An indulgence, as I needed a spot to write up a little META. These are some of my thoughts on the ‘is Good Hal/Bad Hal a split personality’ debate, but also as a supplement to my own fanfiction story, which is about Hal’s life with Sylvie, the one love he thinks about when he needs to stop himself. So alot of this is in general, but a few comments wont make sense unless you read my fic.
I wasn’t fond of how the whole split personality idea was introduced in the show, him choking, blacking out, being all sexy wicked bad, then choking his way back. And it was hard to reconcile this episode with his prequel where he was Bad but knew he’d be turning soon and came to Leo for help. My (mis)understanding of split personality was only based on movies, and in many of what I’ve seen, the personalities don’t know of each other, they are drastically different from each other, they have blackout periods and never remember what they did. But then I did some research, and this convinced me that he could indeed have a version of Dissociative identity disorder. The symptoms had an impact on my interpretation of how Hal deals with traumatic events and guilt, and how Sylvie’s fate came about.
1. Dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder) is thought to be a complex psychological condition that is likely caused by many factors, including severe trauma during early childhood (usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse).
Well we know from his prequel that he grew up in a brothel in the 15th century and by the time the army surgeon found him he had “seen every dark corner of the human heart”. It’s easy to extrapolate that he had suffered all types of abuse growing up, was likely put to use in the brothel for those clients that had a predilection for pretty young boys. So, check.
2. Along with the dissociation and multiple or split personalities, people with dissociative disorders may experience a number of other psychiatric problems, including symptoms:
Depression - Regus’s comment “Ignore him, he’s not happy unless he’s miserable”
Mood swings - I think we can agree that vampires are moody
Suicidal tendencies - how many times did he ask Tom to kill him?
Sleep disorders (insomnia, night terrors, and sleep walking) - This is my personal canon, and it’s addressed a tiny bit more in the epilogue. I had the inspiration for it from Rubyrosettared's fic “Numb”. This is my interpretation of how Hal didn’t seem to be aware that he was about to revert, but Sylvie wasn’t surprised.
Anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias (flashbacks, reactions to stimuli or “triggers”) - The panic attack when he encounters Natasha and has to resort to arranging the paper clips is the biggest one I remember.
Alcohol and drug abuse - *cough* Blood *cough*
Compulsions and rituals - not stopping on the left hand side because it’s unlucky; the domino spiral; his strict rota
Psychotic-like symptoms (including auditory and visual hallucinations) - Hal warns Crumb and Alan about this, and we indeed saw it happen when vampires try to detox
Eating disorders - Does the whole drink blood for 50 years then starve for 55 count?
3. Other symptoms of dissociative identity disorder may include headache, amnesia, time loss, trances, and “out of body experiences.”
Also part of my personal canon, inspired by the fact that on three distinct occasions in the show, Hal seemed to be in a trance, and was confused after. In S4 after Leo died, when grown up Eve urged him to kill baby Eve. When Tom stopped him, Hal seemed to wake up, and answered that he didn’t know what he was doing. At the end of S4 when Mr. Snow welcomed him back into the fold (although that could have been due to some sort of supernatural link through the blood that runs through him from Mr. Snow). And, in S5 when The Controversial Split Personality happened, and Crumb proposed they both drink the blood. Crumb obviously chose the werewolf blood, and Hal almost drank the human blood, but Alex stopped him. “Were you going to drink that?” “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
As for amnesia, I had assumed that his personalities would have holes in their memories. I had a hard time reconciling Bad Hal’s words to Tom “We wake up in the world the other has created around them.” with the fact that Good Hal tells Annie. “I never forget anything.” How can Hal know all the horrible things he’s done if his other personality had done them. But then I found out that he could suffer from Dissociative fugue. ‘a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state is usually short-lived (ranging from hours to days), but can last months or longer.’ So, it is entirely possible the memories would come back quickly. Maybe his vampiric state has something to do with that.
4. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism – the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience that’s too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with his conscious self.
I think this could be why he can fight for so long, and then the guilt is too much to bear and he flips. In the show, even though he’d drunk blood several times, and he knew it was coming - "feed the monster a little to keep it from taking alot, from taking everything" - the blood wasn’t that the cause of him reverting. It was Alex loosing faith in him. He couldn’t bear having disappointed her. For my story, after the events of Chapter 24 and 25, when Good Hal realizes what he’s done, it’s too much for him to bear.
A final note, Jamie Mathiason, one of the BH writers, said that Hal is a bit autistic. I always suspected something like that, and it surely comes into play somehow.
