Dissociated portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder in Fight Club

Dissociated portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder in Fight Club

Fight Club (1999) depicts the life of an average employee and his engagement with the mental disorder of dissociative identity disorder. It captures the essence of dissociative identity disorder not in vacuum but in relation to other mental disorders. It portrays DID as an emergent consequence of other mental disorders; insomnia and depression to name the most obvious ones. Hence, the film also has been able to portray the comorbid nature of mental illness. Although this has been achieved, certain details related to the film lack research and seems baseless. This baseless aspects of the way DID is portrayed seems to be the glue that keeps the plot from falling apart. In this blog post, I would like to point out the possible issues of DID portrayal in Fight Club. This is an instance where attempts of media to give the audience a sense of DID fails. It fails because the assumptions on which the film is made are clearly not backed by scientific research.

First, DID is defined as a coping mechanism to a certain trauma in one’s past life (Cleveland Clinic). According to Ross (1997), “Multiple Personality Disorder is a little girl imagining that the abuse is happening to someone else.” These definitions are on the basis of Post Traumatic Model, according to which DID emerges as a consequence of childhood abuse or other traumatic events (Lilienfeld et al., 1999). With respect to these definitions, it is observable that DID is a result of subjecting the mind to a harsh mental stressor. The exact mental stressor that the mind of the protagonist is subjected to is not superficially visible. The loss of normal sleep patterns may have led to DID as a coping mechanism, but loss of sleep isn’t a traumatic event that one necessarily goes through – at least in the film it isn’t. Hence, the external thrust that leads to DID is not obvious from the film.

Another keyword in the definition is “coping mechanism.” Therefore, the assumption is that DID would lead to hallucinations that reduces the stress on the mind. There are points in the film where the protagonist faces rejection from Tyler, who is the hallucination/ alter ego of the protagonist. There are also points when the members of the fight club praises only Tyler for its inception. The protagonist evidently expresses the sense of rejection or the worthlessness that he faces. The narration mentions that this is what the protagonist faced from his father during childhood – rejection and abandonment. If the hallucination reminds him of his past experiences that might have emotionally affected him, how can it then be considered a coping mechanism? The reason why the abandonment by his father can be considered as a contributor to his mental state is because of the constant rumination on that phase of his life. This part of his life keeps recurring in his mind.

Third, whether the lack of a father figure or proper parental care could lead to mental disorders DID is not a topic that has been studied previously. One could argue then that it is his initial mental state of clinical insomnia that led to depression and DID. This can be refuted using the PTM model of DID. How is insomnia creating a trauma for the mind such that it has to compartmentalise certain events in the life to a dissociated identity. Thus, the only factor leading to DID that stands out in the plot and that of the childhood of the protagonist is the abandonment by his father. This is a significant contributor to the conception of DID. The correlation of parental care and emergence of DID is not something that has been studied but has been proposed. Thus, the basis on which the film puts the protagonist in the state of mental illness is questionable and is poorly researched (Dutra et al., 2009). When the movie was released this study was not even proposed.

These are some ways in which the depiction of DID in Fight Club fails to portray what DID actually is and how it has been defined by psychological research. Script writers often trade off the credibility of the mental illness for the sake of high entertainment quotient. This also evident in the way the movie ends – the protagonist shoots himself. This ideally isn’t the way to cure DID. The depiction of mental illnesses in media is thus questionable and have to be taken with a tinge of scepticism.

References

Cleveland Clinic. Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Identity Disorder). Retrieved from: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9792-dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder

Dutra, L., Bureau, J. F., Holmes, B., Lyubchik, A., & Lyons-Ruth, K. (2009). Quality of early care and childhood trauma: a prospective study of developmental pathways to dissociation. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 197(6), 383–390. doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e3181a653b7

Fox 200 Pictures Regency Enterprises (Producer),  & Fincher, D. (Director). (1999). Fight Club [Motion Picture].

Lilienfeld, S. O., Kirsch, I., Sarbin, T. R., Lynn, S. J., Chaves, J. F., Ganaway, G. K., & Powell, R. A. (1999). Dissociative identity disorder and the sociocognitive model: recalling the lessons of the past.

Ross, C. A. (1997). Dissociative identity disorder: Diagnosis, clinical features, and treatment of multiple personality. New York: Wiley