Dissociative Disorder In The Secret Window

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Secret Window: A Look into Dissociative Identify Disorder in the Movie “Secret Window” is a psychological thriller that was released in 2004. The movie was written and directed by David Koepp. The story is an adaptation of the Stephen King novel “Secret Window, Secret Garden” that was published in 2000. By the end of the movie it clearly characterizes the main character Mort Rainey as having Dissociative Identify Disorder (DID). The movie accurately displays many of the signs and symptoms, however, it does slightly miss the mark on the conventional cause of DID, as well as attempt to mislead the viewers by hiding the missing time gaps from Rainey’s memory as to much drink and smoking pot. Movie Summary “Secret Window” is based on a writer …show more content…

In the movie, Rainey loses time and wakes up in random places that he can not explain as to how or why he got there. This corresponds to the diagnostic criteria for DID; however, the movie does show from time to time that Rainey smokes pot and that he drinks heavily. This is a direct contradiction to the DID criteria because it specifically states that the memory loss cannot be due to physiological effects of drugs and alcohol. This may have been done intentionally to throw the viewer off track thereby keeping the mystery in the movie. Finally, to address the causality of DID, in the movie it appears as though Rainey is pushed over the threshold where is his mind splits when he finds his wife in bed with another man. To this point, researchers do acknowledge that intense traumatic events can trigger dissociations as a coping mechanism that a person uses to protect themselves from psychological distress. However, the movie is not spot on as to the general timing of when this split takes place. Several researchers suggest that these dissociations occur in children that experience traumatic events as a means of accepting what the mind

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