Interesting read

Cameron's portrayal of the upper class in the film was quite negative as most of them were either stupid, narcissistic or cowardly, sometimes all three.
At the time, there was rampant inequality but this was not out of hatred, it was just "how things were" and people usually don't like to buck the status quo particularly when they are benefiting from the status quo.
He did, however, show honesty in his portrayals of Thomas Andrews, the Strauss's, Guggenheim and, although exaggerated, Margaret Brown.

Cameron was probably just fascinated with the Titanic disaster the same way a lot of us are, too. I'm sure he was equally fascinated with avatars.
Mia Carrick's a neat gal.

"His biggest influence" Blah blah blah. Couldn't even finish the post, dope.

His biggest influence? Victorian melodrama,
The church may shout but Darwin roars

Jazzomaniac brings up some interesting points which I will engage with in a semi-serious vein
Interesting. I wonder if he was engaged to Linda at the time and if their relationship was turbulent to the point that it inspired him to write Rose and Cal's relationship and dialogue. Wiki says Linda Hamilton told Larry King in 2005 that:
i don't know about "engaged," but Cameron had been living with Hamilton for some time. However, the relationship he had that was
really
turbulent was not that one, but his marriage to Kathryn Bigelow. She was the one spouse of his who appears to have been his intellectual equal, or nearly so, and while he found that exciting (on the one hand) she was also a match for him in temperament, argument and career commitments (she beat him for winning Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for
The Hurt Locker
in 2010, when he was nominated for
Avatar
. He took it gracefully however).
There was a fascinating interview with her about her relationship with Cameron (I can't find it online now), but while they were evenly matched in many ways they crossed swords constantly and battle royales occurred on a frequent basis. He may have found this very energizing at first - some couples who fight constantly (not physical fights, usually) actually are sexually aroused by this and they get married (as one person I know confided) "so we could fight more conveniently." (!) Cameron and Bigelow retained a lot of fondness and respect for each other, but all this fiery drama definitely was an interference with each one's real first love work. They divorced.
Wonder if things were that bad during the writing phase of Titanic and if Cameron wrote the Jack figure to symbolise his own subconscious desire to escape his relationship? Then again he could have been entirely oblivious to what was happening with his own relationship as he likely spent much of his attention on making the film a success. Do you think the success of it cost him his marriage?
Frankly, I strongly doubt it. Your second proposition is more likely, namely that he was oblivious to the deterioration of his marriage because he was entirely focused on his work. This is how he has been throughout life, and Cameron, like other "workaholics," has the ability to compartmentalize his life very successfully, so that when he is doing one thing, he is able to completely shut out other areas of his life. When he's diving or inventing, he's focused on that; when he's writing, he concentrates on that, when making a movie, because it is an occupation with many facets, he is totally absorbed in it. The film-making part didn't end until after the Titanic openings and awards etc. wound down; the marriage to Hamilton was history by then. He probably was only dimly aware of it, if at all. He may not have noticed how unhappy she was unless she confronted him with it (which she must eventually have done, but we don't know the details).
What is interesting here, is that after four marriages, none of which lasted more than a few years, he has been married to Suzy Amis for nearly 17 years, and apparently they are very happy together. What is different? Amis is, arguably, not nearly so attractive as some of the earlier spouses; she is no brainiac either, yet they appear to be soul mates of a sort. What is clear is that she is accepting of his monomania when work calls and has carved out her own niche - starting a vegan school (the Muse School in Malibu), raising their three children, various environmental causes, something she and Cameron are both involved in.
In one of his interviews, Cameron describes how he tells his wife 'Sorry, honey, I've got stuff to do," when she brings up this or that. Obviously she's OK with this and has her own "stuff to do" and doesn't view his work as a competing "spouse." It's nearly impossible to change a "workaholic", so if one is happily married, one can infer that the spouse is comfortable with the situation, possibly because she (or he!) has her own passions to pursue.
I think Cameron's turbulent relationship history is a product of his personality and driven, type-A temperament. He doesn't seem to be a particularly introspective person, and I doubt the film is an expression of his inner anxieties or anything of that sort. In the gross outlines, this pattern is very similar to that of noted director David Lean, but unlike Cameron, Lean - who married six times - never found a spouse who satisfied him for a long period of time. He, too, was totally wrapped up in his work, but unlike Cameron, he did not have several other competing areas of almost as significant interest - in Cameron's case, deep ocean exploration, inventions, and environmental activism.

Interesting. I wonder if he was engaged to Linda at the time and if their relationship was turbulent to the point that it inspired him to write Rose and Cal's relationship and dialogue. Wiki says Linda Hamilton told Larry King in 2005 that:
'She has bipolar disorder, which she said destroyed her marriage to Abbott, whom she admitted having abused verbally and physically, and eventually sought treatment.'
They divorced and she moved in with James Cameron in 1991. According to the telegraph 'Hamilton has described Cameron as work-obsessed. "Titanic was the mistress he left me for. He was the kind of man who really would rather be at work with the mistress than at home with the wife. That was hard to come to terms with," she said recently.' 'Hamilton said the film's success made their marriage even worse. "It was terrible on every level. I wasn't ready, he wasn't ready. He was terribly insecure that I was going to ruin it for him somehow, which didn't make sense since I am an actress in my own right and had been in front of the camera. It was dreadful," she said. "Jimbo gave me a big diamond but our marriage was all of nine months, the ring meant nothing to me and I gave it away." 'Hamilton said she hated accompanying her husband to awards ceremonies because their relationship was falling apart behind the scenes.' 'In an interview with The Lady magazine, the actress said: "The parading around, the lunches, the stress of being with Jim during the Titanic days, for years I could barely get make-up on, I was shaking so hard, because every damn award show we had was terrible."
Wonder if things were that bad during the writing phase of Titanic and if Cameron wrote the Jack figure to symbolise his own subconscious desire to escape his relationship? Then again he could have been entirely oblivious to what was happening with his own relationship as he likely spent much of his attention on making the film a success. Do you think the success of it cost him his marriage?

Well, the wiki facts are wrong on several points.
First, Cameron didn't write the script "on one of his many dives." He had never made ANY dives to the
Titanic
wreck site until he got the studio to pay for him to do one to get film for the upcoming movie. He did not have any script at that point. He wrote the "scriptment" immediately after that dive (which !!RC was in September 1995) and began working on the script itself promptly after that, but with input from others.
Second, Cameron did
not
write that line about Freud nor did the idea for it come from him. It came from someone else (unidentified) who worked on the script. Cameron did think it was funny. He didn't notice it was an anachronism (Freud's work on the "male preoccupation with size" was not done until some time after 1912, and there was no way Rose could have read
any
of Freud's early work in 1912. It wasn't published in English and it wasn't available in the USA except in some university libraries).
Third, Cameron was at no point homeless, or not knowing where he would sleep next. He did a lot of miscellaneous jobs, including mechanic, school janitor, and poster painter. He had a tiny apartment. His truck driving was local, not long-haul trucking.
Fourth, Cameron wasn't married at the time
Titanic
was being filmed. He married Linda Hamilton shortly before the Tokyo Premiere of
Titanic
in 1997. So, exactly when he began having the affair with Suzy Amis is disputed, but it was during the year
Titanic
was being filmed, at some point. Gloria Stuart mentions the sparks between the two of them. But the bigger question is, why did he go ahead and marry Linda Hamilton if he was already enamoured of Suzy Amis? Who knows. But in any event, since he was a bachelor at the time, I doubt he thought
Titanic
was a parable about any of his marriages, past or future.
Cameron's earlier movies were commercial successes, so I seriously doubt he thought the "next movie would be his last." He has never lacked self-confidence. He has elaborated on numerous occasions what motivated him to make a film about
Titanic,
including his long fascination with shipwrecks, his pal Lewis Abernathy's urging, and his admiration for
A Night to Remember
, which he expressed in a personal letter to ANTR's producer, Bill MacQuitty.
However, I do agree that the film was only partially based on
Titanic
, and much was drawn from Cameron's own imagination and experience of life, though not necessarily his
own
life. I'm frankly very skeptical of deep posychonalytic interprtations of things, though they can be done in fun (which I think we are doing here;-) )