, heroin users, and prescription pain killer addicts like to be down. They like to feel comfortable, warm, drowsy and unconscious. I doubt that any but the strictest sect of AA would classify Morrison as an "addict." People confuse his image with his reality. He experimented with a lot of drugs when he was younger. But by the time he went to Paris he was just your garden variety alcoholic. Now I'm not disagreeing that alcohol is a drug that people do get addicted to; but when someone says someone else is an "addict," that's not usually what they mean.

Diane Gardiner, The Doors' publicist and Pam's confidante, booked press interviews with Jim at the Phone Booth, the bar next to The Doors office. “Jim was interested in strip dancers and how they felt,” Diane said. “He had a real empathy for them. He would go to those places and he would applaud. He’d be a great audience.” Diane also remembered Jim's drunken advances towards her: “Jim had fallen across the bed drunk and he just looked up at me and he said, 'I want to fuck you.' There was that old part of me going, Gee whiz, 'I’d like to fuck you, too.' So I just said, 'Sure, Jim.' I found out he didn’t like women who weren’t feminine. He didn’t like it when women got kind of brash. Later I found he thought I was being too mechanized. Anyway, we didn’t fuck and he went back out into the front room.” Maybe that was the reason he appreciated Pam's femininity and not Patricia Kennealy's brashness. Source: satireknight.wordpress.com

Dreaming, Fiction, Simulation, Jim Morrison as metaphor of the 60s

Dreaming, Fiction, and Empathy: Aside from the considerable evidence that dream content is related to waking social life, a further component supporting a link between dreaming and empathy is that the dream acts as a piece of fiction, which is explored by the dreamer and others as part of the sharing process, and that, like literary fiction (Oatley and Veltkamp, 2013), can induce empathy about the life circumstances of the dreamer. Veltkamp showed that empathy was increased for people who read a fictional story, in comparison to a non-fictional piece, but that this effect only occurred if the reader was fully immersed into the story, “transported into this narrative world.” The emotional response is greater with fiction than with non-fiction, because of the freer involvement with the characters and story, and because “the focus of fiction is primarily on eliciting emotions, rather than presenting factual information.” Drawing a comparison between dreams and literary narrative does raise two questions, on the measurement of the narrative structure of dreams, and on the difficulties associated with deciding what is literary about literary narratives. Nielsen et al (2001) quantified narrative progression in REM and NREM dreams using a story grammar tool to parse dream reports into their constituent components (actions, scenes, and characters) and to identify the causal precursors and consequences of the constituent actions. The two types of sleep did not differ with respect to the mere presence of story components. Episodic progression, that is, the minimal story unit, was defined as the occurrence of at least one character action for which both an initiating event and a consequence were also identified. A greater proportion of REM than NREM stage 2 reports contained at least one episodic progression, proportions were, respectively, 0.66 and 0.43. This significant difference was accounted for by the proportion of dreams with episodic progression being much higher (0.79) for late REM dreams of frequent dream recallers. On the question of what is a literary narrative, Mar and Oatley (2008) include in this category novels, films, TV shows, and theater, and they state these narratives model the human social world, with the viewer or reader undergoing a simulation of events. Some of these characteristics of literary narrative obviously do not hold for dreams, but the crucial characteristics that they have in common are that literary narratives and dreams are simulations of the waking social world, and that both can elicit engagement and emotion when told. The main basis for story production in dreams is detailed in Dr. Edward Pace-Schott’s study Dreaming as a story-telling instinct (2013).

The similarity between dreams and fictional stories is explored by States (1993), with dreams doing “much the same thing as the fiction writer who makes models of the world that carry the imprint and structure of our deepest concerns. And it does this by using real people, or scraps of real people, as the instruments of hypothetical acts.” States proceeds to describe “such narratives contributing to our formulation and recognition of patterns of experience,” and including scriptural violations or scripts in conflict. He compares dreams to two types of narrative, life itself, from which the dream borrows its content, and fiction, which is “waking dreams designed for other people,” and he cites Calvin Hall’s conclusion that people incorporated into dreams are those to whom we have mixed feelings, or some tension. In their paper The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience, Mar and Oatley (2008) state that “Engaging in the simulative experiences of fiction literature can facilitate the understanding of others who are different from ourselves and can augment our capacity for empathy and social inference.” They conclude that “In much of literature, the author challenges readers to empathize with individuals who differ drastically from the self,” and they propose that narrative fiction represents “learning through experience.”

We emphasize that the functional SST (Social Simulation Theory) and non-functional William Domhoff views of dreaming both see the dream as fiction. Dreams are fictional because they have events that only very rarely copy waking life episodes (Fosse et al., 2003). Furthermore, in Vallat et al. (2017), an unknown dream environment occurs in just over 40% of dreams, and is significantly more frequent than an environment that is wholly or partly taken from waking life. In contrast, other characters in the dream are more likely to be known than to be unknown or mixed. Oatley (2016) in Fiction: Simulation of social worlds, states that people who read fiction improve their understanding of others, because fiction has complex characters and circumstances that we might not encounter in daily life. He concludes: “While some everyday consciousness can remain inside the individual mind and be externalized in small pieces during conversations, fictional stories can be thought of as larger pieces of consciousness that can be externalized by authors in forms that can be passed to others so that these others can internalize them as wholes, and make them their own.” The present paper is proposing that dreams can, like fictional stories, be passed to others who internalize them as wholes. But what is being said of dreaming consciousness could also be said of the scenarios and narratives present in waking consciousness. Source: www.psychologytoday.com

"We cripple ourselves with lies. In times like these we need men who can see clearly and speak the truth." -Jim Morrison, Wilderness (1970)

Patricia Butler: Oliver Stone wanted to use Patricia Kennealy's real name in the film. The only way she would agree to that is if Stone let Kennealy rewrite her character the way she wanted it. According to Jerry Hopkins, Kennealy then took what was hardly a scene in the film and blew it up to something like 15 pages of script, making it seem like she was Jim's "other woman", which she never was. Pathetic doesn't begin to cover it. Kennealy did first meet Jim when she interviewed him at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in 1969 and the only motivation I think Morrison had to make this liaision with a rock journalist was to promote his self-published poetry book The Lords & The New Creatures. Randall Johnson (who was the original writer of The Doors' screenplay) was very helpful to me throughout my research and he endorsed my book. And the Doors film Stone directed wasn't like the film Randy wrote. Seeing the difficulty of translating the intrincacies of Morrison's life to the screen, Stone decided to reduce his story to "a metaphor of the 60s."

Stone basically took Randy's script -- which, by the way, was far more honest and did use Jim and Pam's relationship, their real relationship as a focal point, and he ripped it to shreds, creating his own little fantasy of Jim the bad boy of 60s' rock. Randy Johnson's original script was really quite good and would have made a far superior movie than Stone's eviscerated version. "There was never a question of my not meeting Jim. I knew it was going to happen the instant I laid eyes on him, long before I got the job at 'Jazz & Pop' magazine," Patricia Kennealy said in 2013. This suggests an obsession towards Jim Morrison before their "fateful" meeting. It almost sounds like a fan laying siege to their favorite rock star, rather than a self-described "intellectual" or an "accomplished author". It seems the great, self-professed trailblazing feminist's true motivation for taking the job with "Jazz & Pop" was to sleep with a rock sex-symbol, after all.

Kennealy started her bohemian lifestyle in SoCal dancing as a go-go in roadhouses while she studied journalism. She experienced with a lot of drugs, too, and she yet has the nerve to criticize Pam Courson's choices. Each chapter begins with a variation of "Jim and I we were having dinner with others..." She, very conveniently, never names "the others". This is pretty much the gist of this book. Claims made by Kennealy, claims that cannot be verified by anyone else but her alone. Who were "the others", Miss Kennealy? Why do I get the feeling there was no "dinner" and therefore no "others" involved? Her book contains claims by Kennealy that only be verified by Kennealy herself. Despite having 50 years to do so, Kennealy has never produced one iota of souvenirs she claims Jim Morrison "showered" her with, she has never identified the minister who, according only to her, performed the "ceremony" and only has a "marriage certificate" with a lot of redacted information on it with a signature that does not look like Jim Morrison's handwriting. Regarding that picture of Jim Morrison's childhood friend Tandy Martin? There appears to be something of a backstory concerning that picture, from "Tiffany Talks. Patricia Kenealy: Your Ballroom Days Are Over Baby!", by Janet M. Erwin: "She's at it again. She left Jim a valentine today, a big black and white picture of her with Tandy Martin, his high school girlfriend. Stuck it under the windshield wiper on his car. She says she's going to keep doing things like that 'to make him crazy'." Very creepy. It's the same with so many other sad cases I've encountered hovering around the Morrison periphery: they were looking for attention and a perverse sort of "respect" from people not bright enough to know better, or so desperate for someone to worship in lieu of Jim, they'll believe almost anyone who claims to have met him. Simply read "Your Ballroom Days Are Over" by Janet Erwin, and will get a much more accurate telling of Patricia's fake relationship with Jim Morrison. When confronted with Erwin's memoir, Kennealy acted like a blinded deer in headlights and never mentioned it. Something unusual, indeed. Janet Erwin corroborated about her relationship with Morrison: "I dated Jim Morrison around 10 days in two weeks. About what most of his girlfriends had. In other words, Jim really was true to Pam in his own way. All I know is that Jim loved her the best." Even all his other girlfriends will admit this, except Kennealy.

As Danny Sugerman recalled in 1993: "Pamela was a beautiful lady. Jim continually returned to her above all others. Pam was Jim's cosmic mate. Although I saw him with other women, I never heard him speak about any other woman except Pam. And I never considered he was with any women other than Pam. Pam was the one with the power as Jim's woman, no other woman ever possessed that power."  Sugerman fell in love with Pamela but he was not reciprocated. Pamela's last boyfriend was Randy Ralston. Pam called him and she asked him if he wanted to go with her to a concert at the Palladium. Randy Ralston went with Diane Gardiner to pick up Pam. Randy recalls: "She was all dressed up and looked unbelievably gorgeous. It was bizarre. Diane would be whispering in my ear as people came up to pay homage to Pamela, the rock and roll princess." At one point Randy and Pam went to Las Vegas and they talked about getting married: "We always were really very enamored of each other, but I don't think anybody could fill the boots of Jim Morrison. I don't think there was any guy who could do that in her life for her." In December 1973 Randy and Pam were preparing things to make a camping trip, they were very happy until Pam talked about her family. Pam felt so hurt about her sister Judy's remarks about her and Jim, she decided not to spend her last Christmas with her family. Randy tried to convince Pam to go with her family but she made the decision of staying with him. Source: groups.alt.music

Emotion and Gender, Jim Morrison

Emotion and Gender Typicality Cue Sexual Orientation Differently in Women and Men: Heterosexual individuals tend to look and act more typical for their gender compared to gay and lesbian individuals, and people use this information to infer sexual orientation. Consistent with stereotypes associating happy expressions with femininity, previous work found that gay men displayed more happiness than straight men—a difference that perceivers used, independent of gender typicality, to judge sexual orientation. Here, we extended this to judgments of women’s sexual orientation. Like the gender-inversion stereotypes applied to men, participants perceived women’s faces manipulated to look angry as more likely to be lesbians; however, emotional expressions largely did not distinguish the faces of actual lesbian and straight women. Compared to men’s faces, women’s faces varied less in their emotional expression (appearing invariably positive) but varied more in gender typicality. These differences align with gender role expectations requiring the expression of positive emotion by women and prohibiting the expression of femininity by men. More important, greater variance within gender typicality and emotion facilitates their respective utility for distinguishing sexual orientation from facial appearance. These findings thus provide the first evidence for contrasting cues to women’s and men’s sexual orientation and suggest that gender norms may uniquely shape how men and women reveal their sexual orientation. Men are not meant to express as much emotion as women (who are stereotyped as hyperemotional), but are expected to express more dominant emotions, such as anger, to a greater extent than women. Gender inversion theory proposes that gay men and lesbian women have the minds of the opposite sex, thereby explaining their same-sex attraction (Katz, 2007). Specifically, gay men are expected to be like straight women, and lesbian women like straight men, in a plurality of their thoughts and behaviors that includes their emotional expressions (Geiger, Harwood, & Hummert, 2006; Tskhay & Rule, 2015). Although gender inversion is an exaggerated stereotype, particularly as the association between sexual orientation and gender typicality is not always straightforward, it does bear a kernel of truth. Future research could expand to examine how gender typicality and emotion cue men’s and women’s sexual orientation across cultures. Such efforts might also consider target ethnicity, given featural overlaps with emotional expressions (Zebrowitz, 2010) and as sexual dimorphism also varies across ethnic groups (Hopder, Finklea, Winkielman, & Huber, 2014). Source: link.springer.com

Janet Erwin: Jim Morrison was a wonder of man, the best and most considerate lover I have ever had. He was straight and in my opinion, if he insinuated anything different it was indeed to get a reaction from others, to push people's buttons. He was a prankster. Jim had 20 paternity suits filed against him throughout his career. He told me he was being sued by women he'd never even heard of, let alone had sex with, and when I asked him how he felt about gays--after witnessing his intense discomfort at being hit on by a gay man at a bar--he said he didn't mind "as long as they don't try to compromise me." He also said he couldn't imagine "how men could do that to each other." Stephen Davis dared to paint an imaginary scenario featuring the owner of a local coffe shop in Florida, Tom Reese, whose denial of an affair didn't stop Davis' twisted fantasies. The problem is, Tom Reese mentioned Jim Morrison frequently in the talks he gave to his coffeeshop audiences--adding in every instance that there had never been anything of a sexual nature between them--and how he detested those rumors. 

Patricia Butler: My interview with Jeff Moorehouse led me to the conclusion Jim Morrison was straight, nor bisexual. I talked with the Morrisons and their attorneys, Brian Manion and Louis Reisman. Despite the offensive nature of some of the material with which I approached them, the Morrisons were unfailingly gracious and timely in their responses. I had more problems with the Coursons, who didn't want my book about Pamela published. I interviewed Pamela Courson's psychiatrist who treated her during 1967-1974 (Dr. Paul H. Ackerman). Also I talked at length with Eve Babitz, Mirandi Babitz, Pamela Des Barres, Paul Ferrara, Brian Gates, Bob Greene, Babe Hill, Jac Holzman, Jerry Hopkins, Randall Johnson, January Jensen, Christopher Jones, Robby Krieger, Rich Linnell, Frank Lisciandro, Kathy Lisciandro, Ray and Dorothy Manzarek, Anne Moore, Jeff Morehouse, Herve Mueller, Julia Negron, Barbara Stewart Noble, Randy Ralston, Thomas Reese, Paul Rothchild, Raeanne Rubenstein, Ellen Sander, Bill Siddons, Cheri Siddons, Danny Sugerman, Cathy Weldy, Officer Darryl Williams, and Gilles Yepremian, among other insiders from The Doors' circuit. Dr. Michael W. Kaufman, the pathologist who analyzed Pamela's autopsy report, wrote: "Her weight, state of nutrition, and state of hydration would indicate that she was living a normal existence. Of significance was that examination of the endometrium and that the ovaries demonstrated evidence of recent ovulation. This evidence of ongoing reproductive functioning is frequently absent in drug abusers. The liver, likewise, did not show changes suggestive of alcohol abuse on either a chronic or acute basis. The lungs did not demonstrate changes which would be expected in chronic intravenous drug abusers." John Mandell’s statement to the police that Pamela had been using heroin for “approximately one year” seems to corroborate January Jensen’s and Ellen Sander’s observations that Pamela was not using heroin during the year she lived in Sausalito, whis is also confirmed by Dr. Kaufman’s report. “Yes, I can substantiate that,” Pamela's psychiatrist Dr. Ackerman says in response to this assessment of Kaufman’s report. “She did use heroin, but it was not a heavy habit. She didn’t start frequent use of heroin until after Jim Morrison died. And it wasn’t very heavy use, just enough to be worrisome.” 

Virginia Flagg: Jim Morrison was an outlaw in a lawless place. He had the guts to be what everyone won't face they are.... and he took it to the limit, looked at it with brazen and fearless wonder and it all broke his heart. He chose Pamela because she inspired his best instincts and she was someone who remembered him who he really was. Their relationship was wild, strange and romantic, a very tragic romance.

Babe Hill says, “Jim had not only one-night stands, but other girl friends, certain women he was fond of if Pam wasn’t around or if they were fighting. Whatever was convenient, a place to crash, a soft shoulder.” Babe Hill had asked Jim in Miami if he had handfasted Patricia Kennealy, and Jim conceded it was possible, saying, “I don’t know what I did! I was drunk. Maybe I did, but there was no emotional involvement with her.” Jim told Babe he was going to have to confront Kennealy. Babe Hill, “Jim’s attitude was, 'I was indiscreet in my past, and now I have to go pay for it,' because he was such a gentleman. He would never just tell any woman just to fuck off. So, whatever it was, he had to see her and confront it.”

Patricia Butler: Danny Sugerman's whole focus was always to further the Doors' myth as concocted by him and Ray Manzarek. I told Danny once, when I was having trouble juggling everyone's conflicting interests in my book, that it was hard to make everyone happy. He said that when he was preparing NOHGOA, he just had to choose who to be loyal to. And Danny chose Ray Manzarek. It is something to think about. However, I decided to be loyal to Jim and Pam, and it made all the difference. In fact, Danny pointed some of the things out to me that were not true in NOHGOA before I could bring them up, and he asked me to leave some things out of my book because he didn't want these stories to continue. Source: groups.alt.music

Dissociative Identity Disorder, Jim Morrison

As many as 75,000 Americans could die because of drug or alcohol misuse and suicide as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to an analysis conducted by the national public health group Well Being Trust. The group is sounding the alarm that the growing unemployment crisis, economic downturns and stress caused by isolation and lack of a definitive end date for the pandemic could significantly increase so-called "deaths of despair" unless local, state and federal authorities take action. "Unless we get comprehensive federal, state, and local resources behind improving access to high quality mental health treatments and community supports, I worry we're likely to see things get far worse when it comes to substance misuse and suicide," Well Being Trust's chief strategy officer Dr. Benjamin F. Miller told CNN. Miller emphasized the data is just a projection, and that actions taken could change the number of deaths. "We can change the numbers -- the deaths have not happened yet. However, it is on us to take action now," Miller says. "Unemployment during the Great Recession was associated with an increase in suicide deaths and drug overdose deaths," according to the Well Being Trust. For instance, deaths from both suicide and drug overdoses rose along with unemployment during the 2008 recession. Unemployment went from 4.6% in 2007 to a peak of 10% in October 2009 and declined steadily reaching 3.5% in early 2010, according to the group. Changes also must be made to medical and mental health care to ensure that those who need care can get it, the group says. That includes relaxing some privacy standards surrounding technology to improvise care options. "This screams for an opportunity to examine what wasn't working about mental health delivery prior to COVID and examine new strategies to create a new and more integrated approach to mental health post-COVID," Miller says. Earlier this week Vermont, which has been plagued by overdoses, reported that opioid deaths decreased for the first time since 2014. "The state saw a 58% decline in deaths attributed to opioid misuse between 2018 and 2019," Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said. There were also fewer deaths involving fentanyl, but the percentage of opioid-related fatalities involving cocaine continues to increase, Levine said. "We've responded to the opioid crisis in this country as if it was only about opioids when, in reality, it's driven by deeper issues associated with mental health, addiction, pain and suffering," Miller says. "Virtual community may not be enough to hold off the impact of isolation and loneliness. And finally, uncertainty. The stress of uncertainty has a serious impact on the emergence and worsening of mental illness," the group said. Source: edition.cnn.com

Patricia Butler: At some point Patricia Kennealy wrote a serie of exaggerations about Pam Courson and her heroin addiction, citing Alain Ronay as her source. I called Alain and asked him if he had actually told her these things and he started crying and denying his allegations. Ronay also said that the article that was published in Paris-Match magazine was very inaccurate and that everything he'd said had been skewed. In the interviews Agnes Varda and Alain Ronay gave to Paris-Match magazine in 1991, both say that when they arrived, they went up to the second floor apartment where Jim and Pam lived. There is a contradiction in the Ronay and Varda stories at this point. Varda remembers clearly that when they arrived, Jim was still in the tub, surrounded by members of the fire brigade. On the other hand, Ronay says that Jim was already on the bed and that he never saw the body. Varda's accurate description of the death scene in the bathroom gives credence to her story over Ronay's. When Albert Goldman started his first draft, he simply wrote down the same old clichés about Morrison. 

The Doors Companion (1997) by John Rocco, included Albert Goldman's article "The End" which launched the most sleazy speculations about Jim Morrison's last hours in Paris. Albert Goldman, who appointed himself as my mentor, was not exactly known for his accuracy in reporting. In fact, the reason some people wouldn't talk to him (including Alain Ronay) about Morrison was because he had such an incredible reputation for yellow journalism. Goldman made no bones about the fact that he wasn't interested in what was true, just what seemed most provocative. Actually, I thanked Albert Goldman on my book credits along with my other sources, but not on a professional basis. My exact words were, "'To Uncle Albert Goldman, who told me I was too stupid to live to be 30." Albert Goldman was a dear man to me personally, but professionally he was a shark.

I thought Goldman was a nice guy to me personally, but I didn't trust him professionally and wouldn't want to collaborate with him. It would be good for people to consider the possible agenda of an author. My book is told almost entirely through the words of the people who were actually there, and all sides I knew are presented. Since I wasn't there and I don't have a personal stake in the story, I had no reason to lie or mislead the reader. If you interview enough people you start to get a sense of when people are being straight with you and when they are lying. It's not that difficult to tell when folks have their own agenda to pursue (i.e., those who have nothing to gain from lying are more believable than those who do). Also, unless all these people know each other and get together to coordinate their stories, pretty soon you can see if one or two stories seem oddly out of line with the rest and that's a red flag. Babe Hill did initially get angry with me when I told him I'd be writing about Jim's child abuse allegations but he later apologized for his reaction and encouraged me to write honestly about what I'd found in the manuscript of Max Fink, and just be sure I presented all sides and opinions (including the Morrisons), which I feel I did. Also I discovered Danny Sugerman was never romantically or sexually involved with Pamela. The problem with Sugerman wasn't in the details, but rather with the fact that entire passages were made up out of whole cloth. Many insiders had quite a lot to gain from lying ($$$), and Sugerman most of all. It is, after all, the nonsense that Danny added to NOHGOA that made it a bestseller. Jerry Hopkins tried for years to sell his book. Then he teamed up with Danny, who did a lot of editing on it, adding a lot of very dramatic and also very false information, and it's then when the book got sold. 

I talked to Mirandi Babitz quite a length about the rumors of Pamela working as a call girl on Melrose Avenue. When we traced her basis for saying such defamatory things, she realized that she never knew any of this firsthand, and she got it all from shady gossip from wannabes and rivals around the rock scene--the same gossip that had once painted Morrison turning tricks in Florida when the most probable situation was Morrison earning some extra dollars by dealing acid tabs to college students--. Ms. Babitz was repeating essentially third-hand speculation without basis in fact. My theory is Mirandi was jealous by proxy (her sister Eve Babitz had unrequited designs on Jim Morrison). Pamela actually called Eve Babitz "just a groupie" to her face and that apparently struck a nerve. Pamela was erratic, mentally unstable, flirtatious, but she was never a "semi-pro". That's patently nonsense since Morrison was very generous with Pam financially. By late 1970, Patricia Kennealy was stalking Jim Morrison; that's precisely how he saw it. Jim tried to pacify Kennealy to protect Pamela. Kennealy was maniacally jealous of Pamela and didn't understand her relationship with Jim. Her disturbing obsession with Pamela could even be confounded with lesbian attraction.

Jerry Hopkins: "Patricia Butler has worked six years on her book, and because she's turned up so much new material, my ego insists that the extra time she spent on research is why. I spent two years researching and writing No One Here Gets Out Alive; it was finding a publisher that took forever. Patricia, on the other hand, continued plugging away on this project nights and weekends. She slowly developed relationships on the phone and got her sources to tell stories they never told me, and then, adding insult to injury, uncovered some secrets Danny Sugerman and I never knew. Patricia Butler's exploration of Jim Morrison and Pam Courson's love story--and her surprising retelling of the Jim Morrison history-- should be the final word on the matter."

-Frank Lisciandro: Do you think Pamela was material-minded?

-Babe Hill: She wasn’t material-minded; that’s what Jim loved about her. She realized the beauty of his soul and what he was trying to do. She didn’t care about the material aspect of any of the stuff. That was her whole thing about being against the other Doors, and the office, and everything else. It didn’t have to do with that they weren’t making any money; it was just that they were wasting his creativity. I figure she had a very supportive influence on his poetry and never missed a chance to rag on him when he went off the track.

RiderontheStorm69: Severe depression was very obvious and it seems like it was something Jim Morrison struggled with his entire life. I think Jim Morrison might have suffered from DID. Thinking about it always makes me pause about  a few things that Jim wrote: "He felt he had to drink to silence the voices," the seeming separate identities presented in the Hitchhiker screenplay, and in the poem "The Changeling." On the flipside of that though, he could have been drinking as false courage because he was shy; His separate identities in the Hitchhiker screenplay perhaps could be archetypes, because archetypes interested him. I was just reading about DID and the article said that people who suffer from this disorder sometimes experience amnesia. And when a person suffers from the resultant amnesia, they usually try to make up a "story" for it afterwards. Jim's life can be seen as a flight from his past and from himself. The hitchhiker's journey being a metaphor for this. Sometimes, under great duress, people literally forget who they are and just start traveling. In psychiatric parlance this is called a fugue state. Morrison was definitely interested in forgetting; "Learn to forget", "Forget the world, forget the people", "Can we resolve the past?" His story is an internal drama. The family represents past memories Jim must destroy, or repress, at all costs. But as they are his past memories, the family, like the hitchhiker, is an aspect of Jim Morrison. So martydom or self destruction reappears. I tend to wonder if the film HWY was based on this premise, the two lead characters appearing two be adversaries, but actually representing aspects of one person, the life urge and the death urge.

I think the DSM IV has a category for those who consider that their changed consciousness and perception is the result of "shamanistic possession". It's called Dissociative Disorder. The difference between it and Dissociative Identity Disorder is that the person with DID experiences pronounced differences in memory, perception, consciousness, and what we call "personality" with each different part. There are typical "personalites" for DID--the angry protector, who remembers the abuse and acts out abuse on others; the child, who has less access to memories and skills; the member of the opposite gender; the older, wise counselor or nurturing figure; the provoker, or "clown." If Jim was dissociative, his memory of such an event would have been intermittent. If he had Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), he'd only remember it when he was in a particular mood. Specifically, an extremely angry mood. But the incident could still affect him on subconscious levels. Those who have DID tend to have survived abuse from a very early age. Just like in the song "Five to One" Jim alludes, "When the morning wakens/Then may I arise/Pure and fresh and sinless/" This leads me to an aside: The experience of having DID is a broken, shattered state of consciousness. The person experiences "coming to" or "waking up", or "coming up" abruptly, in unfamiliar surroundings, without context, sometimes without recognizing friends or even relatives. The person becomes very adept at covering up memory gaps by joking, making nonsense statements to throw the "strangers" off track, and outright bluffing--interpreted by others as lies--to fill in missing material. Source: groups.alt.music

Labile emotions, Jim Morrison

Psychiatrist Oleguer Plana-Ripoll knew that many individuals have multiple conditions — anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He wanted to know how common it was to have more than one diagnosis, so he got his hands on a database containing the medical details of around 5.9 million Danish citizens. He was taken aback by what he found. Every single mental disorder predisposed the patient to every other mental disorder — no matter how distinct the symptoms. “We knew that comorbidity was important, but we didn’t expect to find associations for all pairs,” says Plana-Ripoll, who is based at Aarhus University in Denmark. The study tackles a fundamental question that has bothered researchers for more than a century. What are the roots of mental illness?Scientists have found evidence that many of the same genes underlie seemingly distinct disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism, and that changes in the brain’s decision-making systems could be involved in many conditions. Researchers are also drastically rethinking theories of how our brains go wrong. Perhaps there are several dimensions of mental illness — so, depending on how a person scores on each dimension, they might be more prone to some disorders than to others. The most immediate challenge is working out how to diagnose people. Since the 1950s, psychiatrists have used an exhaustive volume called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, currently in its fifth edition. It lists all the recognized disorders, from autism and obsessive–compulsive disorder to depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. Each is defined by symptoms. The inherent assumption is that each disorder is distinct, and arises for different reasons. However, even before the DSM-5 was published in 2013, many researchers argued that this approach was flawed. 

Few patients fit into each neat set of criteria. Instead, people often have a mix of symptoms from different disorders. Even if someone has a fairly clear diagnosis of depression, they often have symptoms of another disorder such as anxiety. “If you have one disorder, you’re much more likely to have another,” says Ted Satterthwaite, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Psychiatrists have tried to solve this by splitting disorders into ever-finer subtypes. “If you look at the way the DSM has evolved over time, the book gets thicker and thicker,” says Satterthwaite. But the problem persists — the subtypes are still a poor reflection of the clusters of symptoms that many patients have. As a result, the world’s largest funder of mental-health science, the US National Institute of Mental Health, changed the way it funded research. Beginning in 2011, it began demanding more studies of the biological basis of disorders, instead of their symptoms, under a programme called the Research Domain Criteria. In 2019, the World Health Assembly endorsed the latest International Classification of Diseases (called ICD-11), in which some psychopathologies were newly broken down using dimensional symptoms rather than categories. The challenge for the dimensionality hypothesis is obvious: how many dimensions are there, and what are they? Satterthwaite calls this “a very large problem”. Ultimately, a future version of the DSM could have chapters devoted to each dimension. A 2009 study found that thousands of gene variants were risk factors for schizophrenia. Many were also associated with bipolar disorder, suggesting that some genes contribute to both disorders.

One study of six psychopathologies found that the brain’s grey matter shrank in three regions involved in processing emotions: the dorsal anterior cingulate, right insula and left insula. But subsequent studies by Adrienne Romer, a clinical psychologist now at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, identified a totally different trio of regions with roles that include the pons, cerebellum and part of the cortex. One key to making sense of this might be to focus on the brain’s executive function: the ability to regulate behaviour by planning, paying attention and resisting temptation, which relies on many brain regions. Romer and Satterthwaite have independently found disruptions in executive function in a range of psychopathologies — the suspicion being that these disruptions could underlie the p factor. Suicide is one of the most observed symptoms in DID and suicide rates reported as 70 - 72% in DID and presence of a dissociative disorder was the strongest predictor of a suicidal behavior. DID is highly associated with consequent risk of recurrent suicidal behavior. Self harm, labile emotion, and impulsivity suggest the diagnosis of comorbid borderline personality disorder. Evidences show that Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and DD have often been reported to occur comorbidly. BPD diagnosed in 30% to 70% of DID patients. “I think it’s a time for much more empirical research rather than grand theorization,” says Neale. At the genetic level at least, he says, there are many disorders, such as PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder, that remain poorly understood. Source: www.nature.com

Alan R. Graham: I believe Jim Morrison was descending deep into depression and alcoholic schizophrenia. Frustrated by the mediocrity of his fans, Morrison distanced himself from thems. In his last interview before he left for Paris, Jim had told a reporter, “One morning, I woke up and was surrounded by all of these spirits.” 

Jeff Finn: Subtlety, in the form of fine-detail gray-scale shading, is in order if we are to fully empathize with Jim Morrison's wounded core. When You're Strange briefly broaches the reality of its title: feeling like a stranger, or an outcast. It's been noted elsewhere that Jim Morrison knew that pain, which hit at a young age, so it begs the question: why didn't DiCillo wade further into that particular mire, in order to extract the actual motivations that drove a volatile artist to raging alcoholism, depression, and early burnout, all in a pre-rehab world? It's convenient to now view Jim Morrison merely as a popular icon/cultural oddity and forget that, in the end, the psychic pain that came with feeling like an outsider was what ultimately secured his psychedelic place in the rock pantheon. When I met with Alain Ronay, whom Oliver Stone had hired as a consultant for his Doors film, he told me he marched up to Stone, and asked him why he wasn't telling the truth about Jim. According to Ronay, Stone smiled and said, "Because the truth doesn't sell."

Patricia Butler: I had no opinions formed about Jim and Pamela when I started out my research. I didn't have many opinions formed. That's why it was easier for me to dismiss the oft-repeated theories when actual facts proved those theories to be wrong. I talked to Dr. Arnold Derwin, The Doors' occasional physician. At the time Jim left for Paris, Derwin hadn't seen him professionally for over a year. In truth, Jim was in bad health when he left the States. Ray Manzarek remarked on his horrible cough. Jim filled a prescription for asthma medication just before he left the States. There is difference between what people believe and what they say in public. I know from personal experience that Ray Manzarek, for instance, said many things in public which, in private conversation, he'd laugh about. Manzarek actually confirmed that Jim's asthma was giving him real problems before he left the States. Danny Sugerman, too, would write things for public consumption because it was good for the Doors's mystique, not because he believed those things to be true.  Despite later revisionist claims, Sugerman was not even friendly with Jim at the time. So asking what certain people believe is not the same as asking what what they'll say "on the record." When I spoke to Alain Ronay regarding that interview he did for that Italian magazine, his exact words to me -- and I remember them very well, because he actually cried -- "How could you believe I would say such terrible things about Jim and Pam? I loved them both so much." He swore to me that he had been grossly misquoted and his statements completely misrepresented. Now I don't know whether that was true or not. I can easily see Alain saying sensational things in order to sell a big story to a magazine, and then crying over it when he got called on the carpet for it. I also talked with the Morrisons, who confirmed Jim suffered from asthma since he was a child. Until the 1990s, Jim's parents never visited his tomb in Paris and later Pamela's sanctuary. I was really angry with Stephen Davis when he called me. When he did tell me what he was planning for his book, I found it completely disgusting, not to mention entirely irresponsible. But Davis didn't care. What do you think sells more books -- the truth or the scandal? I recommend Frank Lisciandro's book as one of the few reliable books. Frank told me Paul Ferrara had refused to be interviewed for Friends Gathered Together because Ferrara 'didn't have a good recall of Morrison.' More than that, I think, Morrison had not a good recall of Ferrara, given his flirtation with Pamela.

Virginia Flagg: I did not deal with Jim in public but there are witnesses of our friendship, albeit a bit perplexed that I visited his house. He goofed on never explaining my privileges or purpose in his life. Other than that, our relationship was very reclusive. I spent a lot of time at his house in Laurel Canyon, and Pam knew it. Pam came to trust me, and I had lovely times with her as well. Pam was bright, beautiful, charming, and funny. I never went to a Doors concert but sometimes I hung out with Jim in the afternoon during setup, or after a concert. Once I gave him acid tied to a flower before the Hollywood Bowl concert, as I lived up the hill, and he asked me to come by--but there was a form of wisdom that I gained early on, by not getting in the line that would assign me to groupiedom and would have made lose my objectivity. I only slept with Jim once. Believe me, if you had ever slept with him, you would not forget it--it was an infectious state you found yourself. Pamela was Jim's true love, she was his little girl, and the woman he chose. In that era the artistic scene in Los Angeles was a relatively small community, compared with what it birthed later. About the influence of Warhol/Nico on Jim, I don't think the Factory's scene mixed that well, being Jim straight. My grandfather was James Montgomery Flagg who collaborated in the creation of the "I Want You" poster when FDR asked for a more sobering image for Uncle Sam. John Barrymore and my grandfather were bohemian friends. In the 60s I worked serving drinks in the booths of "The Brave New World" (the coolest underground club, even moreso than Bido Lito's). One night, amidst Arthur Lee and Frank Zappa and the Mothers--suddenly sauntered a rebel dressed in nondescript jeans and a tattered shirt, and I was struck by the sheer weight of his authority onstage. My heart was swollen, it was truly stupefying. Jim was way ahead of the times in his consciousness of what was coming. I was an acquaintance of Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison though Jim referred to me as a friend. We exchanged poetry and he liked my poems. I never idolized Jim Morrison. He was a man of considerable inner strength and personal integrity but his faults were many, with a tendency to self-pity and evasiveness, and I dealt with those faults as well as I could. Source: groups.alt.music

"If you watch the footage of Jim speaking with Pastor Fred Stegmeyer you see more of the real Jim. He was very cordial and, at heart, a true southern gentleman." -Robby Krieger. It’s refreshing to see him sober and enjoying a conversation in this segment of The Doors: Feast of Friends (1970) documentary directed by Frank Lisciandro. The mystique of Jim Morrison kind of fogs the true side of what he was like. It was really nice to see this side of Jim. He listened, he was respectful and gave intelligent answers to the pastor.

Strange Days with Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison

Like a Rolling Stone may have been more revolutionary, but Visions of Johanna has a strong claim to be Dylan’s greatest song, a parade of luminous symbolism that manages to be both mystifying and incredibly potent (“The ghost of electricity howls through the bones of her face”). His Nashville backing band, meanwhile, sounds perfect: subtle but insistent, the small-hours setting of the lyrics seeping into the sound. In the mid-60s Dylan complained that he had never written anything as “far out” as the strangest folk ballads, but on Desolation Row, he succeeded in taking the ballad form to a completely new place. It’s a cliche to compare it to TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, but it fits: 11 stark minutes of oppressive, absurd imagery that never slackens its grip on the listener despite its length.

As I’ve listened to the song during these last traumatic weeks, I’ve come to see “Murder Most Foul” as Dylan’s gift to the world at another terrible moment in our history, when our leaders have failed us and we are living through a calamity that seems to have no end. Like Kennedy’s murder in 1963, the federal government’s utter failure to protect the people in 2020 is a collapse of biblical proportions. Life expectancy, a basic indicator of a society’s health, was simultaneously improving around the world, except in the United States. What we hear in “Murder Most Foul” is the weary voice of a Nobel laureate who’s closing in on his 80s, walking us through our trials and tribulations as only a great poet can do. Clocking in at over 17 minutes, “Murder Most Foul” is the longest song Dylan has ever recorded, just surpassing “Highlands,” released in 1997. President Kennedy “being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb” by unseen men seeking to collect “unpaid debts” who killed “with hatred and without any respect.” Backed by the melancholy chords of his piano, Dylan takes us through the terrible images of the Zapruder film of the assassination that he’s seen “thirty three times, maybe more” (“It’s vile and deceitful—it’s cruel and it’s mean / Ugliest thing that you ever have seen”). At its most essential level, “Murder Most Foul” marks the collapse of the American dream, dating from that terrible day in Dallas, when a certain evil in our midst was revealed in ways not seen for a hundred years—a day that, for Dylan, myself, and others of our generation is forever seared into our collective memory. The murder and the hidden machinations behind it, he tells us, robbed us of Kennedy’s brain, a symbol for the positive, forward-looking American spirit that he represented, and “for the last fifty years they’ve been searching for that.” The contrast between the culture of Dylan’s musical past and the Trump-stricken country of today is summarized in his take on Kennedy’s plea to the nation, turned upside down: That’s the place where Faith, Hope, and Charity died. As Dylan points out midway through the song, they mutilated Kennedy’s body for science, but nobody ever found his soul.  Source: www.thenation.com

Jim Morrison is the ultimate Rorschach Test, in that people only see what they want to see and it is often through a personal myopic view. To some he is forever the leather-clad rebel rock star challenging society and the powers-that-be. To others he is the quiet, introspective poet, and to many raised on the cinematic cartoon from Oliver Stone, he is a drug-addled narcissist with almost no redeeming qualities. There is seemingly no end to the Morrison maze. As Jim’s close friend Frank Lisciandro says: “The fact is that 90 percent of what I hear about Jim Morrison strikes me as being totally wrong; absolutely and totally wrong. The stories that have been made up about Jim Morrison outweigh the facts by so much that I don’t even know where to begin to remend the fabric of truth because its been so torn apart.” Robby Krieger: “Why did Jim go to Paris? It was partly that we couldn’t play anywhere and partly that he needed to broaden his horizons, get rid of all the hangers-on, and just be with his lady. It was unexpected. But there was nothing we could say. Jim obviously needed some kind of vacation, and eventually we all agreed it was a good idea.” Morrison was allegedly seeking a “artist expatriate” lifestyle comparable to many of the writers who found a sanctuary in the City of Light, like John Singer Sargent, Lawrence Durrell, Edith Wharton, etc

However, while the other Doors maintained that Jim did not quit the band, their manager at the time Bill Siddons insisted in no uncertain terms that Morrison was done with the band. “Jim did quit the band. That’s not a rumor, that’s a fact. Jim said that he was leaving the band and was going to pursue other avenues for the foreseeable future. In my mind, Jim had left, but because he hadn’t defined his new future as a screenwriter or whatever he wanted to do, he may come back. While Jim was in Paris, the other three Doors auditioned other singers because they knew that Jim might never come back. A friend of mine at A&M Records had recommended this guy that he had heard and I even ended up managing this guy who was going to replace Jim as the lead singer of The Doors. His name was Mike Stull.” Danny Sugerman controversially wrote in Wonderland Avenue that Pamela Courson had confessed to him that Jim snorted some of her heroin, thinking it was cocaine and overdosed. Of course Pamela died 15 years before Sugerman published this particular story; a story, incidentally, which he never bothered to mention in his 1980 Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive (cowritten with Jerry Hopkins), even though he knew this story by that time since Pamela died in 1974. The number of people who could be called Jim’s closest friends and confidantes can be counted on one hand. Pamela Courson, Babe Hill and Frank Lisciandro are the best known; yet only Lisciandro is available to talk. 

Frank Lisciandro: Anyone who engages in substance abuse spends a lot of time reconstructing reality for themselves, so how can you really know who a person really is when they’re always reconstructing their own reality. The sober Jim Morrison was such an appealing dude, and such a gentle and considerate person. However you also have to understand that this “drunk Jim” wasn’t always hostile. Sometimes he was hilariously funny when he drank, sometimes he was charming and witty, and he loved to play the fool for laughs at times. There were times when I saw him get drunk and obnoxious, but a vast, vast majority of the time he was more playful and just social when he was drunk. I just never felt that he was playing games with my head at all, never. I never once felt that way, but I did see him manipulate or try to use a situation to screw with people. But then again, from my experience, these were usually people who had it coming [laughs]. 

I think Jim assumed a stage character. His stage persona was the character he played. And when it worked he could not only entertain the audience, but also scare them and getting them on a whole other consciousness trip. I can say that Jim's motions were different onstage, his demeanor was different and his voice was different. He was acting a part. There was something about being onstage that forced him to assume a persona that wasn’t his own. Maybe there was a fear or insecurity that forced him to become someone else. Maybe it was simple stage fright, maybe it was his role in the script he had written. Maybe it was in the tradition of shamanism. Who really knows why?

-Steve Wheeler: Did Jim ever talk to you about being disgruntled or tired of performing with the Doors?

-Frank Lisciandro: We know that Jim didn’t like playing in the larger arenas. He told me that countless times and he’s also on the record saying that he wasn’t interested in being a jukebox and pushing out the same twelve songs every show. He was a creative person, so, of course, he wanted to do different things. So who was the guy onstage? It depended on the stage and the night. There was a different Jim Morrison on the stage in Miami in 1969 than on the stage at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. We have the film and can see what kind of performer he was at the Hollywood Bowl, and he was a pretty damn good performer that night. And while the Hollywood Bowl is a fairly big place—when compared to a club like the Whisky—he was still able to create his magic; like he did with his performance of “The End” that night. I can tell you without hesitation that Jim really didn’t have a lust for material possessions, because it was not his goal to make money with his art. The money he did make with the Doors, he would spend on a shop for Pamela or making a movie like he did with HWY. Pamela was friendly enough with me, and I had some short conversations with her over the years. I even stayed at their house one time and she was perfectly friendly to me when we were together, but I can’t say that I really knew her. I can say that when Jim talked about her, it was always in praise of her or about what a great job she was doing with the shop. Jim was very supportive of her. I think she was about three years younger than Jim, so there could have been a bit of shyness. Sure, I’ve heard stories about Pam from other people, but I dismiss them. I try to talk about only what I personally experienced, and not repeat gossip. No other woman had anything close to the relationship with Jim that Pam had. The main reason he gave for going to Paris was that Pam wanted to go there and live. He had completed his contract with Elektra, and he wanted to do some writing over there and he also was taking HWY with him to show to some French film people that he had met previously—Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy—to get their feedback and opinions as a way to maybe find some funding to make films. There were multiple reasons and objectives for his going. Pam was there and he wanted to be there with her. 

I did get the feeling that he felt a sense of disappointment that the “movement” that he had become part of after his rooftop experience in Venice—that is the movement of music and art and the re-establishment of an American Renaissance in the arts—had been co-opted by the media and by commerce. I believe that it all went sour for him. I don’t recall any specific words that he said to bolster that belief, but I had the strong feeling that he felt a sense of loss for that initial Summer Of Love movement when it wasn’t about business, but when it was about artistic freedom and community and peace and saving the planet. Jim said it out loud more than once to unreceptive ears that he was tired of continuing his music career the way it had become. He said this in interviews in various ways, and he said it to me on more than one occasion specifically, that performing in big arenas—the size that the Doors had begun playing in—was something that wasn’t enjoyable to him. In fact, he was talking to Michael McClure and other Hollywood agents about writing a screenplay for one of Michael’s books at the same time that we were working on the editing for HWY. He was really, really interested in film at that time more so than he was in his music career. In my presence, he did talk about the fact that he just didn’t enjoy performing anymore. He did suggest that he would enjoy performing if they could do it in small clubs again, where he first felt the magic, but he didn’t want to do the large venues anymore.

There’s definitely a disconnect from the real Jim Morrison and it’s because people have been making up stories about Jim Morrison for more than 30 years. All of us, who were his close friends, all have the same remembrances of Jim being very discreet. He was just rather smart in not saying private things to people who didn’t need to know about them. There are so many stories about Jim you hear from people who have suspect motives and even less credibility. Did they actually know Jim Morrison? I’m reminded of the communication experiment in Psychology 101 where one person tells another person a story and then he repeats it to someone else and so on down the line. By the time the story gets to the fifth person it’s a complete jumble that has nothing to do with the original story. And, in the case of Jim, you can see what has happened. There are folks telling Jim Morrison stories who met him once or twice and maybe had a drink with him. My advice to those interested in Jim is to believe very little of what you hear or read.

-Steve Wheeler: There are quite a few theories about Jim’s death, did you ever get involved in that parlor game mentality or try to find out anything?

-Frank Lisciandro: Well, I’ve read stories and I’ve heard stories over the years. I read the so-called first-hand account written by Alain Ronay which was published in an Italian magazine. He contends that he was there and that he knew what happened. Then again, I spoke with Mrs. Courson—Pamela’s mother—who told me what Pamela told her over the last few years, which contradicts what Alain Ronay wrote. This was a private conversation, so I don’t feel comfortable repeating it and I never have written about it or told anyone in the press. What I will say is that if what Pamela told her mother was true, and if I understood what her mother told me, then it would contradict the major points of Alain Ronay’s version of events. Then there’s the fire department’s report, the medical examiner’s report, what Bill Siddons has to say, and before you get done you’re more confused than when you went into it. There’s been a lot of talk that Pamela was some sort of heroin junkie. I don’t know that for a fact; I only know that from hearsay. I never saw any marks on her arms, and I never heard her or Jim ever talk about heroin at any time; so I don’t have any first-hand experience to conclude that Jim died a heroin death. I do know that a lot of stories that I’ve heard about me are totally made-up and completely untrue. So why should I take any stories about Jim or Pam as gospel? Likewise, Babe Hill admits to taking nearly every drug known to man with Jim, but he categorically denies that Jim ever used heroin. With the exception of Pamela, there is no one who spent more personal time with Jim than Babe. And anyone who says they were around Jim as much as Babe, is just not being truthful. I think Babe would have seen heroin use by Jim. Heroin was definitely around so Jim could have definitely gotten some, but I just don’t think he would have hid that from Babe or me. And to complicate the matter, there are people out there who make comments about Jim and tell stories about him who didn’t know him at all. These are people who met him in a bar for an afternoon, people who casually ran across him for five minutes, people who really didn’t know him, but these are the same folks who endlessly speculate as to who Jim was or make up stories about him because they want to pretend that they really knew Jim Morrison. The fact is that 90% of what I hear about Jim Morrison strikes me as being totally wrong; absolutely and totally wrong. Source: rokritr.com

Patricia Kennealy rewrites her own love life in "Blackmantle," a messy and rather dizzying fantasy novel, which is too vengeful and wild to be enjoyable. Imagine her autobiography "Strange Days," but with a lot more murder. Her alter ego Athyn was born on a battlefield to a dying mystery woman, and was brought back home as a foundling by one of the surviving warriors. Years later, she is cast out of her family's home, and goes on to become a legendary brehon. Then she discovers she is actually the hereditary queen of Keltia. During this time, she also falls in love with famed bard Morric Douglass (Jim Morrison's alter ego). Eventually the two are married, as Athyn drives out the Firvolgi invaders. But the beautiful junkie Amzalsunëa (Pam Courson's alter ego) is still obsessed with Morric, and poisons him when he comes to comfort her. Now Athyn goes on a rampage against anyone who wronged Morric -- and then she goes into the underworld itself, to challenge the god of death. At first glance, "Blackmantle" sounds like a sci-fi version of the Orpheus legend. But it becomes clear this is a therapy session put to paper, where Kennealy can get revenge on all the people in her life who have ticked her off, then live happily ever after with an idealized, faithful Morrison. It gets a little stomach-turning, in more than one way. It certainly doesn't help that Athyn is such a nasty person. Reality and fantasy collide with a nasty splat in "Blackmantle." In the end, it seems merely like a way for Kennealy to get back at Pam Courson and the Doors in fiction, as she could not do in life. Source: www.amazon.com

Patricia Kennealy: I didn’t really hang out with musicians, it wasn’t my job. Like they say in Almost Famous, “it’s not your job to be friends with them, it’s your job to criticize them.” When you see them over and over again you do develop a personal fun relationship with them. Janis Joplin was a pet of the magazine. We loved her so much and we were devastated when she died. Janis was so amazing. Jimi Hendrix, I was not a fan. All the musicians I met told me what a great musician he was and how incredible he was and frankly, I just didn’t hear it. I was an Airplane girl, I was a Doors girl, a Grateful Dead fan to some extent, but Jimi Hendrix, I just didn’t get it. Lillian Roxon was the first who commented in print my association with Jim. I was indirectly mentioned as “a chick who Jim promptly balled on the living room floor”, and “the next morning Jim’s old lady (Pamela) showed up to complain 'Jim, you always ruin my Christmas'”—a clear reference to the incident at Diane Gardiner’s house in December 1970. Before, Richard Goldstein wrote a 1968 piece about Jim and Pam for New York magazine, in which he remarks Jim “picks up his girlfriend” and they all head out for the beach. I think Jim wanted to protect her privacy so Pam wouldn't be bothered by the fans. The hardcore bandfollowers and people in rock circles knew about Pam. Another writer, misled perhaps by flawed chivalry, even claimed Pam was “Jim’s intellectual equal”.

I wasn’t around Pamela Courson all that much, I only met her a couple of times. For whatever reason Jim needed her in his life. I do believe she killed him, absolutely. Most people think that’s a really terrible thing to say but I really do believe it happened. I mean maybe it wasn’t deliberate or intentional, more like, “here, Jim, just take this, it’s cocaine” and it wasn’t, it was her smack. There are many many theories about how it actually happened, many contradictory stories about he was in a nightclub to score heroin and he came home and overdosed. But he didn’t do smack, you know, when he talked about it he said that heroin was horrible and he didn’t understand why Pamela did it. Maybe Pam just stood by and let Jim take the heroin in hopes of getting him hooked along with her, as junkies are so fond of doing to their nearest and dearest, to cut their own guilt and shame. Also, as an emotional batterer, Pam Courson was right up there with the gold medalists. Jim died because Pam fucked up as much as he fucked up. Source: rocknwomen.avidnoise.com

“Pamela showed me a marriage certificate when I was in Paris with her. Clearly no one else in Jim’s life was as close to him as Pamela was. Of course she was his wife, Pamela was Jim Morrison’s soul wife if nothing else.“ –The Doors’ manager Bill Siddons.

In Patricia Kennealy's Strange Days we don’t see any instances of Pamela being a big bitch to Jim Morrison. In fact, she comes across as rather sweet and nice, which only seems to make Kennealy angrier. Patricia Kennealy: 'Pamela Courson had great charm, when she wasn’t strung out on smack or screaming at Jim like a fishwife, by all accounts both regular occurrences.' Most of Patricia's knowledge of Pamela in the book was secondhand information from other people, and she seems to have only focused on the negative. And again, this is a third-hand account we’re supposed to believe. Note how she says “by all accounts.” So, she didn’t actually see this, she just heard it through the grapevine from who-knows-who, and took it as gospel. She doesn’t even say it was according to people who knew Jim well, or people she trusted. Most of the actions Kennealy attributes to Courson are hearsay or theory. Her 'highly respected' musical Jazz & Pop magazine has pretty much been forgotten except for the pieces they produced on old-time rockers like the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, and some jazz guy called Jim Pepper. In Strange Days, it's funny when Jim suggests that Patricia Kennealy was a secret lesbian and she loses her marbles. Later, Patricia goes apeshit when she discovers Janet Erwin having sex with Jim. And the handfasting ritual she describes honestly doesn’t sound like Morrison’s taste. Patricia met Pamela for maybe a couple of hours. James Riordan credited Pamela as Jim's longtime companion and their relationship as the predominant relationship of his life, saying 'their romance was a tumultuous blend of tenderness and uncontrolled passion right from the beginning and this fire and ice quality lasted right to the end'. Riordan also refers to Pam Courson as Morrison's sexual and intellectual equal. Source: authorial-madness.com