Dissociation: “Brooke Shields and the Curse of Beauty”

“Brooke Shields says that she often detached herself from reality, especially in acting, when called upon to perform a mature sexuality with which she had no experience. Recounting the director Franco Zeffirelli’s attempts to extract from her, 16 and a virgin, a scene of erotic “ecstasy” in the film “Endless Love,” Ms. Shields recalls: “I just dissociated.” (Off camera, to try to simulate passion, Mr. Zeffirelli repeatedly twisted Ms. Shields’s toe, causing her to cry out and contort her face in pain.) In such moments, she says she was “zooming out, seeing a situation but you are not connected to it. You instantly become a vapor of yourself” (1).

Comment: Dissociation is the mental mechanism of Multiple Personality, also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, a posttraumatic condition. If recurrent trauma first occurs in early childhood, the stage of psychological development when imaginary companions normally occur, multiple personality occasionally results. If trauma first occurs at an older age, other conditions, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, are more likely. Brooke Shields describes only an acute stress reaction, and the effect on her sense of identity —“You instantly become a vapor of yourself”—may have been very limited and quite temporary.

1. Rhonda Garelick. “Brooke Shields and the Curse of Great Beauty.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/03/style/brooke-shields-pretty-baby.html