Fight Club Dissociative Identity Disorder Analysis

Dissociative Identity Disorder in the Film “Fight Club” In the 1999 film Fight Club, the main character (whose name is unknown throughout the whole film), presents the audience with the signs and symptoms of dissociative identity disorder. The narrator is a white-collared worker agitated by insomnia and the feeling of being trapped. To try to overcome his insomnia and feelings of being trapped, he seeks guidance through local support groups. The first support group he goes to is for men with testicular cancer (even though he doesn’t have testicular cancer). After his first meeting, a group member encourages him to cry and let all of his feelings out. After expressing his feelings, the narrator states, “I cried, and found freedom,” which resulted

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. Although the narrator didn’t know this till the end of the movie, Tyler knew his role the whole time: “All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you wanna look, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are