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Dissociative Identity Disorder In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

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Dissociative Identity Disorder Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club is a pessimistic novel about a man who is trying to find himself. The narrator, who is unknown, is a neurotic, high strung struggling to find his identity in the world. While he is going through this lonely time, he suffers from a form of
Dissociative Identity Disorder which creates his alter ego, Tyler Durden. Tyler is the Identity that the narrator has created for himself, because he is exactly what our narrator wanted to be. Tyler is suave, a free spirit, funny, the opposite of what our narrator is. With this lack of identity our narrator finds company anywhere he can get, in this case it’s a testicular cancer support group.
Our narrator feels that with this …show more content…

Whenever Tyler was having sex with Marla, I was asleep. Tyler was walking and talking while I thought I was asleep”. (Chuck Palahniuk 174). I believe that Chuck Palahniuk put
Tyler in the story to represent the two-different thought processes and ideas that our narrator has come to reconcile with. A big reason people suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder is to help them cope with a stressful time in their life. In some cases, when the person is under stress the personalities don’t notice each other. The book Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll has found a way to “transform” himself into a person without conscious. While Mr. Hyde is having violent tendency which in the end, cause Dr. Jekyll to run from the police. The difference between these two stories having to deal with Dissociative Identity Disorder is that both Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde always remember what the other does. In this case, our narrator knows Tyler is there but doesn’t notice the bad Tyler is causing around with Project Mayhem. As we read Fight Club we are able to see that our narrator creates Tyler to have him be the person he has always wanted …show more content…

Having Dissociative Identity Disorder can often be mistaken for Schizophrenia. The only difference is that in Dissociative Identity Disorder a person’s alter ego cannot remember personal information which is explained more as ‘forgetfulness’. For a person, this could be scary not to remember what or where you have been for a long period of time. Most people who suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder this a common occurrence while the disease takes over they believe that they have been asleep for a longer period. For a person with Schizophrenia they have trouble with telling if what is happening is really the real thing, or if it’s just a figment of their imagination. Some symptoms of a person who suffers from Schizophrenia is the feeling of being paranoid constantly as if someone is out to get them, or as if someone or something is constantly watching their every move they make. This is a great example of why people could often get a person who suffers from Schizophrenia confused with a person who struggles from Dissociative Identity

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Dissociative Identity Disorder Madison Detwiler Psychology 1113-03 Oklahoma State University Fall 2015  Dissociative Identity Disorder There are many different personality disorders in the world today. Personality disorders are “enduring patterns of thinking, feeling, or relating to others or controlling impulses that deviate from cultural expectations and cause distress or impaired functioning” (CITE BOOK). A type of this disorder is called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

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The disruption of marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning” (American Psychiatric association,2013). To be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, a person will have at least two, and possibly more, distinct identities or personality states. Each will have its own pattern of sensing, thinking about and relating to self and environment (Bexson, 2005). These identities will repeatedly assume control of the person’s behavior, which is what the narrator possesses in this film when he falls asleep, and dissociates into Tyler Durden. One important similarity between the film Fight Club’s dissociative identity disorder and the real one is the interpretation of a stronger, more confident personality that takes over the narrator.

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The idea of a split in the conscious into multiple personalities has been prevalent throughout different cultures, time periods, and eras. Interestingly, although this disorder is one of the oldest illnesses discovered, it is still in the process of being understood, classified, and defined. Dissociative Identity Disorder has been through a long and intense refinement process in which its name has been changed, its symptoms broadened, treatments more developed, the screening more effective. When I first began researching this topic, I had some basic previous knowledge about the disorder. But as I continued the process, I began to understand the complexity and of DID.

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History Dissociative identity disorder (DID), originally referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) was first identified in 1815. Throughout the 19th century several prominent figures in psychology studied MPD, including Jung and Freud (Ellason & Ross, 1995). The term dissociative was established in the late 1800s by Pierre Janet, a French psychologist. Janet described the term dissociative as a state in which an individual’s personality is split into several inaccessible pieces (Joel, 2012). Less than a decade later Morton Prince, an American psychologist, utilized this term to describe a patient who appeared to have multiple personalities (Joel, 2012).

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What is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)? Dissociative Identity Disorder once called Multiple Personality Disorder is a serious form of separation, a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, feelings, actions, memories and sense of identity. DID is when two or more clearly different personalities are present and take over an individual.

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Dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia both contain a split in the mind, but in a different context. Schizophrenia manifests itself as a broken connection between the mind and the external world, in terms of staying in touch with reality. During a psychotic experience, the schizophrenic has extreme alternations in cognition and feelings. Dissociative identity disorder consists of a severe distance forming between two or more personalities, that differ in behavior, world views, and comprehension of the self. Dissociative identity disorder usually develops in response to trauma, sexual abuse or mental and emotional abuse and neglect.

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There is a scene where Tyler puts a gun to a convenience store employee 's skull and makes him assure that he 'll go back to veterinary school, or else he will be executed. The entire time the convenience store worker was pleading for his life, the narrator kept begging Tyler to cut it out because he understood that Tyler was committing an unethical act. Later in the film, the members of fight club came up with a new idea to wreak havoc all over town by doing things like destroying a capital building; they called this group Project Mayhem. Due to the strength of the narrator’s superego, he is able to understand that a lot of what the members of Project

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One of the most widely recognized depictions of a psychological disorder can be found in the 1999 film, Fight Club. The film, which follows the life of an unnamed protagonist and his displeasure with life, makes an attempt at portraying Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This disorder is seen throughout the film in the main character, or should I say characters. The film centers on the narrator trapped in a material life, plagued by insomnia and the feelings that there is no escape. His condition worsens as he continues to try and defeat these feelings by seeing doctors and buying further into the materialistic culture that surrounds him.

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