Split: A Review and Its Unexpected Merit

Producer and director M. Night Shyamalan and producers Marc Bienstock and Jason Blum’s (2016) latest film, Split, is a horror thriller where the main character Kevin, played by James McAvoy, suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID) and kidnaps three teenage girls. Kevin keeps the girls in an abandoned basement where his numerous identities are revealed to them.Towards the end of the movie, the final identity Kevin takes on is a vicious beast that climbs walls, deflects bullets, and ultimately kills two of the abducted girls with his bare hands. Only one girl is spared by the beast because of the scars he finds all over her body. The scars elucidate that both of them were abused as children, which exempts her from the beast’s quest for an erasure of those who, according to him, live with a delusional sense of safety (Shyamalan, Blum, Bienstock, & Shyamalan, 2016).

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) was previously regarded as multiple personality disorder or split identity disorder (hence the title of the film). As stated by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (10th ed.; ICD-10; World Health Organization, 1992), to classify DID, the individual must exhibit two or more distinct personality states that take turns controlling their behavior, as well as gaps in memory unexplainable by common forgetfulness. In Split, Kevin has 24 distinct identity states that alternately control his behavior (Shyamalan et al., 2016). Because Kevin also does not remember what happens when other identities take control, Shyamalan’s depiction of DID accurately conforms to ICD-10’s main diagnostic criteria for DID. Yet, to many mental health professionals and DID sufferers, Split is indeed a horror film, but not in the common sense. Instead, Split is seen as a horrifying example further promoting the stigma around DID and misinformed fear of mental illnesses. More than 20,000 people attempted to boycott the film, claiming that it promoted negative stereotypes and provided false connections between mental illness and violence (Davidson, 2017).

The controversy and resistance that the film has faced arises from media’s frequent misrepresentation and dismissal of DID. An important argument made by many protesters of this film is that the misunderstanding of this disorder is accompanied by

the lack of acknowledgment of DID in both the public and medical spheres, resulting in insufficient training and research. According to Amelia Joubert, one of the protestors who has been hospitalized several times for DID, the mental health professionals who treated her often did not believe in or were not knowledgeable enough about the disorder to treat it (Nedelman, 2017). Joubert’s experience is not singular; all DID sufferers have to struggle with the distressing symptoms of a mental illness. This struggle is compounded by the fact that their mental illness is not recognized by society. Thus, a more pertinent and significant issue lies in the representation of DID: that it is a real disorder that requires appropriate treatment.

As highlighted by Joubert, an important issue that the film addresses, and could potentially help to alleviate, is the uncertainty of DID’s diagnostic validity. The history of the disorder has been and still is a controversial matter. Some researchers argue that the majority of diagnoses of DID are made after implicit hypnotic suggestions by a few psychiatrists (Frankel, 1990; Ganaway, 1995; McHugh, 1995). They argue and depict DID to the public as an iatrogenic disorder, an illness caused by medical examination, instead of a traumagenic disorder, an illness caused by traumatic events. Others argue that DID is not a disorder at all. Contemporary researchers have concluded that the disorder is an epiphenomenon (a secondary byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence) of borderline personality disorder (Lauer, Black, & Keen, 1993).

These oppositional claims regarding the disorder discredit the validity of DID as a real condition. As a result, practitioners are often wary of making the diagnosis and other professionals are deprived of sufficient training on the treatment of DID. In a survey of mental health professionals who treat DID patients, they reported that due to the bizarre representation of DID as a manufactured disorder, their colleagues have moderate to extreme reactions 80% of the time after learning that the professionals are treating the disorder (Dell, 1988). As a result of the lack of recognition in both medical and public fields, only around 6% of people with DID reveal that they suffer from the disorder, if they are ever diagnosed at all (Kluft, 2011).

Unfortunately, past depiction of DID in film and media has not alleviated this pressing issue. Fight Club (1999), Secret Window (2004) and Raising Cain (1992) use DID identities to advance the main character’s criminal desires. The identities are plot devices and only that. In Split, a similar phenomenon occurs as well, where the different identities are used to create suspense, plot twist, and horror—the essential elements to a Shyamalan thriller film. However, Split goes beyond its genre and undertakes depicting dissociative identity disorder as a genuine and valid mental illness as well. It denies the claims that DID is an iatrogenic disorder or an epiphenomenon of another disorder and affirms trauma as a potential cause of this very real mental illness. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) lists childhood abuse before the age of five as a common trigger for the disorder, and towards the end of the film, the audience witnesses the early emergence of the disorder through clips featuring episodes of Kevin’s mother abusing him as a child (Shyamalan et al., 2016). Kevin’s vivid recall of that experience triggered the resurfacing of his true identity, which had only survived his mother’s abuse because it was carefully protected by his alternative identities (Shyamalan et al., 2016).