Dissociative Identity Disorder In David Koepp's The Secret Window

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Secret Window is a movie directed by David Koepp based upon the novel written by Stephen King. At one night in a model, Mort Rainey is a successful novel writer who found out his wife Amy Rainey has an affair with Ted Milner one night at a motel. Six months later, in an early morning, a stranger named John Shooter showed up on his doorstep and claimed that Rainey stole his story and threatened him to fix the name on the magazine. But he refused to do so because he insisted that he wrote the story prior to John Shooter. A series of strange things followed up: his dog died, his friends died, his wife's house was burned, and his divorce proceedings with his wife continue to be uglier. At the first, Rainey appeals as a poor husband who was cheated …show more content…

Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by identity fragmentation rather than a proliferation of separate personality. In this movie, Rainey has two distinct and alternating personalities: one personality is the one he presents in his daily life and another personality is the one he was not consciously known of. As he was angered by the betrayal of Amy and anxious about his secret will be discovered by others—he stole the ideas of the story from someone else—he eventually divided into two identities. Therefore, John Shooter is the name of his second identity. In my opinion, the reason Shooter kept threatening Rainey to fix the end of the story because Rainey did not shoot his wife at the night he found out her affair even with a gun in his hand. Even six months after he still did not sign for the divorce agreement and hoped his wife would turn back to him. His secondary identity as Shooter burned Amy and Ted's house for revenge. Eventually his wife could not wait any longer and decided to come to Rainey's house and ask him for signature. As this moment, Rainey' two personalities become into one, that is the one wants to kill his