CHAPTER FOUR
Michael Markus
Holland Perry: “Who are you?”
Niles Perry: “I’m me. Niles. Niles Perry.”
Holland Perry: “Are you sure?”
—The Other (1972)
Dissociative identity disorder (DID, formerly known as multiple personality disorder) is a condition which has routinely been depicted in cinema since the silent era and, if the success of the recent television series The United States of Tara (2009–2011) is any indication, it continues to be a source of audience fascination today. Cinematic representations of DID can be found across the spectrum of major genres, from drama (The Three Faces of Eve, Sybil), to comedy (Loose Cannons; Me, Myself & Irene), to horror (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Psycho).
This chapter explores typical portrayals of DID in the latter genre. As several scholars have noted, mental illness is almost never depicted with sympathy or accuracy in horror films, and this is unquestionably the case when it comes to the representation of DID in such films.1 However, I will focus on the rationale behind the horror genre’s widespread adoption of this DID plot variation, which I refer to here as the “surprise DID plot structure” (SDID). I will argue that this plot structure appears frequently in horror films because it is so effective in producing a particular fear-response in audiences—one which other horror films generally do not produce. Finally, I will suggest that recent changes in the depiction of DID in films employing the SDID plot structure are largely a consequence of the exigencies of that plot structure itself.
The Emergence of the SDID Plot Structure
DID remains a highly controversial diagnosis within the psychiatric community.2 Much of the controversy stems from the dramatic increase in diagnosed cases which occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, its inclusion as a specific diagnosis in the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5, 2013) indicates that many still view it as a genuine, and distinct, mental illness. At present, the key diagnostic criteria for DID are 1) the alternating presentation of two or more distinct personality states within a single person; and 2) amnesia experienced by the “host” personality for periods during which an alternate personality is in control.3
Leaving aside cases in which such symptoms were attributed by observers to demonic or spiritual “possession,” documented instances of this symptomology have been located as early as the late 18th century.4 Beginning in the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a significant proliferation of case studies, and this trend continued into the first decades of the 20th century. It is no coincidence that it was also during this period that the notion of the “split personality” began to percolate through American popular culture. Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) familiarized readers with the notion that a single human body might host two separate and distinct personalities.5 Over the course of the next few decades several popular stage plays (some of which were explicitly based upon Jekyll and Hyde) focused on characters with split personalities, and between 1915 and 1923, no fewer than six American-made films did so as well. These early cinematic treatments of “split personality,” such as The Curious Conduct of Judge Legarde (1915), The Case of Becky (1915), and The Brand of Satan (1917), established a basic framework of representation which is still often utilized today. In such films it is the main protagonist who is a sufferer of split personality—a fact which is typically established for the audience quite early in the film, although the protagonist herself or himself may initially be unaware of it due to the amnestic qualities of the condition. In each case the unfolding narrative focuses upon the struggles and challenges experienced by the afflicted protagonist, which are utilized to achieve various dramatic, suspenseful, and/or comedic effects.
Up to the late 1950s, the only films in the horror genre which dealt with the subject of split personality were the various iterations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (of which at least ten had appeared between 1920 and 1957), and these utilized the basic narrative structure noted above. Although in Stevenson’s novella the fact that the brutish Mr. Hyde is actually the kindly Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego is kept hidden from the reader until the final pages—thereby constituting a frightening and horrific “surprise ending”—this was never the case with the various stage and screen adaptations of it which followed. Both on stage and on screen, the true nature of Jekyll’s relationship with Hyde is usually revealed to the audience early on.
In the late 1950s, a revival of interest in the clinical diagnosis of what was by that time commonly called “multiple personality” was accompanied by an increase in cinematic representations of it. The drama The Three Faces of Eve (1957), based upon an actual case study,6 followed the representational pattern established in earlier film treatments of the subject. At the same time, it served to crystalize for audiences the “scientific” reality of the “multiple personality” diagnosis, and in so doing helped to lay the groundwork for an alternative pattern of cinematic representation which would soon emerge.
The groundbreaking horror films in which this alternative representational pattern was first established were Robert Day’s The Haunted Strangler (1958) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), both of which utilized the Surprise Dissociative Identity Disorder plot structure (SDID). This plot structure, which continues to be utilized by horror filmmakers today, represented an entirely novel approach to the onscreen depiction of DID. Rather than focusing upon the travails of a protagonist whose DID is overtly acknowledged, films which employ this plot structure hide from audiences the fact that a major character, or even the main protagonist, suffers from DID. Indeed, knowledge of this fact is carefully concealed from the audience until it is suddenly revealed—usually towards the end of the film—in the form of a shocking “plot twist” or “surprise ending.”
In The Haunted Strangler (1958), Boris Karloff plays James Rankin, a benevolent Victorian-era novelist and social reformer who becomes obsessed with proving that an innocent man had been executed 20 years before for a string of murders. Roughly halfway through the film, Rankin manages to locate the never-discovered murder weapon. The audience is then presented with a wholly unanticipated plot twist as Rankin’s handling of the knife causes him to undergo a Jekyll-and-Hyde-style transformation into his long-dormant alter ego—a twisted, murderous fiend. The remainder of the film follows a fairly straightforward Jekyll and Hyde trajectory, with Rankin himself eventually coming to understand that he is the very murderer for whom he has been searching. The film, despite its title, eschews a supernatural explanation: as one character puts it, Rankin is “possessed” by “a side of himself he can’t control. A dual personality that, without the knife, is incomplete.”
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is, of course, a film which has been far more widely seen, and is considered far more influential than The Haunted Strangler. Nevertheless, the two films approach the representation of DID in strikingly similar fashions. In both films, the revelation that a major character has a second, murderous personality comes as a terrifying surprise to the audience. And in the 50 or so years since the release of these two films, the SDID plot structure which they pioneered has been employed by filmmakers time and again. Indeed, the potency of this particular plot structure is strongly attested to by the very fact that it has been reiterated so frequently. The SDID plot structure, it must be noted, is one which has been employed almost exclusively in horror films—and for good reason. Its effectiveness as a plot structure rests in its ability to generate a particular type of fear—one which horror films typically do not evoke.
Why SDID?
There is a substantial body of literature devoted to the exploration of issues surrounding the question of what, exactly, audiences find appealing about horror films. Given the wide range of approaches, both psychoanalytic7 and cognitivist,8 that film scholars have adopted, it should hardly come as a surprise that a multitude of answers to the riddle of horror’s appeal have been proffered. Not all scholars agree, for example, that people who like horror films like them primarily because they enjoy the sensation of artificially-induced fear. Indeed, even among those who adopt a psychoanalytic approach there are differing perspectives on this question, with some suggesting that certain horror films, at least, provide the viewer with pleasure via the vicarious gratification of repressed, unconscious desires, as opposed to the arousal of repressed, unconscious fears.9 One of the leading advocates of the cognitivist approach, Noël Carroll, has suggested that the fear engendered by horror is largely an unavoidable (and perhaps unsought) by-product of horror’s real payoff—which, he claims, is the satisfaction of the audience’s curiosity regarding unusual or impossible things.10 Moreover, it is unquestionably the case that the success of some horror films must be attributed less to their ability to frighten than to their successful incorporation of other genre elements—such as comedy, drama, or action—into the narrative. Nevertheless, most scholars would agree that people who like horror films like them in large part because they enjoy, in some manner, the sensation of fear which these films elicit.
In general, successful horror films work by instilling in audiences both a fear of what the villain is, and a fear of what the villain does and might do. That is to say, horror films typically “other” the villain—be it demon, monster, or “psycho-killer”—in such a manner that the mere contemplation of her/him/it inspires fear and disgust. At the same time, audiences are also prompted to experience fear for the victims, and potential victims, of the villain.
Films which employ the SDID plot structure work, in part, by eliciting fear in these familiar ways. In Psycho, for example, “Mother Bates” is a horrifying and menacing figure who elicits fear and dread long before her true connection with Norman is revealed. However, what makes SDID films so memorable and effective is the fact that, in addition to evoking fear in these ways, they also elicit from audiences a separate and distinct sort of fear which most horror films do not evoke. Simply put, these films undermine the commonly held notion of the “unitary self” and they inspire in viewers the fear that our own experience of selfhood might well rest upon far more fragile, or even illusory, grounds than we are typically comfortable with acknowledging.
The “traditional” notion of the self as a unitary, stable, and continuous entity rooted in the cognitive process—an idea embodied in Descartes’s dictum “I think, therefore I am”—has been unraveling for decades in the face of scrutiny from various quarters including philosophy, psychiatry, postmodernism and, most recently, evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience. However, despite this fact, most people—including those who are fully aware of these developments—prefer to regard themselves, for all practical purposes, as “selves” in the traditional sense of the term. It is most likely the case that one of the main reasons for this is the simple fact that the alternative to the unitary self is, for most people, a profoundly disquieting one. David Spiegel, in attempting to explain why the DSM’s diagnostic category of “Dissociative Disorders” (which includes under its rubric DID) continues to be so controversial within the psychiatric community, has suggested that even many psychiatrists are simply uncomfortable with the implications for the concept of selfhood which these diagnoses entail. Dissociative disorders, Spiegel contends, “force us to reexamine our assumptions about the solidity of identity and the consistency of our control over our minds and bodies.”11 And indeed, there is no question that challenges to these traditional assumptions can be deeply disturbing. One philosopher has gone so far as to contend that such challenges to our sense of selfhood constitute the very definition of “horror”: “‘Horror’ is the title I am giving to the perception of the precariousness of human identity, to the perception that it may be lost or invaded, that we may be, or may become, something other than we are, or take ourselves for [.]”12 The reason that films employing the SDID plot structure are so effective is that they elicit just such fears—and do so far more directly, and viscerally, than other horror films generally do.
Most horror films involving mentally ill villains portray the “mad slasher” or “psycho killer” as being, in most respects, akin to any other screen monster—grotesque, violent, and utterly alien. Audience members are no more encouraged to regard Hannibal Lecter or Leatherface as being “a person like myself” than they are to find commonality with Dracula or the Blob. This may seem a shockingly unfair and irresponsible way to depict mental illness (and indeed it is), but in many respects, it differs only in degree from the way the mentally ill have traditionally been portrayed in Western art. Sander Gilman argues that Western representations of illness, including mental illness, have always been largely instrumental. By depicting those with disease as radically unlike ourselves, we mentally quarantine ourselves from the possibility of dissolution which disease represents to us: “Then it is not we who totter on the brink of collapse,” he contends, “but rather the Other.”13 If this is so, then the typical horror-film depiction of the “mad slasher” actually evokes one type of horror—namely, the potential existence of a monstrous, deranged killer—while simultaneously insulating audiences from another, perhaps more unsettling, horror: the possibility that our own mental state might not differ substantially from that of the madman. Gilman even ponders a question which gets to the heart of what animates the SDID plot structure: “What happens when it is not the identifiable “mad person” who turns out to be aggressive, but the “normal,” nice kid next door? … Our shock is always that they are just like us. This moment, when we say, “they are just like us,” is most upsetting.”14
And of course, the SDID plot structure works precisely because the “mad slasher” is not “othered” in these films—or, at least, the “othering” does not take place until after the “surprise” has been revealed. Indeed, SDID films present viewers with a “psycho killer” who does not know, and has no way of knowing, that he or she is a “psycho-killer.” In that moment of surprise in which it is revealed that the seemingly normal, even likeable, character with whom the audience had been encouraged to identify actually suffers from a mental illness characterized by alternating personality states and amnesia, audiences are forced to confront the frightening possibility that anybody—including themselves—might also be a person who is radically different from the person whom they imagine themselves to be. (In this context, Norman Bates’s most famous observation—“we all go a little mad sometimes”—takes on an even more unsettling meaning.)
The degree to which SDID films succeed in prompting this disquieting revelation depends, in large part, on the degree to which they succeed in convincing the viewer to identify with the character who will ultimately be shown to suffer from DID. Although some film scholars criticize the term “identification” as ill-defined, we need not adopt a very stringent or elaborate definition of “identification” to find the concept of use. For our purposes, an audience can be said to “identify” with a character if they anticipate that the character is meant to represent the film’s “main protagonist”; or, more generally, if they simply “like,” or feel some sympathy for, a character. In his famous examination of the structure and elements of tragedy, Aristotle argued that “pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves.”15 The fear to which Aristotle referred is not the audience’s fear for the character, but fear for themselves which the plight of the character has inspired. Films which utilize the SDID plot structure work, ultimately, because they manage to convince the audience that the character who suffers from DID is “a man (or woman) like ourselves.”
Recent Developments
Between 1970 and 1980, horror-film audiences would see the SDID plot structure recycled time and again in films such as The Other (1972), Sisters (1973), the “Millicent and Therese” segment of Trilogy of Terror (1975), Schizo (1976), and Dressed to Kill (1980). However, use of the SDID plot structure fell into abeyance during the 1980s and 1990s—a fact which might seem surprising given the huge proliferation of diagnosed cases of DID which occurred during this period. It is most likely the case that filmmakers abandoned the SDID plot structure during this period because they believed that it was losing its effectiveness: overuse had familiarized filmgoers with the possibility that a major character might suddenly be revealed to have an alternate personality. And, as we have seen, if the SDID plot fails to surprise, it fails to frighten.
It is therefore noteworthy that, beginning in the early 2000s, horror films utilizing the SDID plot structure once again began to appear: Secret Window (2004), Hide and Seek (2005), High Tension (2005), My Bloody Valentine (2009), The Uninvited (2009), and Silent House (2011) have all employed it. This revival of the SDID plot structure has been largely facilitated by the willingness of filmmakers to employ certain representational techniques which, for the most part, had not been utilized in previous SDID films. Significantly, the use of these techniques—which are designed to make it more difficult for audiences to guess the surprise that the film has in store for them—directly impacts the way DID itself is depicted in these films.
As has been noted, it is almost never the case that mental illness is accurately (or sympathetically) depicted in horror films, and horror films depicting DID have never been an exception to this rule. The most obvious example of this is the fact that SDID horror films invariably depict the afflicted character’s alternate personality as being a psychotic murderer, whereas this is simply not true in real-life instances of DID. However, other, more subtle inaccuracies have always been present in SDID films. DID has always been characterized as a “reality-oriented” disorder, as opposed to a species of psychosis. It is important to note, in this regard, that DID, as it has been defined across the various editions of the DSM, can entail certain symptoms which might otherwise be indicative of psychosis—namely auditory and (more rarely) visual hallucinations. However, the presence of delusional beliefs—another key aspect of psychosis—is not a recognized symptom of DID.
In general, early SDID films did not suggest that afflicted characters experience hallucinations. On the other hand, they did portray DID as a mental illness which involves elaborate delusions. For example, afflicted characters in these films commonly hold the delusional belief that their alternate personality is a living, breathing, externally existing person with whom they share some sort of relationship. Examples of this can be found in Psycho, Sisters, and Dressed to Kill. Needless to say, real-life sufferers of DID do not hold such delusional beliefs.
What differentiates the recent crop of SDID films from those of the previous generation is the fact that these newer films present to the audience the interwoven hallucinations and delusions of the afflicted protagonist without signaling to the audience that they are hallucinations and delusions. Protagonists are shown having conversations—and even engaging in physical altercations—with characters who are ultimately revealed to be their alternate personalities. Invariably, these alternate personalities are played by a different actor than the one who portrays the protagonist, and they are presented to the audience without the slightest indication that they exist only as a projection of the protagonist’s psyche. Indeed, entire scenes are eventually revealed to have taken place completely within the mind of the protagonist. The enormously popular Fight Club (1999)—perhaps the sole example of a nonhorror film which utilizes the SDID plot structure—paved the way for this style of representation, and it has been adopted, at least to some degree, by every SDID horror film produced since then.
In its utter reliance upon the notion that DID entails all manner of hallucinations and delusions, this recent mode of representing DID is even less “realistic” than earlier depictions had been. Realism, of course, is not the point of a horror film; and filmmakers have adopted this mode of representation for the simple reason that it makes it more difficult for the audience to guess that a now-familiar plot twist is going to be sprung on them. The obvious hazard involved in utilizing this style of representation is that it may lead audience members to feel “tricked” or “cheated” by the film. On the other hand, the fact that filmmakers continue to risk this hazard might be taken as testimony to the uniquely disquieting potential of the SDID plot structure.
Notes
1. For sharp criticism of the portrayal of mental illness in horror films, see Otto F. Wahl, Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995). Scholars who employ cinematic representations of mental illness as a pedagogical tool almost never utilize horror films for that purpose: See Jacqueline Noll Zimmerman, People Like Ourselves: Portrayals of Mental Illness in the Movies (Lantham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003); David J. Robinson, Reel Psychiatry: Movie Portrayals of Psychiatric Conditions (Port Huron, MI: Rapid Psychler Press, 2003); Lisa D. Butler and Oxana Palesh, “Spellbound: Dissociation in the Movies,” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 5, no. 2 (2004): 61–87; and Danny Wedding, Mary Ann Boyd, and Ryan M. Niemiec, Movies and Mental Illness: Using Films to Understand Psychopathology, 3rd rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe Publishing, 2010).
2. August Piper and Harold Merskey, “The Persistence of Folly: A Critical Examination of Dissociative Identity Disorder, “Part I: The Excess of an Improbable Concept,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 49, no. 9 (2004): 592–600, and “Part II: The Defense and Decline of Multiple Personality or Dissociative Identity Disorder,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 49, no. 10 (2004): 678–683; David Spiegel, “Dissociation in the DSM-5,” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 11, no. 3 (2010): 261–265; Joel Paris, “The Rise and Fall of Dissociative Identity Disorder,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 200, no. 12 (2012): 1076–1079.
3. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (DSM-5) (Washington DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013), 291.
4. For the history of the DID diagnosis see Michael Fleming and Roger Manvell, Images of Madness: The Portrayal of Insanity in the Feature Film (London: Associated University Presses, 1985), 57–60, and Piper and Mersky, “Persistence of Folly, Part I,” 596–597.
5. Henri Ellenberger’s The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970) identifies parallels between Stevenson’s popular novelistic treatment of split personality and emerging psychoanalytic concepts. A psychiatrist and a medical historian, Ellenberger convinces readers that literary developments paved the path to acceptance of Freud’s and Jung’s controversial (and difficult-to-prove) theories about dualism.
6. The real-life clinical outcome experienced by Chris Costner Sizemore, who was dramatized in the film as “Eve White,” was far less tidy than that which was depicted in the film. Although she would eventually claim to have been cured of her condition, this resolution would not come until the mid-1970s, at which point over 20 personalities had presented themselves.
7. Steven Jay Schneider, ed., Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Worst Nightmare (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
8. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, eds., Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996); and James B. Weaver III and Ron Tamborini, eds., Horror Films: Current Research on Audience Preferences and Reactions (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996).
9. Malcom Turvey, “Philosophical Problems Concerning the Concept of Pleasure in Psychoanalytical Theories of (the Horror) Film,” in Schneider, ed., Horror Film and Psychoanalysis.
10. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London: Routledge, 1990), 184–193.
11. David Spiegel, “Dissociation in the DSM-5,” 262.
12. Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 418–419.
13. Sander L. Gilman, Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 1.
14. Gilman, Disease and Representation, 13.
15. Aristotle, Poetics, XIII, H. S. Butcher, trans., http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.2.2.html.