This episode of Doom Patrol centers entirely around (and in) Jane’s psyche. With 64 different personalities, Jane could easily be a textbook example of the mental health condition known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (or Multiple Personality Disorder). But there’s far more to this story.

Similar to Scholastic’s Magic School Bus, we’re taken deep into Jane’s mind, to the dimension where all her personalities exist together, in a dark place called the Underground. As explained in the episode, each of her “alters” has a “purpose… a reason for being,” and one identity among them is required to be on the surface to represent them. The personality on the surface, therefore, is responsible for experiencing and expressing emotion. We also discover that the catalyst of her identity fracture was a childhood trauma in the form of sexual abuse. It becomes clear why anger, resentment, rejection, and projection become Jane’s core emotional functions. The primary personalities represent the emotions that are safer to live in, and are the ways in which she avoids facing deeper feelings of hurt and pain caused by her father. In our discussion, we explore the reason individuals who have survived childhood abuse may have difficulty connecting with others, why the protection of “alters” could be a coping mechanism, and how someone could overcome the hardships caused by a history of victimhood.

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