The idea of multiple personalities has been popularized, often in an exaggerated or factually incorrect form, by many types of media.

Books, movies, television

• Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 classic The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is about the scientist Dr. Jekyll who has artificially separated his good and evil sides, causing him to switch between two separate personalities.

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

• Sybil (book), Shirley Mason's story as told by Flora Rheta Schreiber, was turned into a 1976 TV movie. More than any depiction before or since, Sybil popularized the concept of multiple personalities in the media and Sally Field's portrayal is one of the most familiar images of multiple personality to the American public.

• The plot of the 2002 Doctor Who novel Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose features a genuine case of DID as well as ones imposed by a malfunctioning time machine that literally fractures its users, and the book's hero, the many-lived Doctor, is on his eighth personality and body. The 1977 episode The Face of Evil features a computer which was designed to think independently, but has assumed multiple personalities as a result of a botched repair job by the Doctor.

• Over the years on the soap opera, One Life to Live, lead character Victoria Lord (Erika Slezak) has had multiple personalities since her adolescence. Originally she had only one alternate, Nikki, who challenged her in a constant struggle for dominance, but in the late 1980s Victoria's multiplicity was brought into line with then-current beliefs about Dissociative identity disorder and she was given a vast array of alternates and a childhood-trauma backstory. Victoria's daughter Jessica Buchanan (Bree Williamson) has recently also had to deal with a troublesome alternate personality, Tess.

• Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly features the lead character with DID known both as drug dealer Robert 'Bob' Arctor and narcotics agent Fred. The reason for his DID is due to subsequent use of a drug known as Substance D or Death. There is a film of the same name.

• 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.

• Pat Barker's 1993 novel "The Eye in the Door" deals with numerous "splits" in the human life and psyche during wartime. The lead character, Billy Prior, deals with a number of "splits", but deals mostly with his obvious and sinister split personality. His other personality (referred to in the book as a "fugue state") appears to have been created to complete the tasks Billy can't bring himself to do, like fight in France or work as an intelligence agent.

• The novel Fools by Pat Cadigan is set in a high-tech future when additional personalities of various kinds can be added and removed at will.

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

• The 2003 book Set This House In Order by Matt Ruff concerns two multiples (people who are multiple) on a journey of self-discovery.

• The short story "Multiples" by Robert Silverberg (1983) describes a future where multiples form a subculture similar to the gay community today. A singleton (a person with one personality) fakes multiplicity to attract a multiple partner, and ultimately attempts to fragment her personality to become multiple herself.

• Sidney Sheldon's book Tell Me Your Dreams (1998) is about a woman, Ashley, who has two other multiples, Toni and Alette, each with dynamically different characteristics. A string of vicious murders seem to follow her, and the police must work hard to find out who is behind the serial murders.

• Several Tamil language works deal with multiple personality disorder: the television serial Marmadesam, and the films Anniyan and Chandramukhi.

• The Malayalam film Manichithrathazhu also deals with the same subject in detail.

• The 2005 film Hide and Seek features two characters with DID.

• In the novel Thr3e by Ted Dekker, the main character has three different personalities: himself, a childhood friend, and the villain.

• In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the beggar Altogether Andrews has multiple distinct personalities, each with its own memories and manner of speaking.

• Me, Myself and Irene (2000) starring Jim Carey as Charlie Baileygates and Hank Evans

• In The Last Stand, it is explained that mutant Jean Grey developed a split personality as a result of mental barriers placed in her mind by her mentor, Professor Xavier. This "creature" represented all her primal urges, and called itself "Phoenix".

Comics

• In the 1980s, the backstory of the Incredible Hulk was reworked to fit then-current beliefs about DID. For a time, the character's personalties were believed to have been merged, but he eventually lapsed back into his multiple state. This take on the character partially inspired Ang Lee's Hulk film.

• The Batman supervillain Two-Face has a Jekyll-Hyde split personality owing to injury which scarred one side of his face. Batman himself was portrayed as something of a dual personality in the Dark Knight series.

• As written by Doug Moench, Moon Knight had three separate civilian identities. Often he showed confusion as to which was the "real" him. He eventually did develop something similar to DID, but was apparently cured.

• Rose and Thorn are the personalities of two different multiples in DC Comics. In the 1940s, Rose Canton, who later married the original Green Lantern, had a self called Thorn, a plant-based supervillain. The 1970s version 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. This latter series was remade in 2003 to incorporate a storyline which fit then-current beliefs about DID -- the personality of Thorn was revealed to have been induced by an unscrupulous therapist.

• In the early 1990s, Superman was injured and spent some time as a blackout 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, made into a TV miniseries directed by Takashi Miike, 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.

• Aurora, a superheroine from Alpha Flight, was actually diagnosed with DID. As in 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 excursions as a costumed hero, although Aurora is aware (but disapproving) of her other's existence. Aurora's DID was apparently cured or suppressed for a time (i.e., the two selves were integrated).

• The character Yugi Moto in the manga Yu-Gi-Oh coexists with a powerful spirit, Yami, once an Egyptian Pharoah, who may be Yugi himself in a past life (making this a case of diachronic telepathy rather than straight-ahead multiplicity). Yami appears as an older, more confident version of Yugi. Rather than the stereotyped memory losses and conflicts shown in most media portrayals, the two communicate freely, encourage one another, and are able to overcome challenges by cooperating, even co-running -- both using the body at the same time. One episode shows how they prevent a powerful opponent from reading their thoughts by "mindshuffling" -- deliberately switching at an unexpected moment, without sharing information with each other. An antagonist, Marik, suffers a more extreme case of DID, brought on by a ritual imposed by his father which scarred his back in childhood.

• The pseudonymous author Madison Clell wrote about her life with DID and her alters in the autobiographical comic book Cuckoo.

• The main character of the webcomic Kagerou has four vastly different personalities.

• The character Lucy from Elfen Lied has been multiple from childhood.

• Kozue Aoba of Mahoraba has four vastly different personalities, sans the main personality.

• Momoka Nishizawa from Sgt. Frog has two different personalities that work very well together without memory loss, although one is much more confidant and manipulative than the other "main" personality.

Music

• Split Personality is both a single by UTFO, and an album by Cassidy.

Computer and video games

• The main character of Xenogears, Fei Fong Wong, has several personalities, one of which is a villain. Fei's confrontation and integration of these personalities is a major plot feature of the game.

• The videogame Killer7 features a main character whose different personalities take a physical shape, allowing him to turn into various killers. These killers, known as the Smiths because of their shared last name, (Dan Smith, Kaede Smith, Con Smith, etc.), each have different abilities and weapons that the player must use to progress through the game. A major aspect of the game is finding out which personality is the dominant and the original one.

• The 1999 PlayStation game The Struggle Within by Agetek features a meek main character with a homicidal alternate personality. The player must combine the former's insight with the latter's ruthlessness to solve puzzles and to survive.

See also

• Dissociative identity disorder

Dissociative disorders