Ralph Greenson and his twin sister were born in Brooklyn, New York, on September the 20th in possibly 1910 or 1911: biographical sketches and obituaries dedicated to Dr. Greenson inconsistently cited the year of the sibling’s birth. However, all agree that he was given the name Romeo Samuel Greenschpoon while his twin sister received the name Juliet. Apparently, the twin’s father was a true fan of William Shakespeare; but even so, Romeo later asserted, his father did not know anything about the sonneteer’s tale of woe poetically spun around Juliet and her Romeo. You can believe that if you want.

After enduring ridicule during his childhood because of his name and his conscripted violin lessons, Romeo became a Ralph. He contracted his last name later in life and became a Greenson. The psychiatrist’s friends, however, referred to him by his childhood nickname, Romi.

Romi Greenson attended Columbia University and then earned his medical degree from the University of Berne in Switzerland. He served a two year internship at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. There he met and befriended Dr. Hyman Engelberg. After establishing himself with a private practice, Dr. Greenson helped found the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, a group of Freudians with ties to Anna Freud and Dr. Marianne Kris. He also lectured on psychiatry at UCLA’s school of medicine. Known as an entertaining lecturer and a charismatic speaker, Dr. Greenson’s orations often featured humorous topics and titles like “The Devil Made Me Do It, Dr. Freud”; and some of his peers considered his lectures to be primarily performances. Dr. Greenson was known as the Psychiatrist to the Stars even before he began consulting with the biggest star of them all; and he was versed in the business of Hollywood, connected by marriage to the renown entertainment lawyer, Milton Rudin, who also became Marilyn’s lawyer. In an odd way, the relationships all seem rather cozy. Romi was also connected to several production studios, Hollywood executives and producers who became his clients, a term Dr. Greenson preferred rather than patients. The movie, Captain Newman, MD, was based on the psychiatrist’s work with soldiers traumatized by combat during the second world war.

For the most part, Dr. Greenson was a respected psychiatrist, despite his somewhat flamboyant lecturing; he was accomplished in his chosen profession, a prolific writer and contributor to various psychiatric and medical journals, magazines and related publications. In 1967, Dr. Greenson published a book which described his psychoanalytic techniques, The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis. In 2001, Jeffrey H. Golland reviewed volume one of Dr. Greenson’s text for the American Psychological Association: Greenson’s Volume One did not disappoint, opined Golland and then he noted: the definitive and confident nature of Greenson’s formulations was awesome, suggesting, perhaps, that only someone of his unique talents could master psychoanalytic technique.1“The Technique and Practice
of Psychoanalysis (Book Review).” Jeffrey H. Golland. American Psychological Association,
Div. 39, Psychoanalytic Psychology. Summer 2001.
<https://www.apadivisions.org/division-39/publications/reviews/technique-practice>While Dr. Greenson had outlined volume two of his psychoanalytic treatise and started its composition, the psychiatrist died before completing it.

Not long after Marilyn began consulting with Dr. Greenson, he began to assert and gradually increase his influence over, not only Marilyn’s personal life, but her cinematic career as well. It has been asserted by legitimate biographers and conspiracists alike that Marilyn grew to represent Romi’s twin sister, Juliet, in a fantasy world created by Dr. Greenson; and through his association with Marilyn, he was able to reconcile some feelings of inferiority caused by comparisons to his more artistically accomplished twin sister, the accomplished concert pianist who received all the applause, all the compliments, all the admiration and all the resultant public acclaim. As a child, Romeo had struggled to play the violin with a mediocre and mechanical proficiency. Some of Dr. Greenson’s colleagues believed that the psychiatrist craved the applause and the attention gained through notoriety, accolades usually afforded to only Juliet. Some have asserted, Donald Spoto particularly, that Romi believed acclaim and fame were available to him, were within his reach though the incredibly famous, Marilyn Monroe. He was, of course, correct.

There are indications that Dr. Greenson became obsessed with Marilyn. The good doctor acted in oddly unprofessional ways, as chronicled by few of Marilyn’s biographers. Many of Dr. Greenson’s colleagues, then and now, questioned his intrusion into and meddling with Marilyn’s personal and professional lives; and the fact that he allowed her to enter unfettered into his family life, thereby virtually adopting her, has been termed a complete disregard for an ethical and prudent treatment strategy and professional behavior. On an odd psychiatric pendulum, Dr. Greenson swung precariously between his dual role as Marilyn’s therapist and an assumed role as her good father, the man in Marilyn’s life determined not to cause her additional disappointment, the man in Marilyn’s life offering sapience and benevolence.

Dr. Greenson asserted that Marilyn had never experienced life with a loving family, an assertion, however, that was certainly not true. She had experienced family life as a child with various foster families who loved her, despite her protestations and assertions otherwise; and she had experienced family life with the Dougherty family, the Karger family, the DiMaggio family, the Greene family and the Miller family. But the relationships through which Marilyn established those familial links were flawed, naturally, and the families were also flawed, also naturally. What Marilyn had never experienced was perfection, not in a romantic relationship nor within a familial environment; and perfection was the lofty fruit for which Marilyn constantly reached, a condition she constantly desired to obtain, not only in her chosen craft of acting, but in her personal life and relationships as well. She must have defined perfection as unconditional acceptance borne out of an unconditional love, two unconditionals that do not exist, at least not in this human realm, and a condition that Marilyn could never find, not with any man, not with any family, not even the Greenson family. By allowing Marilyn unfettered entry into his life, Dr. Greenson signaled a dangerous intention and a belief: he could provide for her all that she lacked. What he created was a situation destined for failure, more disappointment, more disillusionment.

In Dr. Greenson’s misguided opinion, he was the most important person in Marilyn’s life even though he believed that his association with the movie star, along with his inclusion of her into his personal life became a burden on his family, a treatment strategy that he easily rationalized. Marilyn was, after all, an extremely lovable person; and she was, after all, Marilyn Monroe; and, after all, she delighted his family. Besides, he and his family loved Marilyn. Certainly so; but which was he, Marilyn’s therapist or her adoptive good father?

Certainly, Dr. Greenson’s intentions were laudable; but, the psychiatrist had lost his tactile relationship with certain realities of his life and Marilyn’s life. As he expressed in a letter which he wrote to Marianne Kris shortly after becoming Marilyn’s therapist, he cast her in the role of the pathetic and perpetual orphan for whom he felt pity because her endeavors often ended with failure despite her earnest efforts (Spoto 428). However, nothing could have been further from the truth, certainly with respect to her professional life; but even so, Dr. Greenson needed to satisfy his rescue fantasy, a fantasy recognized by his wife, Hildi, who expressed it to Donald Spoto. By allowing Marilyn into and accepting her as a member of his family, Dr. Greenson satisfied that fantasy while he also fulfilled his unconscious desire to create a sanctuary where all wounds caused by the difficulties and disappointments of life could be treated and healed, where all of his clients, persons for whom he certainly cared, could be and would be rescued (Spoto 424-425). All were fulfilled through his entanglement with Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately the reality of imperfect humans and an imperfect life could not be overcome, not even by Dr. Romeo Samuel Greenschpoon.

Before leaving with his wife for an extended summer vacation in Europe, Dr. Greenson left Marilyn prescriptions for medication, the purpose of which, he later stated, was to moderate Marilyn’s depression and agitation during his absence, to moderate her lonely and anxious moments. In Dr. Green­son’s mind, the pills represented him, something of me to swallow, to take in, so that she could overcome the sense of terrible emptiness that would depress and infuriate her (Spoto 449). The sexual component of the good doctor’s amazing statement and his association of himself with a Marilyn who needed something of him to swallow, thereby filling an emptiness caused by his absence, confirms that in his mind, as he said, he was the most important person in Marilyn’s life; and although he does not verbalize his obsession in an entirely honest manner, she had become, it appears, the most important person in his.

Certainly, most men who found themselves in Marilyn’s presence, and in her presence frequently, would succumb to her beguiling sexuality. Not to do so would have been virtually impossible, despite any initials which might have appeared before or after his name; and in Dr. Greenson’s case, considering that he already suffered from a rescue fantasy which approached being a Messiah complex, resisting Marilyn’s allure was all but impossible. Remarkably, Dr. Greenson understood the situation in which he suddenly found himself, or more precisely perhaps, the tough predicament: he realized that he was succumbing to the effects of an uncontrollable fixation. According to Donald Spoto, Dr. Greenson became codependent while a completely egocentric eroticism possessed him. Dr. Greenson, the good father, found himself in the vice grip of a serious countertransference (Spoto 515).

Briefly and generally, countertransference refers to a psychiatrist’s or a therapist’s emotional entanglement with his patient, the exact opposite of transference, a situation in which the patient transfers feelings for a significant person to the psychiatrist or therapist. According to virtually all psychotherapists and analytical psychologists, including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, in extreme episodes of countertransference, the therapist transfigures the patient into an object onto whom the practitioner can project feelings and desires; and Jung especially noted that extreme episodes of countertransference are particularly problematic since the doctor and the patient cannot climb out of what amounts to a black hole of unconsciousness. Donald Spoto went to considerable lengths to establish and then confirm that Dr. Greenson was experiencing an extreme and problematic episode of countertransference due to his emotional entanglement with the beautiful, beguiling and famous Marilyn Monroe.