Fight Club
Plot Summary:
This is a personal-narrated story about an insomniac, unnamed
reliability consultant of a car company, the narrator himself, and his radical
consciousness after he met a soap salesman, Tyler. Together, they formed the
Fight Club at the basement of a bar which later on Tyler took over and form the
Project Mayhem, a group of terrorists. Only toward the end the movie revealed
that both Tyler and the narrator were not two separate individuals, but rather
the same person, a person who was clearly suffering from Dissociative Identity
Disorder.
Disorder:
People
with Dissociative Identity Disorder, also known as Multiple
Personality Disorder, develop two or more distinct personalities, each with
unique set of thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and memories. Those split personalities
usually are totally opposite, cannot be integrate by patients, and they are at
some point in control. Such symptoms are not associated with medical conditions
or the use of substances (Student Notes) (Comer, 2010).
From
the movie, the narrator/Tyler suffers from DID. At the beginning of the movie,
the narrator had this intense stress all the time when a woman named Marla came
into scene, he was too timid and shy so he developed coping mechanism, that is
his alter personality, Tyler, who was very confident, charm, and outgoing.
During Tyler and Marla were having sexual relationship, the narrator was not
aware that it was himself and Marla having that relationship, not realizing
that he and Tyler were the same person, and that Tyler was his own inner urge
for that woman. Furthermore, Tyler took over narrator’s action as he was
sleeping, and the narrator had no memory of being Tyler at all. Good indication
was when he woke up in different places all the time. He had complete amnesia
of Tyler’s actions, for example, Tyler/narrator burned down his own apartment, traveled
across countries to form his own fight club, and planted bombs in different buildings
without knowing that he did. Only toward the end of the movie, the narrator
came to realized that Tyler was actually himself because people kept calling
the narrator Tyler, and telling him that he was the one giving them hand scars.
Moreover, as he was tied to a chair, seeing his imaginary identity Tyler pointed
a gun to his head, he found out that the gun was instead in his own hand. Most
of all, he showed self-mutilation which is very common in DID patients in order
stop the alter personality by eventually shot himself in the mouth to get rid
of Tyler.
Causes:
Psychodynamic –
Excessive repression, the ego defense mechanism, from traumatic childhood
events such as childhood abused has caused the disorder. The narrator could try
to fight off from bad impulses (from his job, loneliness, etc.) by
unconsciously prevent them to reach awareness and assign other personality,
Tyler (Comer, 2010).
Behavioral – Dissociation
is an escape behavior of Tyler/narrator result from reinforcement rather than
unconscious (Comer, 2010).
Treatment:
Little treatment is
known as the disorder is extremely complicated. I personality do not think the
below treatment would work with Tyler/the narrator case.
1. Stabilize &
recognize the disorder – stabilize by bonding with
different identities and educate them to recognize the nature of their disorder
2. Recover the memories
– working
through trauma, connecting real life events, identities
3. Post integration
therapy – merge all the different alter personalities into
one integrated identity (Comer, 2010) (Student Notes).
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