Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Research Paper

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Authors at times take personal experiences from their lives to help them craft their book or story. Likewise, Robert Louis Stevenson connected his personal issues with his bestselling novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The contrast between Mr. Hyde’s evil mischief and Dr. Jekyll’s naivety underscores the subtle narrative that the author is more than familiar with the situation described in the novel than meets the eye. Influenced by his own experiences with abuse, multiple personality disorders, and frightening dreams, Stevenson was able to formulate Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Having multiple personalities, or split personality disorder, was not considered a psychiatric condition until 1980. After having been classified as a …show more content…

Psychiatrists have claimed that these personalities come into existence when patients, “withdraw from reality, creating alter egos to experience the abuse and absorb the pain”(Bass 1). Patients develop these multiple persons in an effort to cope with overwhelming experiences that they were put through as children. “‘When you're abused like that, you either go crazy, die or become a multiple personality,’ said Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, a noted psychiatrist from Lexington, Ky…. ‘Becoming a multiple personality is actually the healthiest way to deal with this kind of abuse,’ she said” (Bass 2). Along with the belief of being a healthy way to cope, here are a couple beliefs as to how these personalities develop in children who are abused at a young age. One theory is that the child believes that an imaginary friend is being abused, but not the child themselves. Being attached to this imaginary playmate, when the abuse happens, the child enters an altered state of consciousness, allowing a different state to replace the core personality. Multiple personalities can begin to form, and these new personalities are capable of developing their own memories, traits, and behaviors. However the memories of the abuse are not brought out in the core personality, but instead they are brought out

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