<\/p>\n
Imagine that there is a part of you that emerges for moments at a time. It takes over your body, your actions, your life \u2014\u00a0and when you come to, you have no recollection of what happened during its stay.<\/p>\n
While that might sound strange, this isn\u2019t an original premise by any means. Hollywood has recycled this narrative for blockbuster hits in the form of the \u201csplit personality disorder\u201d trope. It\u2019s an overplayed trope and a central concept to well-known horror movies ranging from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film \u201cPsycho\u201d to the 2016 M. Night Shyamalan film \u201cSplit.\u201d Both movies, despite being released five decades apart, tell the same story: A serial killer, who seems<\/em> relatively well-adjusted, is revealed to suffer from \u2014 surprise, surprise \u2014\u00a0a Dissociative Identity Disorder<\/a>. The same concept is seen in 1992\u2019s \u201cRaising Cain,\u201d 2005\u2019s \u201cHide and Seek\u201d and, most recently, the fourth season of 2023\u2019s \u201cYou.\u201d<\/p>\n The split personality disorder is often used as shock factor in these movies and, as a result, filmmakers focus less on an accurate portrayal of the mental disorder and more so on making\u00a0a spectacle out of the mentally ill. The films draw the line between characters with DID and the average Joe, telling the audience that, surely, these characters could only be so sadistic because they\u2019re not like us. As such, the trope is more than a little detrimental to the representation of individuals with DID. In fact, in the mental health education field, there have been tons<\/a> of<\/a> YouTube<\/a> videos<\/a> where licensed professionals break down the issue movie by movie and tell the audience that having DID does not equal murdering people.<\/p>\n The trope gets pretty boring pretty fast once you figure out that it\u2019s just another flimsy excuse for a serial killer\u2019s motives. What I\u2019ve always found interesting about movies with the split personality trope, though, is they refuse to explore the innate horror of losing control over your own self. To me, the terror of these movies isn\u2019t the atrocity of their actions when their \u201cother self\u201d takes over \u2014 it\u2019s the fact that they don\u2019t have any autonomy in these moments.<\/p>\n