Split film recounts a fictional case of a man named Kevin who suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder, a real disorder.
In the film, Kevin’s personality is fragmented into 23 different parts, all with their own gender, age and personality, however one of his personalities is equivalent to a “demon”.
The film is not based on a specific case of multiple personality disorder, but on many, but there is one that stands out for its great resemblance to Kevin’s case.
We are talking about Billy Milligan.
The fragmentation of personality in different people has reached 100 personalities. The case of Billy Milligan does not reach those extremes, but he had 24 very defined personalities.
The life of William Stanley Milligan, known as “Billy” was always very difficult and full of disorders.
He was born in Ohio in the year of 1955 and since a very young age his problems began, usually caused by the relations that his mother had with different men, who came to serve as stepparents, however none really became, because they did not stay enough time in their lives.
But more than that, it was what he had to live in these relationships, one of them took his own life, after having tried twice before, these events caused a very strong impression on the child, while another of the men continuously forced him to do unseemly things, what could have finished driving him crazy.
From his adolescence, Billy Milligan became a bad guy, stealing continuously, and over the years his problematic behavior was increasing to the maximum point, which is where his story resembles that of Split.
On one occasion two of their personalities decided that they wanted to deprive women of freedom, and they did so three times, leading the young women to lock them up and abused. However, when the ladies were liberated and they reported to the police, the authorities were confused because despite the fact that the women had been attacked by a man who physically described the same, in terms of the accent and personality of each case was very different.
When Billy Milligan was caught he was studied psychologically and found that he had 24 personalities, and two of them had been responsible for the terrible acts, a Yugoslavian who even spoke with the accent and wrote Serbian, and a young woman, both declared themselves to be guilty of the acts, but the Yugoslavian said he did not remember anything about the offense to the women.
The studies came to light giving the results of all Billy’s personalities, which were divided into two groups: The Desirables and the Undesirables.
Desirables
They were those personalities that Billy Milligan considered pleasant, Billy, the principal personality; Arthur, a very polite Englishman; Ragen Vadascovinich, the Yugoslavian; Allen, a scammer who played drums; Tommy, an electronics expert and liked to paint; Danny, with anthropophobia, especially towards men; David, eight years old, was the one who received all the hate and sadness of others; Christine, a three-year-old girl who received punishment; Christoper, Christine’s brother and played the harmonica.
Undesirables
Those who were also there, but badly influenced Billy Milligan. Adalana, a young woman who liked women and wrote poetry; Phil, someone who had taken people’s lives, he had a Brooklyn accent; Kevin, another bad guy, who took “substances”; Walter, an Australian fighter; April, a girl who planned to remove the life of Billy’s stepfather; Samuel, a Jew and the only one to believe in God; Marcos, a “zombie”, without any initiative at all; Steve, the imposter; Lee, the joker; Jason, a very irritable person; Bobby, without ambitions; Shawn, with four years and deafness; Martin, a New York snob; The Teacher was the sum of the 24 people together and had access to everyone else’s thoughts.
Billy Milligan was the first man diagnosed with multiple personalities disorder, so he spent 10 years in psychiatric hospitals before being liberated in 1988.