5 Great Mad Movies About Madness

How our favourite flicks treat mental illness…

Mar 27th 2009


The Movie: Fight Club (1999)

The Madness: Dissociative Identity Disorder

WTF? An individual displays multiple distinct personalities (alter egos), each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment, with associated memory loss, so sayeth the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  

Also seen in: Swimming Pool (2003); Switchblade Romance (2003); Identity (2003); The Machinist (2004).

Previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, sufferers tend to manifest extreme, often opposing personas that are unaware of each other’s existence.

Ed Norton played hooky with it in Primal Fear until film karma caught up with him and stuck Brad Pitt’s anarchist Tyler Durden in his office drone melon, making Fight Club the definitive fractured nut job flick.

How realistic is it? Not very. Multiple Identity Disorder is extremely real to the person experiencing it, but whether or not it’s powerful enough to allow someone to have a massive scrap with themselves is up for debate.

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Comments

    • KerrAvon

      Mar 27th 2009, 13:34

      Interesting article though you missed out bi-polar or manic depression as it also known but that seems to be something that a lot of actors suffer from rather than a subject that a lot of films are made about, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (Richard Dreyfuss, Carrie Fisher are bi-polar for example)

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    • SheNoir

      Mar 27th 2009, 14:01

      The main character in Girl, Interrupted was diagnosed with Borderline Personality disorder, so not exactly insane but is capable of some pretty insane things like overdoses and self-harm, impulsivity. Similar characters you would diagnose with BPD traits would be Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She left Joel but immediately got into another relationship once things took a turn for the worst, possibly pre-empting abandonment. Had he left her, the chances of her attempting suicide would be pretty high. BPD sufferers often come across as vibrant people with shifting changes in mood and personality. To others it may seem normal but to the person with BPD it can feel like nobody understands them and feels completely isolated.

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