This article covers things we learned in class. In bullet points, the article iterates that not all therapists are interested in their patients' childhoods, that people with psychological disorders are not more likely to be violent (that serial killers are almost never psychotic, but psychopathic), that it takes more than acting strange to get yourself committed to a psychiatric ward, that "electroshock" therapy does not actually make a person convulse, that psychological problems aren't obvious to the casual observer, that the terms psychiatrist and psychologist are not interchangeable, and schizophrenia is not the same thing as dissociative identity disorder or bipolar disorder.
While reading this article, the first thing I thought of was "United States of Tara", a TV series written by Diablo Cody and produced by Steven Spielberg, about a woman with dissociative identity disorder whose personalities manifest themselves as herself ("Tara"), a teenager ("T"), a 50s housewife ("Alice"), a biker ("Buck"), a psychiatrist ("Shoshana Shoenbaum"), a small child ("Chicken") and a rabid animal ("Gimme"). After watching a few episodes of this show, I decided to look up whether this was an accurate representation of dissociative personality disorder or not. According to WebMD, Medicinenet, and Psychology Today (and Wikipedia), "United States of Tara" appears to be a realistic representation of the dissociative identity disorder. The show focuses on Tara's alters with the ultimate goal of uniting them, something mentioned in the Psychology Today definition. The characters have very distinct characteristics and mannerisms, for example, "T" is a childish, selfish teenage girl while "Buck" is a male Vietnam war veteran. Tara, the primary identity, is a passive character, prone to feel guilty, helpless and dependent on those around her (according to Psychology Today, this is expected behavior from the patient---the primary identity is usually the most vulnerable and depressed); in contrast, "Alice" is dominant, aggressive with a sugary demeanor and extraordinarily manipulative. According to Psychology Today, these kinds of differences can and do occur, where a person's age, gender, vocabulary, general knowledge and predominant mood change. The switches in alters are triggered by external stimuli, such as when Tara is stressed by a certain situation or when she sees specific objects she attributes to the characters. For example, when she finds Alice's lipstick on the sink, Tara becomes Alice. When she becomes overwhelmed by the meeting between herself and her potential rapist, she becomes "T", who actually had sex with him. Psychology Today states that "certain circumstances or stressors can cause a particular alter to emerge", so the "diagnosis" still fits.
Tara is rarely aware of what her alters do. There are a few times when she describes watching what her alters are doing or feeling what they feel, but being unable to act herself.
In the last part of Psychology Today's Diagnosis Dictionary article, it states that these alters may or may not know of each other. Tara is not aware of all her alters; Alice was the only alter who knew of Gimme and was aware that that particular alter had been around for some time already.
"United States of Tara" is an interesting show not only because of its intriguing premise, but because it seems to adhere to the most important characteristics of the illness.
I watched a youtube video about a man with DID, and a camera was brought into one of his therapy sessions. He switched rapidly from personality to personality, much in the same way Tara did during her own sessions. The man would rub his forehead and twitch, and then another alter would appear. Tara would tilt her head back and her eyes would flicker, followed by the manifestation of one of her alters. In another video, a women living with DID described the childhood abuse that led her to become a "multiple", and how she deals with living with her alters.
I think we can safely say that "United States of Tara" is not only entertaining, but accurate, at least where the characteristics of the disorder are concerned. Regarding movies that seem to support the top article's hypothesis that there are widespread misconceptions about psychological disorders and treatments, I can only think of "A Beautiful Mind", where the electroconvulsive therapy was applied to Nash while he was institutionalized for schizophrenia (the actual Dr. Nash did not actually see the people talking to him; he only heard their voices, but that is not necessarily inaccurate for the disease itself, only this particular case; there, artistic liberties were taken). Unless we're dealing with B-movies or melodramatic films from the fifties and sixties, I sincerely doubt that there are serious movies that would not take time out of their pre-production steps to actually research the areas of their focus. So while I agree that there are certainly films, books and other entertainment media that perpetuate these myths, they are to psychology what science fiction is to physics, and usually very obviously so. People shouldn't take films at face value. If your information source is obviously entertainment (read: medium with artistic license) based, you should know that you are not combatting your ignorance, but should instead take the WORK OF ART as a means of kindling your interest in the subject in question. If you're just going to watch a movie and not be interested in the subject matter enough to actually look up the validity of the statement, premise or whatever it is that intrigued or angered you in the first place, don't even bother citing this film a source of authentic information. Art is never about the literal; if it were, it would be a science.
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