What is Multiple Personality Disorder?
By Victoria Carlsen
If you have seen films like Split, Fight Club, or Psycho, you may have heard of a disorder often referred to in the media as “multiple personality disorder.” Like many other mental conditions, this disorder is grossly misrepresented. Its typically falsely characterized by an alternate, usually violent or chaotic persona(s) that takes control over someone’s body. Take the 2016 horror film Split, for example. In this movie, three teenage girls are kidnapped by a man with 23 different personalities and need to escape before the frightening 24th personality emerges and comes for them. Movies like Split reinforce stigmas surrounding this disorder that are not necessarily based upon facts. What is “multiple personality disorder,” really?
Well, for starters, the term “multiple personality disorder” is no longer used to describe this particular disorder. The name was changed in 1994 to dissociative identity disorder (DID) to represent it better. In order to understand dissociative identity disorder, it’s important to first understand what dissociation is. According to the American Psychiatric Association, sometimes a strange occurrence happens where our thoughts, memories, emotions, actions, or identity disconnect from our own sense of self. This is called dissociation. Everyone experiences dissociation to some degree, like when we “zone out” or daydream. However, some people experience dissociation to an abnormal or extreme degree, resulting in something called a dissociative disorder. Dissociative disorders are most common in individuals who have had an overwhelmingly traumatic experience. This is because when an individual experiences something that is too difficult for them to handle, sometimes they will cope by detaching from difficult memories or feelings.
Dissociative identity disorder is often associated with traumatic experiences that occurred during an individual’s childhood. As a result, they end up experiencing two or more identities, or personality states, living “inside” them. These alternate identities, or “alters” may have their own names, history, identity, behavior, etc. that is separate from their own. At least two of the alters take control over the hosts’ (the term ‘host’ refers to the “real” or main person) body and the host will live and act as them. These ‘shifts’ cause memory loss and usually a great amount of distress within the individual. Individuals with DID are not any more likely to have violent tendencies than the average person. In fact, many people with DID developed the disorder to cope with being the victim of extremely violent acts.
Suggesting that they themselves are violent is not only false, but it’s also insensitive.
I’m not suggesting that you avoid watching popular movies that showcase DID. Fight Club and Psycho were both Oscar nominees, after all. However, you should come to terms with the idea that movies and pop culture often perpetuate false information about psychology and mental illness. Additionally, these movies in particular attribute violence to the character as a whole, and not to their disorder. Split, on the other hand, pins the blame on the character’s acts of violence on the disorder. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand that these characters are fictional and not representative of real people with a real condition. It also serves as a good reminder to always fact check information that you get from the media before making your own assumptions, because it may not be necessarily accurate. TeachTrauma is a great resource for learning about how psychological disorders like DID, as well as other psychological ideas, have been distorted by the media.
References
American Psychiatric Association (n.d.) What are Dissociative Disorders? https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/dissociative-disorders/what-are-dissociative-disorders
Bourget, D., Gagné, P., Wood, S. F. (June 2017). Dissociation: Defining the concept in criminal forensic psychiatry. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 45(2), 147-160. http://jaapl.org/content/45/2/147#:~:text=Claims%20of%20amnesia%20and%20dissociative,most%20relevant%20to%20forensic%20psychiatry
Psychology Today. Dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder#:~:text=DID%20was%20called%20multiple%20personality,or%20growth%20of%20separate%20personalities
Teach Trauma. (n.d.). Myths and media portrayals of dissociative identity disorder. http://teachtrauma.com/controversial-topics-trauma/myths-media-portrayals-dissociative-identity-disorder/