Split: Horror with a Side of Split Personality

Source: kansascity.com

With "Split" M Night Shaymalan is back. Until the next “Lady in the Water” at least.

This engaging thriller about the kidnapping of three teenage girls offers a superbly acted and plausibly complex portrait of a villain with Dissociative Identity Disorder (a.k.a. split personality).

To clarify, the term split personality is a catchy placeholder for a process of fractured consciousness and personality that remains largely a mystery to the field of clinical psychology. If the split personality phenomenon even exists, it is likely a function of trauma. Meaning, the split personalities emerge and develop within the individual in response to the mind’s choice to hide from the pain of unresolved past, current and perceived realities. It goes without saying that this subconscious series of choices is severely dysfunctional, and the therapeutic end goal (the one thing the field agrees on) is integration - get back to a single, coherent sense of identity.

Without continuity of consciousness you could struggle to achieve even the most basic of emotional and relational capacities - when you get angry and yell at someone, for instance, you need to be able to take responsibility and repair the damage caused by the misbehavior to be successful in relationships. And you cannot possibly do this if you have built an internal world that permits you to say, “that wasn’t me,” especially to a split personality degree wherein you literally believe "that wasn't me."

To a degree, we all struggle with the “that wasn’t me” coping response to unwanted emotions, memories, actions and other distressing life content. All of our personalities fluctuate on a consciousness-identity spectrum, and it seems theoretically reasonable to suggest that split personality is the unhealthy pole of this continuum. On the other end, of course,is the theoretically flawless picture of health - a positive, cohesive, and stable sense of one-ness (mostly aspirational, sometimes achievable).

Shifting back to the movie's discussion of identity, I consider it a nuanced point of reality that each of James McAvoy’s characters within a character possessed some degree of self-awareness (knowing he/she was part of an ensemble cast, so to speak).

One mission of this blog is to reality check the portrayal of mental illness and therapy in cinema, and I have a few takeaways:

In this film, a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) also succumbs to the dark and disturbed urge to kidnap and potentially (will refrain from spoiling) kill. While little is known about DID there is no empirically supported reason to presume that DID correlates or causes such unique anger and violence. Further, on the matter of murderous villains and mental health diagnoses, I have long hypothesized that the willingness to kidnap and murder (in reality) requires a specific and unique blend of personality factors associated with three separate mental health diagnoses (Borderlines Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Anti-Social Personality Disorder). I found it to be another point of nuanced reality that this film’s character had not just DID but shades of these other diagnoses.

Another mission of this blog is to tease out the therapeutic value so often embedded in film and television.

A clear life lesson of “Split” is the importance of knowing thyself. It is better to openly confront/resolve internal conflicts and dilemmas than to avoid, procrastinate and compartmentalize. If you go too far in this unhealthy direction you could slip into DID territory. While I'm mostly joking about the slippery slope (DID is very rare and extreme), we all struggle with the instinct to retreat from, rather than combat head-on, psychic distress. And success is contingent upon, among other things, a clear and cohesive identity.

Perhaps this is why all therapy, regardless of the problems being treated or the theoretical rationale being employed, trumpets clarification of goals and values. You have to know what you want, and how you want to get there, to know if you are even moving toward or away from a happier and healthier version of yourself. A therapist’s basic duty is to help a client not only clarify goals and values, but to reality check and modify any preexisting goals and values that are unhealthy. Formulating more effective means to such desired ends is, of course, the other part of the treatment puzzle.

I highly recommend "Split" if you are in the mood for strong entertainment and a rich discussion of split personality, and don't mind a viewing experience of perpetual horror and creepy danger.