# Did Gollum have DID?



## Humbelle (Jan 27, 2022)

Okay, so my favorite YouTube channel posted a video about gollum having disassociate identity disorder (DID). And I am not quite sure what I think about it and I do not know enough of the lore to respond. I always thought Smeagol was his own personality and that Gollum was the rings influence. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated! 
Here is the video.





Thanks,
Amanda


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## HALETH✒🗡 (Jan 28, 2022)

Well, maybe DID was caused by the Ring.


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## Elassar (Jan 28, 2022)

The ring caused smeagol's alterego gollum too emerge, too start decaying and too go mad and his madness brought up his speaking problems DID


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## HALETH✒🗡 (Jan 28, 2022)

Elassar said:


> The ring caused smeagol's alterego gollum too emerge, too start decaying and too go mad and his madness brought up his speaking problems DID


Elassar, I'm not a native speaker and I've got a curious question. Why do you write "too" instead of "to"? Is it slang? For example, in Russia we sometimes write "щас" instead of the right form "сейчас" just for fun.


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## ZehnWaters (Jan 28, 2022)

HALETH✒🗡 said:


> Elassar, I'm not a native speaker and I've got a curious question. Why do you write "too" instead of "to"? Is it slang? For example, in Russia we sometimes write "щас" instead of the right form "сейчас" just for fun.


I think it's just a misspelling.



Humbelle said:


> Okay, so my favorite YouTube channel posted a video about gollum having disassociate identity disorder (DID). And I am not quite sure what I think about it and I do not know enough of the lore to respond. I always thought Smeagol was his own personality and that Gollum was the rings influence. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated!
> Here is the video.
> 
> 
> ...


No. DID causes alters but, to my knowledge, these alters can't interact with one another. This is closer to schizophrenia.


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## Olorgando (Jan 28, 2022)

ZehnWaters said:


> This is closer to schizophrenia.


That's apparently a common misconception, but schizophrenia has nothing to do with a split personality.

From Wikipedia:
"Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, paranoia, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdrawal, decreased emotional expression, and apathy."


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## Humbelle (Jan 29, 2022)

Ok another question: do you think the ring had a stronger grip on Smeagol because he killed to obtain it? Or is that scene in the movies just from Peter Jackson's imagination?


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## HALETH✒🗡 (Jan 29, 2022)

Humbelle said:


> Ok another question: do you think the ring had a stronger grip on Smeagol because he killed to obtain it? Or is that scene in the movies just from Peter Jackson's imagination?


Yeah, the Ring had a stronger grip on Smeagol because he killed to obtain it. In contrast, when Bilbo got the Ring, he didn't kill Gollum. That's why Bilbo didn't become someone like Gollum himself.


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## Elassar (Jan 29, 2022)

HALETH✒🗡 said:


> Elassar, I'm not a native speaker and I've got a curious question. Why do you write "too" instead of "to"? Is it slang? For example, in Russia we sometimes write "щас" instead of the right form "сейчас"


I am not the best speller in the world, but my brother is a literacy teacher so he obviously got the spelling gene instead of me


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## Olorgando (Jan 29, 2022)

Humbelle said:


> Ok another question: do you think the ring had a stronger grip on Smeagol because he killed to obtain it? Or is that scene in the movies just from Peter Jackson's imagination?


The contrast between Bilbo and Sméagol that Haleth points out is one, I believe, that JRRT intended as an extreme contrast (in the Second Edition).
But Sméagol must have had a streak of evil in him to kill for the ring before he even touched it.
The One Ring always had it easier with such characters.
Another weakness the One Ring found easy to exploit was ambition - Boromir's problem.
At least on that account, being found by a Hobbit (and staying in the possession of several Hobbits, but *only* Hobbits, to its destruction) was the *worst* thing that could have happened to the One Ring.

But if you look at Appendix B "The Tale of Years" in "The Return of the King", there are also the highly different lengths of time the three major Hobbit Ring-bearers held it: Gollum for 478 years, Bilbo for 60 and Frodo for 17 before leaving Hobbiton (plus that for him increasingly horrific half year until its destruction). Notable is that even Gollum never became a wraith - which besides other possible reasons had exactly to do with being a Hobbit.


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## Humbelle (Jan 29, 2022)

Thank you all for your knowledge. If you watched this video and enjoyed it, they have 4 others regarding LotR. My favorite is Aaragorn vs. Toxic Masculinity. It contains one of the greatest lines on YouTube MHO. "You can decapitate orcs and write poetry; they aren't mutually exclusive."


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## ZehnWaters (Feb 3, 2022)

Olorgando said:


> That's apparently a common misconception, but schizophrenia has nothing to do with a split personality.
> 
> From Wikipedia:
> "Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, paranoia, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdrawal, decreased emotional expression, and apathy."


I know, that was my point: it's NOT DID, rather Gollum's symptoms more align with Schizophrenia, as your definition clearly matches.


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## Olorgando (Feb 3, 2022)

ZehnWaters said:


> I know, that was my point: it's NOT DID, rather Gollum's symptoms more align with Schizophrenia, as your definition clearly matches.


There's one problem with single symptoms, probably often even combinations of them, that they can appear across a whole spectrum of ailments, often both physical and psychological. Diagnosing any one ailment can be tricky.

The bit about Gollum speaking to himself, or as it is portrayed in both book and film, the Sméagol - Gollum "debate", might speak against both schizophrenia _and_ DID. But I'm not on firm ground here, and the professionals might give me quite a dose of .
But as I remember it, the hearing of voices afflicting the schizophrenic does _not_ include the schizophrenic's _own_ voice. They might enter into a dialogue with the _other_ voices, not sure about that.
As to DID, in at least one variant of it, the multiple personalities _do not know about each other_, at least not first-hand. They might be told about the "others" by other people who have witnessed it, or perhaps by therapists (these might even record videos of the "others", again no idea of they do). So that would seem to exclude any possible "dialogue".


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