It’s been common knowledge for quite a while now that Michael Jackson is crazier than a barking cat, but I have the vague impression that in the past he wasn’t generally regarded as a froot loop. So when did people start noticing his battiness? Do any specific examples stand out in Jacko history?
He was into kids already when he did the supporting tour for Thriller in 1984. He also had Bubbles, the chimp, wore the one sequined glove, and the silly short pants with the white socks & penny loafers. I recall on the documentary released around then that he was already “cocooning”, isolating, building himself a private world of toys, animals and children. He had already had at least one nose job by then too.
Ironically, he didn’t start to go “off the wall” until sometime after his “Off the Wall” album @1979. Sometime between that and “Thriller.”
I remember reading an interview he did when he was in his early 20’s where he said that he had no life whan he wasn’t performing, he didn’t feel “real” except when onstage, and didn’t know how to act (what was expected of him). This is also when you first began to read about Bubbles his chimp being his best friend (and didn’t he have a snake --big python or something–as wll?). That’s when I first realized that he at least had the potentiol to be very, very odd (and very, very, very sad).
He’s talked about his childhood being very very lonely. I think he’s an extremely shy person who was put under intense pressure as a child. IANAP but I’m thinking maybe he’s got “avoidant personality disorder” or something. Being a celebrity is more than he can handle. Maybe if he’d never been both famous and a performer he would have turned out fine.
He also tried to buy the Elephant Man’s bones in the mid-80s.
Whoa, hold on there. As someone who was once diagnosed with AvPD I can tell you there’s a hell of a lot more going on there than just an avoidant personality! 
What exactly is avoidant personality disorder?
I’m guessing that he has a variety of disorders, compulsions, phobias, syndromes, and illnesses. I think it’s pretty clear that he has a whopping case of OCD. I wonder if he has schizophrenia or something.
According to WebMD, schizophrenia in men usually manifests itself in the teens to early twenties. Off The Wall was released when he was about 21. Thriller was released when he was about 24. He appeared normal in the Off the Wall era, but was showing serious eccentricities by the time of Thriller’s huge popularity. I know very little about schizophrenia, but I know that a lot of undiagnosed and untreated schizophrenics are really “wacko.”
I firmly believe that he is severly mentally ill, and I hope he’s under the care of a competent psychiatrist.
I also have OCD, but I don’t think Michael is OCD. Nor do I think he’s schizo-because he doesnt’ go off on random sentences like, “The picture has a headace, and I want to get a job so I can go to school and get a job in a bakery.”
Or something like that. I’d guess he’s bipolar. If only because he seemed really manic.
http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis1/p21-pe08.html
To summarize, it’s basicly when a person aviods getting involved in social situations because of an intense fear of rejection. I don’t really meet the criteria for it anymore, although I still have panic attacks, but they’re not based on any social fears.
Guin–OCD and schizophrenia manifest themselves in many different ways, as you know. Not everyone has the same symptoms. A lot of his behaviors point to OCD, imho, from the surgical mask that he always wore (not in this interview, tho) to the compulsive shopping. He seems to have major paranoia issues (the masks on the kids) and be really disconnected from reality. Maybe he’s bipolar, too. I dunno. But he’s no garden variety eccentric, that’s for sure.
That’s interesting about avoidant personality disorder.
True, very true. He could have a mixture of disorders.
Either way, it’s disturbing.