The Fractured Self: Postmodernism and Depersonalization Disorder
Aigne Journal November 23, 2018 Conor Michael Dawson
This paper argues that several late-1990s American novels and films—Tim O'Brien's *In the Lake of the Woods*, Chuck Palahniuk's *Fight Club*, David Fincher's film of the same name, and Darren Aronofsky's *Black Swan*—depict a fractured identity that intersects postmodern cultural theory with the psychiatric disorder depersonalization disorder. The author contends that elements of Fredric Jameson's and Jean Baudrillard's theories, along with Gothic-postmodernist motifs like the mirror and doppelgänger, show these texts as structurally mimetic of depersonalization. The postmodern condition, the paper proposes, induces a depersonalized identity, leaving protagonists in existential insecurity and disconnection from self.