Psychological profiling of Dark Doctor Strange
((a random brainstorm by @your-dark-magic-man-mysterio for @doctorstrangeaskblog and @darkdoctorstrange))
Let's start with darkness as a part of Stephen's nature itself.
It is very remarkable the way that Stephen dealt with it. There would be two solutions, normally: the first one would be to come to terms with it and even use it to his advantage.The second one would be to let it drown him and lead his steps.
What Stephen did was that he separated it violently and almost in a pathological manner apart from his pure self; not extinguishing it, not letting it consume him, but being in DENIAL and most probably in FEAR of it. He knows the power of his dark self well.
It is much like what the body does when something foreign is introduced. Maybe Stephen recognizes the darkness as foreign because he is in denial that it is actually one of the most profound aspects of his self. In that case there are again two solutions: either the body rejects/destroys the foreign thing or it traps it into a cyst and leaves it there, forgetting it ever existed. Thing is, the darkness in Stephen is not a foreign thing, and it is not a dead thing either; it suffers when trapped, and goes wilder still.
What is very interesting from a philosophical perspective is that Stephen's reaction towards his own darkness is the most HUMAN reaction ever. He is AFRAID. He is in DENIAL. Thus, he seals the closet's door and tries to forget the skeletons that lie in it. It takes a whole new level of balance in order to come to terms with darkness as part of existence, and a great deal of arrogance or even insanity to wear it with pride. Stephen is clearly too traumatized from the world... The same world which created the darkness in the first place.
In order to fully accept it, in my opinion as a psychologist, he would need some years of utter seclusion and concentration and PEACE OF MIND; however, he cannot be graced with those, given his position as the sorcerer supreme, so what he does is occassionally trying to bring the darkness forth and even speak with him as if it was an entirely different person. It is an effort at least to understand what is going on with him, and maybe dark stephen knows it too; that's why he allows that he remains hidden; because perhaps if he went forth, stephen's denial would drive him insane.
But the fact that he stays hidden and has agreed to that after some time of turmoil and protest does NOT mean that he does not suffer or feel oppressed. Remember; Stephen's darkness is much different than a demon's organized, serene and poisonous one. It is angry, desperate and chaotic; which makes it somewhat less effective, but deadly still. And exactly because of its chaotic nature, it is VERY hard to be contained. I bet that Stephen spends a huge amount of mental resources daily just to keep dark him inside; it must be exhausting him in a deeper level.
But, thing is, were dark Stephen not the INCREDIBLY POWERFUL BEING he is, he would feel better, because the oppression would not make him suffer that much. The imprisonment must have affected him somehow. Think about it. It is like imprisoning an angry, desperate, depressed individual. They become even more desperate, angry and depressed. In other terms, the imprisonment does dark stephen good, in a sense, but it also makes him feel even worse, because never forget that dark stephen is stephen STILL, therefore he is not inherently made out of darkness.
Dark stephen SUFFERS from his own darkness.
It is a very intriguing concept, because darkness makes him stronger and hurts him at the same time
The best way to think of stephen's darkness is to see it as PAIN. If the pain gets intense, the person grows more erratic; he grows depressed, tries to be freed from the pain, so he might appear stronger than his serene self. But as pain grows more intense the person's suffering does too.
Dark stephen is not like "I am darkness hear me roar", against to common belief. He is more like "I have become darkness lest it makes my pain a little more sufferable but it hurts still.”
Normal Stephen probably knows what is going on and he understands that sooner or later he has to come to terms with dark stephen; but he cannot, at least for now, It has to be a very slow process because they somehow are united right now but darkness is partially locked away; like they have a truce
I believe that if Stephen went to the Himalayas, for instance and lived there all alone for a year or two, where noone else would be around to get hurt by dark stephen and those two just talked and talked and talked, in the end they would be truly united. I imagine that at first stephen would talk to dark himself like one talks to another person, but as they slowly accept each other it would be as if he is talking to himself, and then he would still talk to himself, but in his own mind. Until finally, the talking would stop.The understanding would be complete, so there would be nothing left to be said.
