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.Tyler Durden is half of the narrators split personality in Fight Club, right? He beats the crap out of Ed Norton, chucks him down stairs, pulls his hair out, breaks his leg. Watching this on CCTV, we can see its just Ed beating himself up. Has there ever been a documented case of schizophrenia where one personality would beat the other, like in the movie?
Schizophrenia and multiple personality syndrome are two very different disorders. Schizophrenics present a lot of different symptoms, but usually suffer from delusions, paranoia, and sometimes suffer from auditory and/or visual hallucinations. While they often believe themselves to be someone they’re not (Jesus, God, Satan, and other supernatural religious figures are quite common) they don’t have “alternate” personalities.
I believe (although I’m far from an expert) that the Hollywood version of MPS is almost entirely fictional. In fact, there’s some controversy over wether or not MPS is a valid diagnosis at all, or if its pseudoscience.
Just a suggestion, if you are going to say there are spoilers you should indicate what movie you are spoiler-izing.
I figured everyone knows who Tyler Durden is. At what point do we forgo spoilers?
IMHO, a discussion of “the real Tyler Durden” as half of a mentally ill individual misses the point. To me, Tyler Durden isn’t a person; he represents the young man’s wish to be subversive, to be an individual, to be worth something, to transcend what he perceives as artificial social constructs. I know there have been times when I wished somebody would be my Tyler Durden, helping me stick it to the man and burst out of what I then perceived as traditionalism holding me down. That’s a story for another thread entirely, but I personally don’t think Mr. Pahlaniuk was thinking about mental illness when he came up with the idea. In fact, in his prologue to some of the newer editions of the book, he specifically relates Tyler Durden (or, at least, the fight club) to an external force such as a drill sergeant, a football coach or a father figure of some kind. I don’t recall mental illness really being mentioned at all, although obviously old Chuck wouldn’t have wanted to spoil the ending in the beginning of the book.
That’s not a safe assumption. Do you know who Joe McCarthy was? Maybe you do, but I know a lot of people my age don’t. Not everyone on the SDMB has been part of a social circle which would’ve brought the book or the movie Fight Club to their attention, nevermind actually reading/watching it.
To be a bit more specific, Schizophrenics do hallucinate, but the definition of their illness is that they are unable to tell reality from what is imagined. They have become mentally “unhinged” from reality, as it were. Thus a Schizophrenic may be under the delusion that they are Napoleon, Moses, etc. There’s only one personality in there, and that personality is the one with the delusions. I haven’t seen Fight Club, but if the main character becomes aware at any point that Tyler is, in fact, part of himself, then it’s most likely that he does not have schizophrenia, but DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder) which is the newest name for what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. However, there aren’t (as far as i’m aware) any cases of DID in which a secondary personality manifested as another person; Usually in these cases the personalities either “share” a brain ( in which case, the personalities are often quite aware of each other and are either controlled by a more “powerful” personality (which does not have to be the original one) or share the body ) or take it in terms to manifest in the person, in which case individual personalities may or may not know that the other personalities exist. It seems likely that, if it were a real person, the main character would be suffering from some kind of combination of these two disorders…but in film terms, it’s probably just an exaggeration of one of them on the part of the director.
To answer the OP’s question; Not to my knowledge. I’ve never heard of a case in which a person’s alternate personality manifested itself as a hallucination. Although, to be fair, it’s entirely possible that this happens and we don’t know about it.
[Lurch]
You rang?
[/Lurch]
Furthermore, wouldn’t the individual in question have to:
- “See” the alternate personality as another person,
- attempt to inflict physical harm on said person, and
- succeed?
If you see someone in front of you and swing your fist at him, and there’s nobody there, you’re not likely to hit anyone, including yourself. I would think that beating oneself up would involve an actual attempt to hit oneself. If you’re trying to hit yourself, you know you’re not aiming for an individual inhabiting another body–you’re aiming for an individual inhabiting your body. Maybe someone’s thought there was evil inside them that they had to punish physically, but this deviates pretty far from the depiction in Fight Club, which is that Mr. Durden is seen as an distinct individual in another body. Also, you could stretch it out to self-mutilation, which probably usually has nothing to do with multiple personalities or dissociation as traditionally understood.
It’s very strange, psychologically speaking. I doubt the director ( or writer, I think it was a book beforehand) read much into the subject.
A person could hallucinate that another person existed, but there’s been no recorded case ( that I know of ) where that other person has had a different personality, which is what seems to be the case here. However, it’s very possible that Ed’s hallucinating Tyler, who is just a delusion (and not, in fact, a seperate personality). In this case, it’s also possible that Ed would hallucinate being beaten up by this delusion. I don’t think, though, that he could have this delusion and yet be actually hurting himself; schizophrenia means that a person is disconnected from reality, even on a subconscious level, and to actually be hurting oneself and yet under the delusion someone else is doing it seems contradictory. Also, Ed does, on many levels, still connect with reality, and (apart from Tyler) seems mentally sane. This would not be the case for a schizophrenic.
On further thought, it’s not even possible to say that Ed’s both schizophrenic and has DID; While that would explain him both hallucinating and there actually being a seperate personality, Tyler would also have schizophrenia - there is no information, or subconscious ability, to hallucinate a sane person with total mental understanding of reality.
minor hijack:
It may not always be correct, but I think it’s still a safe assumption, if you consider that it will protect those who don’t want to see spoilers from them.
Assuming that the title was not misleading or exceptionally vague, a thread marked “Spoilers” with a title you don’t understand is obviously going to spoil something you haven’t seen yet.
The thread title is exceptionally vague for those of us not familiar with Fight Club. That’s the problem here, not the spoilers.
As portrayed in the movie, the narrator has a whole host of mental disorders that apparently no real person has ever manifested in even a remotely similar combination.
Delusion/Hallucination - The narrator imagines Tyler is a real person and interacts and fights with him, ala Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes fame. Calvin is at least interacting with a stuffed animal, which makes him half-a-tick less looney. 
Dissociative Identity Disorder - The narrator falls asleep and assumes the Tyler Durden persona upon “waking,” planning and implementing the plans of Project Mayhem.
I’m not sure if insomnia and masochism are “official” mental illnesses, but he seems to suffer from them as well.
The novel Fight Club was written by Chuck Palahniuk (official site). An English professor friend of mine tells me that Palahniuk used to have a heavy drinking problem; when he’d wake up sober, people would tell him the things he’d done the night before, and he would realize that it sounded like someone else, a totally different person.
Those of you who’ve known severe, death-bent alcoholics have seen this phenomenon in action: A friendly, engaging individual gets a certain number of drinks in him/her and becomes a completely different person. I don’t mean that figuratively; suddenly they don’t remember you, don’t understand the difference between friends and enemies, etc. If you’ve seen it in action, you know how shocking it can be.
I don’t have a better cite than “my friend the English professor told me,” but I know that the Palahniuk books with which I’m familiar (Fight Club, Choke, Diary) all seem to deal with addicts of one kind or another, be it violence, sex, drugs, pity, whathaveyou. And they’ve all got a pitch-perfect ear for the idiom and tone of people who’ve been in therapy for years and years.
If you want to understand the film, read the novel.
A moderator really needs to change the title of this thread, as not only does it not tell what it is it is spoiling but positing the question of whether Tyler Durden was real or not spoils the fact that there was a question about it, and hence the major secret of the movie is already given in the thread title.
I have changed the title of the thread, and I’ve moved the Opening Post down so that it won’t show up in a mouse-over.
bubastis, I think we should always avoid spoilers in the thread title… no matter how old or well-known the work That way, anyone (however few) who hasn’t seen/read the work who doesn’t want to know, won’t have it thrust in their noses.
At the same time, I think titles need to be clear as to the work, rather than just a character in the work. (Exceptions would be series characters like James Bond, or characters who are so well know that the work is evident, like Scarlett O’Hara.)
No big deal in this case, it’s not like a current release, but kind of a guideline for future.