Furthermore, Roseanne’s description of her TBI implies damage to the frontal lobe, which is home to the brain’s skills of executive function, including planning, predicting the consequences of actions, and impulse control, all of which help to explain why she could lapse into sadistic, racist identities and not understand why those actions and accompanying identities are so horrific. If we think about someone who has severe DID and has endured TBI, you’re likely going to see some inconsistent outlandish, even self-sabotaging behaviors. In DID, during a dissociative episode, alters (alternate identities) might take over and wreak havoc.
Before social media, we had no way of knowing when Roseanne’s alters took control. But now, it seems clear that her Twitter account was taken over by an alter who identifies as a sadistic, authoritarian figure, like the people who surrounded her growing up. That photo of her dressed as a Nazi, I now realize, is not Roseanne. It is an alter who identifies as or with the Nazi who lived down the street from her, who got off on torturing a young Jewish girl.