Pranaya Prakash
In the movie “Anniyan” (Shankar, 2005), the protagonist Ramanujam Iyengar, also known as Ambi, is the host of his alters: Remo and Anniyan. While the focus of the movie is only on Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), the host, Ambi, and the alter, Anniyan, show symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), respectively. In this blog post, I attempt to critically analyse the portrayal of DID and the possibility of the protagonist having comorbid Personality Disorders. While it is highly unlikely for individuals with DID to have comorbidities with Personality Disorders (Antisocial Personality Disorder), especially with OCPD and ASPD (Fink, 1991), it is interesting to think of the possibility and analyse the developmental trajectory of these individuals.
The movie starts with the character development of Ambi, a lawyer who is meticulous and very particular about organisation. He prefers following rules and orders and also goes out of his way to advise the general public on his way to work to follow traffic rules, act prosocially, have civic sense and also be environmentally conscious. He despises the fact that people are careless, and are comfortable with mediocrity and corruption as well. This makes people around him consider him “impractical” (Shankar, 2005) (dysfunctional) because of his “process-drivenness”; he holds that taking shortcuts amounts to cheating the society and legal system (Shankar, 2005). Ambi reminds one of “Sheldon Cooper” (Lorre & Prady, 2007) and “Monica Geller” (Crane & Kauffman, 1994).
Nonetheless, the reason for Ambi’s orderliness, as I infer, is not more genetically influenced but rather a consequence of his developmental life events (Fink, 1991; Brand et al., 2016; Hooley & Nock, 2020). He sees his younger sister get electrocuted and die in front of him when they were children; she falls in a rain-water filled road with electricity wire making contact with the water on Gandhi Jayanti. He observes his parents and grandmother talk about the authorities’ carelessness, the prevailing corruption and the desensitisation to mediocrity. As a child, this was traumatising since he had shared a strong emotional bond with his sister (Dissociative Identity Disorder; Fink, 1991; Shankar, 2005).
Further, he listens to his grandmother saying that everyone will be punished according to “Garuda Puranam” – a Hindu text on how the wrongdoers get punished in their afterlife (Shankar, 2005). He internalises these schemas (Hooley & Nock, 2020) in association with the funeral rites of his sister. Hence, he strives to be perfect so as to not cause harm to others due to his callousness; this is later revealed through self-reporting during his psychiatric examination. Additionally, he reports experiencing splitting headaches, anxiety and profusely sweating when he finds people being legally and morally unethical (Shankar, 2005). I infer these to be the typical symptoms of Anxiety and OCPD; he does not have OCD considering the lack of obsessions or rituals. Nevertheless, he is a dysfunctional perfectionist (Hooley & Nock, 2020).
An important observation here is that although Ambi is meticulous, the world is not and he cannot control it. Since Ambi is a soft natured person who often gets mocked, he feels helpless but desires to change the world. This leads me to Anniyan, the aggressive and violent alter of Ambi who wants to eliminate the wrongdoers and the callous. Although Ambi is unaware of his alters, Anniyan knows Ambi (Brand et al., 2016) and considers him to be good-for-nothing – someone who can only cry because he is limited by his commitment to his conscience and the legal system (Shankar, 2005).
Consequently, Anniyan mentions that there is a need for someone to do the things Ambi is unable to do and thus, he emerges. Anniyan murders five people in the movie and evidently, he is not psychopathic – not charming or manipulative (Hooley & Nock, 2020) but rather upfront and easily triggered by people who oppose him or are unethical. Once again, the antisocial characteristics of Anniyan can be traced back to Ambi’s developmental trajectory. He believes that he is protecting (Alter Functions | DID-Research.org) Ambi from anxiety and society, by taking the law into his hands. Here, it is imperative to note that the emotional stressors of Ambi include not only the death of his sister but also verbal abuse of his conscientiousness (Fink, 1991; Hooley & Nock, 2020). This explains the emergence of the alter and the ASPD-like symptoms (Antisocial Personality Disorder; Shankar, 2005).
Psychologically, while it is possible for the host/individual to have a comorbid psychological disorder, it is rare for the alter to have ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder) since the alter itself is a creation of the improper integration of certain parts of the personality of an individual (7.3 Dissociative Identity Disorder – Essentials of Abnormal Psychology; Hooley & Nock, 2020). Moreover, even if the alter did have ASPD, the following conditions should have been met: (a) the alter emerged in early childhood and (b) the alter was antisocial or was diagnosed with conduct disorder (Hooley & Nock, 2020). However, the latter scenario is also ruled out since Anniyan emerged in adulthood and seems to be the same age as Ambi, although there is no mention of it in the movie (Shankar, 2005).
I do acknowledge that alters manifest in different ways and possess different characteristics among people with DID, but considering Ambi as a case study, I hold that it would be inaccurate to diagnose the alter to have ASPD (Hooley & Nock, 2020). Nevertheless, I am confident that Anniyan displays antisocial characteristics.
In conclusion, although the DSM criteria for DID and Personality Disorders in the movie seem vague and overlapping, the movie does an average job of making the viewers aware of the psychological disorder of DID/MPD. But, like any other Indian movie, psychological disorder equals scope for a horror or thriller film – the alter switches are heavily dramatic. For example, when Remo, the “lover boy” alter, switches to Anniyan, he gets thrown away to the corner of the room as if he is possessed by a ghost. Furthermore, Anniyan besides being aggressive seems to know martial arts with no prior mention of the protagonist learning the art form; the movie successfully meets the action-thriller genre considering how dramatic and horror-like the switch between Ambi/Remo and Anniyan is. Such depiction not only stigmatises the illness of DID in the Indian context but also misinforms people by providing a template of how DID looks – and how dangerous an alter manifestation can be. Finally, the portrayal of the psychiatric examination too has problems in terms of how quickly diagnosis happens, and also how one of the doctors improperly draws parallels between the unpredictable behaviour of a drunkard and the mechanism of an alter. Moreover, the primary psychiatrist also uses “Recovered Memory Therapy” – which is not a valid and reliable form of “therapy” and may even do more harm than good (Stocks, 1998) – to bring out the childhood memories of Ambi through hypnosis (Shankar, 2005; Williamson, 2019).
Regardless, it is important to note that despite consuming (mis)information, we need to psychoeducate ourselves and reflect on our understanding of what it means to have a psychological illness.
References
Alter Functions | DID-Research.org. (n.d.). DID Research. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://did-research.org/did/alters/functions.html
Antisocial Personality Disorder. (n.d.). DID Research. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://did-research.org/origin/comorbid/pd/aspd.html
Brand, B. L., Sar, V., Stavropoulos, P., Krüger, C., Korzekwa, M., Martinez-Taboas, A., & Middleton, W. (2016, July 8). Separating Fact from Fiction: An Empirical Examination of Six Myths About Dissociative Identity Disorder. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 24(4), 257-270. Harvard Review of Psychiatry. 10.1097/HRP.0000000000000100
Crane, D., & Kauffman, M. (Executive Producers). (1994). Friends [TV series]. Warner Bros. Television. https://www.netflix.com/in/title/70153404?source=35
Dissociative Identity Disorder. (n.d.). American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://aamft.org/Consumer_Updates/Dissociative_Identity_Disorder.aspx
Fink, D. (1991, September). The comorbidity of multiple personality disorder and DSM-III-R axis II disorders. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 14(3), 547-566. National Library of Medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1946024/
Hooley, J. M., & Nock, M. K. (2020). Abnormal Psychology, EBook, Global Edition. Pearson Education Limited.
Lorre, C., & Prady, B. (Executive Producers). (2007). The Big Bang Theory [TV series]. Warner Bros. Television. https://www.netflix.com/in/title/70143830
7.3 Dissociative Identity Disorder – Essentials of Abnormal Psychology. (n.d.). Open Text WSU. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://opentext.wsu.edu/abnormalpsychology/chapter/9-3-dissociative-identity-disorder/
Shankar (Director). (2005). Anniyan [Stranger] [Film; Tamil]. Oscar Films. https://www.mxplayer.in/movie/watch-anniyan-movie-online-00d1e327249401e7f8084a331a008614?watch=true
Stocks, J. T. (1998, October). Recovered Memory Therapy. Social Work, 43(5), 423-436. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sw/43.5.423
Williamson, A. (2019, January 31). What is hypnosis and how might it work? Palliative Care: Research and Treatment, 12. SAGE Journals. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1178224219826581
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