How Moon Knight plays into Hollywood’s obsession with dissociative identity disorder

Steven Grant, the main character of the Moon Knight series, is a man with a personality disorder and a sense of self-destructiveness. Moon Knight only just began to explain some of the things it has to say about its hero, like why Steven loses significant chunks of time or why he puts on an unconvincing accent. Moon Knight and other stories like it have often used the same methods as living with DID, coding their characters as if they were living with the disorder before diving into what it entails.

Moon Knight is a show about a man who is chosen by a god to become a mummy-like avatar of moon-themed vengeance, and it is clear that Marvel wanted to get its first series. Ahead of Moon Knight's release, Marvel made a point of noting that a board-certified psychiatrist was brought onto the project as a consultant in order to help both the actors and the filmmakers understandDID and its implications.

At a time when film studios are trying to be more thoughtful about all kinds of on-screen representation, it makes sense that they would take particular care with a show like Moon Knight. It's interesting to consider what taking care means when telling stories about DID, a disorder whose complicated realities have been overshadowed by sensationalized fiction.

The first season of Moon Knight is about to begin.

The show only really starts digging into the topic in the first season. Moon Knight has relied on a number of stylized tropes associated with the disorder to allude to Steven. Steven had gaps in his memory and people calling him "Marc" for reasons he couldn't initially understand, but he still caught sight of his reflection moving independently of him.

Steven agreed to let his reflected self take control in the final minutes of Moon Knight, as he was being chased down by a jackal creature. In almost any other typical cape show, one would expect Moon Knight to follow up on Steven's first transformation with an exploration of what his powers are and why he can transform himself into a hooded mummy at will. One of the ways Moon Knight tries to set itself apart is by revealing early on that, new and unfamiliar as the Moon Knight thing is to Steven, it's something that's one of Steven's alternate personality.

The idea of multiple personality disorder has been used in pop culture for a long time as a catchall for mental illness. The Bird's nest, Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley's The Three Faces of Eve, and a book by Flora Rheta Schreiber. The early stories helped lay the groundwork for more modern depictions of DID like The United States of Tara, Split, and HBO Max's Doom Patrol show. They played a key role in shaping the public's perception of what DID is and how it works, which is a tricky situation given the entertainment industry's tendency to prioritize drama over accuracy with sensitive, difficult subject matter.

DID is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the WHO's International Classification of Diseases. Though DID has been codified along with all of the other major dissociative disorders, skepticism about it being real persists.

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There is no single reason that the psychological and psychiatric communities have not come to enough of a consensus about DID and its components to develop a similar level of understanding of the condition as has been the case with others like schizophrenia. One of the leading theories that have been put forth by skeptics of DID is that it is a primarily North American phenomenon. In recent years, more and more clinicians have been re-examining conventional wisdom about DID and arguing that our misunderstandings about it have more to do with gaps in how professionals are taught to recognize and treat it rather than it being made up.

Dr. Simone Reinders is a senior research associate at the Centre for Affective Disorders at the King's College London psychology department. When we spoke with her, she pointed to her own research into the disorder as an example of how the clinical research community has changed in recent years.

Some of the biological correlations are associated with early childhood trauma. Some studies have shown that people can't do all of the things that DID does.

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A study was published in 2012 to determine if DID could be attributed to fantasy proneness, suggestibility, suggestion, and role-playing. Of the study's 29 subjects, 11 were patients with DID, 10 were controls who were highly prone to fantasizing, and eight were not prone to fantasizing. The study's participants were observed listening to tapes of their autobiographical memories after being told to either be neutral or trauma-related. When listening to their personal trauma script, people with DID exhibited higher subcortical activity and nervous system activation than controls.

A paper I wrote in 2012 showed that blood flow patterns in the brain in individuals with DID cannot be mimicked by healthy controls.

A paper I wrote in 2012 showed that blood flow patterns in the brain in individuals with DID cannot be mimicked by healthy controls.

The research found that people with DID and actors who were told to shift between the two were different in their cerebral blood flow patterns.

In the UK, there are no university courses on DID.

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The head of McClean's Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Research Program spoke about the stigma surrounding mental health treatment in a recent interview. Because DID often stems from trauma experienced in a person's childhood, those with the disorder are more likely to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

There are alterations in arousal and reactivity, as well as alterations in cognitive and mood, Kaufman said.

Kaufman was talking about how people living with DID have histories of dealing with traumatic events in a different way than the typical symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Kaufman noted that the concepts of trauma and dissociation loom large in people's minds.

Moon Knight gestured towards the severity of Steven's condition and his own personal traumas by introducing important aspects of his life. Steven has no recollection of being married to Layla or being involved in the mysterious situation that led to her father's death. The larger purpose was to set up a number of significant reveals, one of which was that Steven was the original personality who first developed DID.

Steven's traumatic trip down memory lane comes by way of an animal goddess and it details how his family was torn apart. Asylum shows you how young Marc and his brother were and how they pretended to be Dr. Steven Grant and his companion, Rosser. Wendy takes it upon herself to blame herself for Randall's death, even though she blames herself for one of the boys' trips to a cave when Randall drowns.

Wendy heaped physical abuse on her son as she mourned the death of her husband. Steven first began stepping in for his mother as a means of dealing with her rage and beatings.

Moon Knight's introduction of the circumstances that caused his mind to fragment does match some aspects of DID that have been shown in clinical study. Even as they attempt to portray the disorder accurately, shows like Moon Knight run a risk of glamorizing DID and misinforming the general public about it simply by turning it into entertainment.

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SWPS University in Poland has a Research Centre for Trauma and Dissociation that Dr. Pietkiewicz heads up. A lack of clear diagnoses guidelines for DID is one of the more significant factors contributing to instances of false positive diagnoses and the general way in which DID comes to be understood as a rare, exotic condition. Pietkewicz believed that European psychiatric programs were doing a lackluster job of training future clinicians and that DID was a disease of hiddenness due to sufferers wanting to want to.

People who really have DID have been severely traumatized and usually try to hide or minimize their symptoms to pretend they don't exist because they are terrifying for them. You are talking to me now, but imagine being in a supermarket with no idea how you got there or who put things in your cart. You would think your mind was playing tricks on you.

The symptoms of DID can be frightening, but the core trauma that leads to the disorder is often sexual and at the hands of the caregivers. Pietkiewicz said that sensational DID stories have the potential to be disrespectful, and that they also have the power to inspire people to misidentify themselves as DID sufferers, making it difficult for professionals to connect with people who need their help.

I think Hollywood needs to be very careful about giving people the idea that they have it.

Moon Knight is not the most salacious depiction of DID Hollywood. Typhoid Mary is a spin on Iron Fist that is a step up for the MCU. Moon Knight is meant to be an exciting story of triumph where the challenges Steven faces push him to become an extraordinary superhero. That may be the best that these shows can do. It is important to acknowledge the potential consequences that can come from mining these narratives.

Moon Knight has not been seen by Reinders. In her opinion, fictionalizing DID for entertainment is not appropriate. Though she sympathizes with filmmakers who need to earn a living, she pointed out how fictional stories can affect researchers who depend on public funding.

It has been difficult for me to get funding for my research because of DID. It costs money to train therapists and develop more expertise.