DID/MPD in fiction - Definition and Overview

The idea of multiple personalities has been popularized by many types of media.

Books, movies, television

• The first novel to feature multiple personality prominently was The Birds' Nest, in 1954, by Shirley Jackson, which was made into a forgettable 1957 movie called Lizzie. Interestingly, the movie version of Three Faces of Eve, starring Joanne Woodward-- which was released in the same year-- drew heavily on Jackson's work to a point where some consider Jackson to have been plagiarized.

• Sybil, Shirley Mason's story as told by Flora Rheta Schreiber, was turned into a 1976 TV movie.

• Over the years on the soap opera, One Life to Live, lead character Victoria Lord (Erika Slezak) has had to combat her with multiple personalities since her adolescence.

• The 1994 mystery Color of Night, starring Bruce Willis, the 1996 movies Primal Fear and Shattered Mind, and the 2003 thriller Identity also feature multiple personalities in fictional crime scenarios and explore the idea of responsibility for another personality's actions.

• Various movies, including Never Talk to Strangers and Session 9, and episodes of popular TV shows such as X-Files, Psi Factor and Judging Amy, have used the now-cliche idea of multiples with a hidden "killer personality" for cheap drama and thrills. Touched by an Angel goes so far as to imply that multiples are actually demon-possessed.

• The plot of the book Fight Club and its subsequent movie adaption revolves around the bizarre relationship between a mild-mannered protagonist and his wildly different alternate personality.

Comic books

In comic books, DID is a feature of a number of characters.

• The most visible examples are the 1980s versions of the Incredible Hulk and the Batman supervillain, Two-Face.

• Batman himself was portrayed as something of a dual personality in the Dark Knight series.

• The 1970s DC backup feature Rose and the Thorn depicted gentle Rose and feisty crimefighting Thorn, who was out to avenge the murder of Rose's father. Rose had no idea that Thorn shared her body.

• In the early 1990s, Superman was injured and spent some time as multiple. He didn't realise he was Clark Kent, nor, as Clark, did he know he was Superman.

• Crazy Jane of the Doom Patrol is deliberately and in some detail based on Truddi Chase.

• In the popular Japanese manga MPD Psycho, a police detective tracking down a mad killer discovers he himself is multiple, and fears that the clues point to one of the people in his system as the murderer.

• Marvel superheroine Aurora from Alpha Flight is a character who is actually diagnosed with DID. Like Rose and the Thorn, a conservative self dominates during Aurora's normal, day-to-day life, and a more adventurous self is responsible for her nightly excursions as a costumed hero.

• The pseudonym Madison Clell wrote about her life with D.I.D. and her alters in the autobiographical comic Cuckoo.