The bizarre and exotic lifestyle of James Douglas Morrison all began on 8 December 1943 in Melbourne, Florida. Jim was the child of Steve and Clara Morrison who went on to have two more children, a sister named Anne and a brother named Andy. Morrison's father, Steve, was an Admiral in the US Navy and due to the ever-changing locations his work demanded, the Morrisons constantly moved from house to house and state to state. They resided in Melbourne, FL, Albuquerque, NM, Los Altos and Claremont, CA as well as Washington DC to name a few.

             Morrison was a rebellious child to an extent. He felt he was being pushed into a direction by his parents he did not want to go. Morrison struggled with this until he embraced an independent and live for myself philosophy. This way of thought guided Morrison through life in both good and bad times. This mentality became publicly visible some years later. It was a combination of ideas like these plus many other childhood experiences which created the writer as well as the topics of writing covered by Morrison. Morrison's parents used a type of punishment known as dress-them-down which involved no physical violence but instead used verbal abuse until tear followed.

             It was high school where Morrison's writing began its early course. In his spare time Morrison poured his racing mind into the pages of notebooks, stuffing them one by one. The passion of writing was fueled by the world inside his mind in addition to the ideas from books which congested the walls of his room. The authors of these books included Kerouac, Rimbaud, Blake, Camus, Balzac, Joyce, and Baudelaire. Several of Morrison's classmates claim that Morrison would wave his arm around in a room full of books asking them to choose any one of their choice and to start randomly reading and before the paragraph was complete, Morrison would both identify the title and author. In the classroom Morrison's participation was the .