Dissociative Identity Disorder

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I have never met anyone who has any sort of psychological problem, so I had to start thinking about fictional characters who displayed such characteristics. After thinking about the numerous movies that exist with characters who display psychological problems, one particular film came to mind. Teddy Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island is a perfect example of someone who displays dissociative identity disorder. Even though the movie leaves the audience curious as to whether Daniels actually has multiple personality disorder, it is evident by the end of the film that Daniels has dissociative personality disorder. The people who are unfamiliar with this film and main character, Teddy Daniels was once a detective who had a family, but also had experienced past traumatic experiences. In the movie, Daniels goes to an island that has a mental institution that contains psychologically disturbed patients who have committed heinous crimes. He goes to this island because he thinks that there is a run away patient who he has to look for, and while conducting his investigation he intends on revealing the harsh realities of the institution. Daniels believes that this facility is conducting harsh experiments on its patients, such as lobotomies in order to progress scientific research. The actual reason for his presence is due to that Daniels himself has a psychological disorder, and is completely oblivious to it, and the fact that he himself is a patient of the mental institution. Psychologist can use the numerous theoretical models to describe Daniels disorder.

The psycodynamic view takes a very convincing and descriptive look at dissociative disorders. According to Ronald Comer (2011) “psycodynamic theorists believe that...

... middle of paper ...

..., and we realized how this alone has contributed to his personality disorder.

We can see how the six theoretical models can be applied to the dissociative identity disorder displayed by Teddy Daniels, but the one that provided the best explanation is the psychodynamic model. This model provides the best explanation as to why Daniels has developed his personality disorder and why he is the way he is.

Works Cited

- Comer, Ronald J. Fundamentals of Abnormal Psychology. New York, NY: Worth Publ., 2011. Print.

– "DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER (MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER): SIGNS, SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT."WEBMD. WEBMD, 16 SEPT. 2009. WEB. 25 FEB. 2012. .

"Shutter Island." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. .

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