Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of the Seattle based grunge rock band Nirvana. As Nirvana's lead songwriter, guitarist, and singer, Cobain took the music industry by surprise and is considered the godfather of the grunge rock movement. Cobain and his band had a prevalent influence on young teenagers of the 1990s and were considered idols by numerous individuals. Nirvana took the popular music industry by storm when they were able to revamp the genre of grunge rock and cause a dramatic shift in music, away from the dominant genres of the 1980s. The success of Kurt Cobain was overshadowed by numerous of his psychological problems including drug addiction, his unstable marriage to music celebrity Courtney Love, and constant pressure from the
Another form of this expression could be displayed in the album cover art of Nirvana's compact discs such as the naked baby submerged in a swimming pool while chasing after a dollar bill on a fish hook in their most famous work of music Nevermind. Cobain displayed self destructive tendencies in his continuous tampering with his body due to the use of psychoactive drugs. His constant use of heroin may have been the biological good feeling drive that he could have believed drugs offered. Cobain had overdosed numerous times on different substances, most notably was the time Nirvana had to cancel their European tour due to Cobain's overdose prior to a live concert in Rome, Italy. Post mortem autopsies found that during the time he committed suicide his body contained enough of a lethal dose of heroin that could have killed an individual without him having to use a shotgun.

Erick Homberger Erikson, the famous Danish psychoanalyst would have been concerned with Kurt Cobain's overall quest to find his place in society by achieving a sense of identity. Erickson discussed the importance of social and cultural climate that surrounds an individual. He was also concerned with child and adolescent development and its crucial role in answering the question of "who am I?" I believe that Erickson would place a tremendous amount of stress on social and cultural factors such as the cohort that Kurt Cobain