Never Talk to Strangers, "Disasociative Personality Disorder"

This movie begins with Criminal Psychologist, “Sarah” played by Rebecca DeMornay, interviewing a rapist who is serving time in prison for his crimes. It is suggested later in the movie that Sarah’s father had raped her several times during her child hood. Later, Sarah meets Banderas in a shopping mall and gives him her phone number. The two begin a hot, steamy relationship as she avoids the advances of her neighbor. Several days pass in the relationship when Sarah begins to receive death threats and strange gifts. Some of the gifts include rotten eggs and dead flowers. The gifts become more and more disturbing as she gets more involved with Banderas; finally, she receives a large box as a gift and she opens it to find her life long cat, cut in to tiny pieces. After this incident, a terrified Sarah hires a detective to catch her stalker. The detective soon discovers that Sarah is her own stalker and shows her a video documenting her killing her own cat and mailing herself some of the other disturbing gifts. Sarah has no memory of her criminal actions but the video sends her over the edge and she kills the detective as well as her father. The movie also suggests that she has killed lovers in the past and at the end of the movie she begins a relationship with the neighbor. After the viewer is made aware of the two distinct personalities we are shown that each of them is very different from one another; One is strong and ruthless and the other down to earth and caring. Based on the evidence it is indicated that Sarah suffered from Disociative Identity Disorder.

Dissociative Identity Disorder ( DID) formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder covered in Chapter 12 on pages 472 and 473, is a psychiatric disorder that describes a condition where a single person displays multiple, distinct, different personalities. Each personality is an individual and has its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with its surroundings. Each personality of a person suffering from DID has its own memories, wishes,way of speaking and behaving; each identity is a unique personality. At least two personalities must take control of the person as well as display memory loss concerning what the other personality has done in order to make a definite diagnosis. Symptoms must not be caused by substance abuse or biological medical condition. Doctors believe that this disorder develops as a way to repress unbearable impulses, unbearable memories. Most people suffering from DID are victims of severe and unavoidable abuse as children. Sufferers also seem to be skilled at self hypnosis and can induce a trance like state. Most people with DID found that they could escape the trauma of abuse by subconsciously creating separate and safe personalities to deal with stress and unwanted memories.

I chose this Movie because I find this to be an interesting and fascinating topic that exemplifies the power of the human brain.