Dissociative Disorders in Fight Club

The Dissociative Split

"People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden." The protagonist of David Fincher's Fight Club, a film based on Chuck Palaniuk's cult-hit novel of the same name, makes this statement a number of times throughout the course of the film. His life, in his estimation is routine, boring even, as he shuffles to and from his job as an investigator for an automobile company. He has a quiet niche carved for himself, complete with "a stereo that was very decent and a wardrobe that was getting respectable." However, suffering from insomnia and searching for some sort of catharsis to relieve his psychological trauma, he encounters two people who will change his life. The first is Marla Singer, a fellow malingerer amongst the support groups which the narrator attends. The second is named Tyler Durden, an outlandish and flamboyant soap salesman. These two seemingly unrelated figures serve to send the already ailing narrator into a psychological spiral, characterized by Insomnia, Dissociative fugue, and Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Fight Club's Narrator's descent begins with a bout of Primary insomnia. In the narrator's own words, "For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy." Characterized by difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep, to the point of life impairment (Meyer, 2006), the Narrator's insomnia is left untreated by his physician. Instead, he is urged by his doctor to visit a support group for testicular cancer in order to see what real suffering is.

This "prescription" is, by any standard, rather unorthodox. One would be hard pressed to find a physician willing to send someone in need of treatment to an unrelated support group. However, without psychological counseling, the Narrator's condition begins to improve. However, as he comes in contact with Marla, a fellow malingerer among support groups, his Insomnia relapses.