-Satyakam Ray

Hollywood star James McAvoy portrayed 23 distinct personalities in the movie Split. Also, in the 1973 movie Sybil, the protagonist, a woman, appeared to suffer from multiple identity disorders. It sparked a debate at that time about whether multiple personality disorder was a genuine mental anomaly or clever acting for showbiz.

Nevertheless, Dissociative Identity Disorder(DID) has attracted the attention of several moviemakers and the general public. The concept is relatively obscure in common parlance and beyond the realm of the boundary. Psychoanalysts and sociologists have made considerable efforts to understand the phenomenon closely.

Dissociative disorders are mental illnesses that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, consciousness, or awareness, identity, and/or perception. People with DID develop one or more alternate personalities that function with or without the attention of the person’s usual character. An alter may be of a different gender, have another name, or have a distinct set of manners and preferences. The person suffering from DID often has an alternate ego. The person may experience amnesia when a modified form of the condition takes control over their behavior.

The Split personality is well represented in Hindu mythology. The Ardhanarishvara (Sanskrit: अर्धनारीश्वर) is a composite form of the Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati. In this case, the split thing is not demonized. It is depicted as half male and half female, equally divided. It synthesizes masculinity and femininity simultaneously. The female counterpart, Shakti, is inseparable from Shiva, the male god. Normal human beings possess elements of Ardhanarishvara traits within them.

The double statue of Mephistopheles & Margaretta, the most famous figure in the Salarjung Museum, depicts a dual personality. Two Mephistopheles define the evil of the two, who wear cynical smiles, dressed in hooded cloaks and heeled boots. The meek-looking Margaretta, on the other side, has a prayer book in her hands, looking down and engrossed in love. Goethe’s Faust has these two favorite characters. The European masterpiece is a direct analogy of a split personality.

Patients suffering from DID have structural changes in the limbic system—the hippocampus and amygdala—and the cortex. The limbic system, particularly the amygdala and the dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortex, is associated with short-term and working memory, whereas the hippocampus is linked to long-term memory. Blood flow is also altered in the orbital frontal cortex. All of these regions are somehow affected in the DID patient’s brain.

We all have a certain level of alter egos. In social circumstances, these alter egos behave like subdued Frenemies.

Whether to separate or not, separating reality from imagination requires constant spillage.