The movie “Split” is a psychological horror-thriller filmed by M. Night Shyamalan, starring James McAvoy, who plays about a person who has 23 prominent personalities due to sexual abuse happened in his childhood (Fischer, 2017). Each character of the person has a name and story, but the first man portrayed is Kevin Wendell Crumb. He kidnaps and imprisons three teenage girls in an isolated facility. The main character has a dissociative identity disorder (DID): one day, he may be a little boy, and tomorrow he is a strict teacher. When one of his 23 personalities kidnaps three schoolgirls, some of the characters approve of this act, and some want to fix the situation.
In the movie, Crumb shows typical symptoms of the disorder, such as the transition from one personality to another occurs spontaneously. Sometimes the change takes a few seconds; other times, it lasts for hours and days, while a person has a memory loss for some time. Each personality has its name, habits, intonation, facial expressions; for instance, “Dennis” imprisons girls, “Hedwig” has a childlike nature and wants to play with them, “The Beast” aims to kill girls and take ownership of the world.
The character tried to “fix” the problem by having visits to a psychotherapist. In the movie, we see the scenes of Kevin’s appointment with a psychotherapist. The doctor asks the main character, who is in front of him by building hypotheses, and Kevin confirms or rejects the guesses. When a dissociative identity disorder hits a person severely, the only recommendation for the main character to resolve the psychological issue is contacting a psychotherapist and conducting comprehensive treatment. I would suggest using cognitive-behavioral and dialectical behavioral therapy approaches to treat the person with the DID because it helps to decrease negative responses to stressors, which cause the appearance of other personalities (Dryden-Edwards & Stöppler, n.d.). Furthermore, these approaches are recommended to help a person unite all characters and control them to avoid adverse consequences (Fischer, 2017).
References
Dryden-Edwards, R. & Stöppler, M. (n.d.). Dissociative identity disorder.MedicineNet. Web.
Fischer, K. (2017). Movie ‘Split’ does harm to people with dissociative identity disorder, experts say.Healthline. Web.