Edie Sedgwick a Troubled Beauty free essay sample

She was the seventh of the eight children of Francis Sedgwick and Alice De Forest, both of exceptional lineages, but who together created a dysfunctional household (Stein, 1982). Francis, who insisted on being called â€Å"Fuzzy† by his children, was advised not to have children due to a diagnosis of manic depressive disorder and a previous institutionalization due to a breakdown (Painter Weisman, 2006). Fuzzy exhibited his disorder by behaving almost like a â€Å"Greek god:† he was obsessed with his physical appearance, worked out for hours each day and was largely absent in his children’s lives except to discipline them (Stein, 1982, p. 6). Both parents seemed to live separate lives apart from their children, creating space both emotionally and physically (Stein, 1982). For example, Edie’s parents relied on nurses to raise their children; Edie lived in a guest house on the family’s ranch with her nurse and other young siblings, visiting her paren ts in the main house for a few hours a day (Stein 1982). Edie’s parents isolated the family from the outside world (until the children were old enough to attend boarding school) by living on a 3,000 acre ranch (Stein, 1982). This contributed to the children’s worship of their father at a young age because he owned everything â€Å"as far as the eye could see† (Stein, 1982, p. 55). Edie’s parents aimed to maintain their public image, but the family was already deteriorating by the time she was born. Fuzzy had begun to have affairs because he no longer found his wife attractive because her body had been exhausted due to having so many children; while at first opposed to having children, he later did not want to stop just so he could boast that he had more children than anyone else he knew (Stein, 1982). He would openly flirt and dance with young, beautiful women at the lavish parties at the ranch while Alice looked the other way (Stein, 1982). While she never verbally expressed her feelings on the matter, Alice began getting frequent â€Å"low grade fevers,† often visiting the hospital and declining invitations to parties due to this stress on her relationship with Fuzzy, but she refused to leave him (Stein, 1982, p. 89). The other children were silent like their mother; only Edie was outspoken enough to verbally object his behavior (Stein, 1982). She even witnessed him making love to another woman in their house once, but he flew into a rage, claiming she was insane and immediately calling doctors to the house, ordering them to give her tranquilizers (Stein, 1982). This episode dramatically changed the way Edie viewed her father who discredited her and her mother who refused to believe her, thus beginning a destructive path of feeling helpless and vulnerable that would continue for the rest of her life. Edie was in and out of various boarding schools and institutions throughout her teenage years. She first attended the Katharine Branson School near San Francisco when she was thirteen (Fall 1956), but was removed by her parents by the spring semester and brought back home (Painter Weisman, 2006). Her eldest sister, Alice (nicknamed â€Å"Saucie†) heard multiple rumors as to why Edie was taken out of school but knew it was because Edie had developed anorexia, and Saucie partially blamed it on their father, since they all learned to idolize him as children (Stein, 1982). According to Saucie, In a way, my father was a model for Edie because he would eat such quantities; then he would burn it off with his exercises and swimming and riding. But Edie vomited it up. She would sit down to a very special meal which she herself would carefully choose and eat helping after helping of, course after course, excusing herself during the meal to go and be sick, to throw up what she had eaten so she could eat more. But nothing reached her stomach, or very little did. (Stein, 1982, p. 105) The following year (1958), Edie was sent to St. Timothy’s school for girls across the country in Maryland (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie at first thrived at St. Timothy’s, excelling academically and becoming a member of the basketball team and class president, but her behavior started changing by the end of her first semester (Stein, 1982). She began disobeying her teachers, violently expressing her anger and starting feuds with and among fellow classmates (Stein, 1982). Edie was once again removed from the school by her parents during the spring term (Stein, 1982). Edie was the only child at home because everyone else was in school, and she exhibited manipulative behaviors over her parents, convincing them to let her sleep late, drive the car and indulge in similar actions that were previously â€Å"considered absolutely out of the question† according to Saucie (Stein, 1982, p. 109). Fuzzy forced Edie to go to Silver Hill mental hospital in Connecticut in 1962 due to her worsening anorexia, the first of many stays in psychiatric institutions for Edie (Painter Weisman, 2006). Silver Hill was an open facility, so Edie was able to maintain her eating habits and often went shopping with friends, charging hundreds of dollars of merchandise at almost each store she visited (Stein, 1982). When Edie’s weight dropped down to 90 pounds, Fuzzy had her transferred to Bloomingdale, a closed facility, in New York the fall of the same year (Stein, 1982). Because Edie was unable to manipulate her situation, she was able to become healthy during her time at Bloomingdale (Stein, 1982). However, when she neared her â€Å"graduation† from Bloomingdale when she was 20 years old and was granted a day pass to see if she could â€Å"handle [her]self outside,† she made love for the first time and became pregnant (Stein, 1982, p. 118). She was immediately given an abortion when she notified her doctors but was still permitted to leave Bloomingdale later that year (1963) and shortly thereafter decided to begin her newly independent life in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Stein, 1982). Although she continued to see a psychiatrist three to five times a week, Edie decided she wanted to study art and began taking lessons from a private nstructor. She was a social butterfly, quickly obtaining a following, mainly consisting of men, that she was rarely seen without (Stein, 1982). Her art instructor noted that â€Å"she was very insecure about men, though all the men loved her,† so she gravitated more towards homosexual male companions that were non-threatening (Stei n, 1982, p. 119). Many of her Cambridge companions noted that she was so alluring because of her beauty and her charming vulnerability (Painter Weisman, 2006). She began dating Bartle Bull, an ivy league gentleman, who noticed her unpredictable nature; she â€Å"could become immensely difficult or very sweet;†¦be creative and sculpt and have an organized week; or she could retreat and be chaotic and not do anything,† but he brushed it off, saying that it was just â€Å"part of her charm† (Stein, 1982, p. 121). Bartle also observed that â€Å"sex was a nervous, uneven thing for her. If she talked about it, it was only very lightly: offhand, frivolous,† possibly suggesting a difficulty with intimacy (Stein, 1982, p. 21). Her younger sister, Suky, noticed that Edie never liked anyone to get too close to her: â€Å"As soon as there were men who were interested, she would wriggle away† (Stein, 1982, p. 123). Though Edie did not like people getting too close, she adored the superficial attention she received from everyone she met and thrived off that infatuation. In March 1964, one of her older brothers, Francis ( nicknamed â€Å"Minty†), committed suicide in Silver Hill, the same institution that Edie had previously been a patient in (Painter Weisman, 2006). His suicide tore the family further apart because it apparently immediately followed Minty’s confession of his homosexuality to his father, who did not take the confession lightly, aggressive voicing his disapproval (Stein, 1982). Edie blamed her father for Minty’s suicide and further believed that Fuzzy was the reason for all her siblings’ problems (Stein, 1982). When Edie celebrated her twenty-first birthday less than two months later, activating a trust fund from her maternal grandmother, Edie decided Cambridge was too small for her so she moved to New York City (Painter Weisman, 2006). Her social networks blossomsed, but her family was struck with another tragedy before the year ended. She and her eldest brother, Bobby, were involved in car crashes on New Year’s Eve on opposite sides of the country (she had gone home to California for the holidays) (Stein, 1982). Edie made a full recovery; Bobby died twelve days later (Stein, 1982). Edie again blamed their father for her brother’s death due to the destructive relationship her father and brother had, similar to her father’s relationship with Minty (Stein, 1982). By this time, Edie drank heavily and had been chain smoking for years. It is undetermined when she began using illegal drugs, but these behaviors all escalated once she met Andy Warhol in March of 1965 (Painter Weisman, 2006). Andy was immediately taken with her and she soon became one of his â€Å"superstars,† accompanying him to parties and being featured in his photographs and underground movies (Stein, 1982). The Bohemian, often predominantly homosexual crowd that hung around Andy’s â€Å"Factory† and accompanied him to parties was driven by illegal substances (Painter Weisman, 2006). Andy and Edie’s relationship was very controversial, but most viewed them as a team; they thrived off of each other’s identical artistic soul (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie was so enthralled with Andy that she cut all her hair off and bleached it in order to match his haircut; they also often wore matching outfits to parties (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie rose to fame due in part to Andy: she trademarked her style of black tights, leotards, loose tops and chandelier earrings and was featured in such magazines as Vogue (Painter Weisman, 2006). Andy has been criticized for exploiting Edie because she paid many of his bills when they were out together and he let her take center stage in all social situations, remaining in the background himself, photographing and filming her demise as she fell deeper into the clutches of addiction (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie continued to draw people in with her needy innocence and naivete which gave way for her lack of inhibition and thus addiction to alcohol and drugs which helped her spiral more and more out of control (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie had always been used to charging everything she bought and consequently had little concept of money (Stein, 1982). She spent her entire $80,000 trust fund from her grandmother in six months in New York; as the bills started piling up, she just neglected them, continuing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on clothes, fur coats, make up, and lavish dinners for the entire Factory entourage (Painter Weisman, 2006). If one store or limo company (a friend had since crashed her Mercedes Benz) canceled her credit due to non-payment, she would simply move on to another (Painter Weisman, 2006). She also shoplifted from stores and took home silverware from restaurants (Painter Weisman, 2006). As previously stated, Edie had never had much interest in serious relationships or marriage, but that changed when she became involved with Bob Neuwirth who worked with Bob Dylan (Painter Weisman, 2006). She was still Andy’s superstar at this time, starring in all his films, but Dylan’s managers wanted to help her become a real actress and suggested she distance herself from him and the scene at the Factory (Painter Weisman, 2006). This caused much tension between her and Andy, especially after she asked him to stop showing her films (Painter Weisman, 2006). Her behavior became more erratic, sometimes shifting multiple times a day between the thrill-seeking, fun-loving personality which everyone at the Factory was accustomed, to a more severe version of herself that demanded that she be taken seriously (Painter Weisman, 2006). The shallow nature of her relationships became evident during this part of her life because few people sided with her in her quest to move on with her life (Painter Weisman, 2006). She and Andy eventually parted ways in February of 1966 (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie left Andy partly because of her romantic relationship with Neuwirth (Painter Weisman, 2006). She recalled being utterly obsessed over him because it was her first true love and she did not know how to control her feelings; if they were not making love, she started fights with him that sometimes got physical (Painter Weisman, 2006). This was partly due to her drug addictions which consumed her life as much as Neuwirth (Painter Weisman, 2006). He ended it early the following year because of her erratic behavior and addiction to barbiturates and â€Å"speed† (Painter Weisman, 2006). She had finally let herself get close to a man, but it ended in devastation because of her addictions (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie had little left in her life by this point except her addictions. In April 1967, she caused a fire at the Chelsea hotel, where she was currently living due to a similar fire in her previous apartment, because she dropped a lit cigarette when she passed out one night after getting high (Painter Weisman, 2006). Now she did not even have her fur coats and jewelry. She sporadically moved from New York back to California that summer when she tagged along with some new friends on their way back to school on the opposite side of the country (Painter Weisman, 2006). The next few years is dotted with trips back to New York which include various hospitalizations due to her drug use and self destructive behaviors, but she ends up back at home with her mother in late 1968, about a year after her father died (Painter Weisman, 2006). After being busted for drunkenly spilling a bottle pills in front of police officers, authorities sent her to the Cottage Hospital psychiatric ward where she met Michael Post (Painter Weisman, 2006). Michael Post fell in love with Edie for much the same reason as everyone else did: her vulnerable naivete combined with her beauty were still undeniably intoxicating (Painter Weisman, 2006). Edie had never fully given up on the idea of becoming a wife; she thought it was something she could excel at if she tried, so she tried with Michael (Painter Weisman, 2006). They were married on July 24, 1971 at her family ranch, just two weeks after he proposed (Painter Weisman, 2006). Unfortunately for Edie, her addiction was more that she could shake, and despite the help and supervision of friends and her new husband, she succumbed to her disease again after being prescribed barbiturates after an illness (Painter Weisman, 2006). She suffocated in her pillow during her sleep on November 16 due to a drug overdose the night before which left her incapacitated (Painter Weisman, 2006). Personality Theory Analysis Edie Sedgwick, despite her numerous hospitalizations, was never diagnosed with a personality disorder- or at least not one that was ever released to the public. However, the personality theories of both Sigmund Freud and Karen Horney lend insights into the origins of her atypical personality. Freud was the first psychologist to claim that the experiences of one’s childhood shapes the personality which he or she develops and exhibits as an adult, and this personality could be categorized as one of four distinct types: oral, anal, phallic or genital. Edie Sedgwick can be defined as having an oral personality. According to Ellis, Abrams and Abrams, adults trapped in this stage of development â€Å"tend to be dependent, ingratiating and compliant† (2009, p. 112). Edie never learned to â€Å"self-soothe,† which led to her neediness of other people (Painter Weisman, 2006, p. 91). She fed off the attention of others, and the more she got, the more she needed, because she was unable to internalize those gratifying feelings (Painter Weisman, 2006). Much is still hidden about the childhood of Edie and her siblings, but since she did not live in the same house as her parents when she was a young child and they appeared emotionally distant when she did see them, it is possible that she did not receive the soothing that she required in order for her to overcome this psychosexual stage. The oral personality adult is inclined towards â€Å"optimism, equanimity and delight,† which is obvious in Edie’s adult life because she was always looking for the next opportunity for pleasure, whether that be through socializing, dancing or drug-induced euphoria (Ellis, Abrams Abrams, 2009). Her addictions- smoking, drinking, drug-taking and eating (and purging) are all centered physically on the mouth and are characteristic of those with an oral personality. Of the two subcategories, being either oral dependent or oral aggressive, Edie seemed more dependent in her adult life even though she was able to manipulate her parents during her teenage years and some doctors and nurses in her first stint at Silver Hill. Horney’s theories on personality disturbances â€Å"are rooted in troubled social relationships,† the first of which begins with one’s parents (or other caregivers), which could have been lacking in this case according to the identification of Edie as having an oral personality (Ellis, Abrams Abrams, 2009, p. 198). Furthermore, the nature of this principal relationship â€Å"sets the pattern for future personality development as well as problems therein† (Ellis, Abrams Abrams, 2009, p. 199). It is obvious that Fuzzy had troubling relationships with most of his children, considering the prevalence of psychological disruptions among them; his wife’s relationship with them was as well affected due to his domination within their relationship as husband and wife. Edie was eternally distorted after being falsely accused of being psychotic after witnessing one of his affairs (Painter Weisman, 2006). Such an accusation certainly does not instill (psychological) safety or satisfaction, which Horney deems the two primary needs of children (Ellis, Abrams Abrams, 2009). This breakdown in the relationship, including domination (by Fuzzy), overprotection (by both parents by raising the children on a secluded ranch) and isolation from other children (when Edie was removed from school) leads to basic anxiety (Ellis, Abrams Abrams, 2009). This anxiety may have influenced Edie’s tendency to â€Å"wriggle away† when people started to get close to her emotionally (Stein, 1982, p. 123). Because of her warped initial relationship with her parents (more specifically, her father), she was unable to trust people enough to allow them to become much closer than a shallow relationship. Analyzing Edie’s life according to Horney’s theory of neurotic needs may also give some insight into Edie’s personality woes. Edie most observably identifies with need 1 (need for affection and approval), but needs 4 (need for power over others) and 7 (need for personal admiration) seem to be evident in her life as well (Ellis, Abrams Abrams, 2009). As labeled by various friends and acquaintances of Edie, there was a neediness and vulnerability about her that worked as part of her charm which drew people in to her. As stated by Fred Eberstadt, a photographer who worked with Edie in 1965, â€Å"she would go to any length to please. She needed to be accepted really on a visceral level, not the way most of us needed to be accepted- kind of casually† (Painter Weisman, 2006, p. 116). He also stated that she showed up late to an interview because she could not get away from her previous engagement and wanted to leave early because she was so worried about upsetting the next celebrity she was off to have dinner with (Painter Weisman, 2006). She was so eager to please everyone that she was unable to keep hardly anyone happy because she overextended herself. However, because she did receive so much affection, she was able to sometimes use it to her advantage, thus manipulating people. She exhibited this with her parents and Silver Hill attendants as a teenager, and as an adult, she was always able to get away with such things as charging dinners and other purchases with little to no backlash and making limo drivers wait on her for hours on end while she dined and danced with celebrities. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons why people display certain behaviors. Was her neediness just to lure people in just to then manipulate them, or was her real necessity just to have affection, and peoples’ manipulations were just accidental by-products of enticing she was? There is also a fine line between her needing affection and admiration. She refused to let most people get close to her, so did she not prefer admiration from afar to affection? If she just wanted affection, why was she so interested in Bob Neuwirth and Bob Dylan’s offer to make her a real actress? If need 1 is dominant, Edie should be define as â€Å"moving towards people,† but if her motives more likely identify with needs 4 or 7, she should instead be defined as â€Å"moving against people† (Ellis, Abrams Abrams, 2009, p. 200). Perhaps reasons like this are why Edie was never officially diagnosed. In the last years before her death, Edie had been working on a final film project, Ciao!