I suspect that my dad might have split personality disorder.

[Freakshow]

This is an issue I've always wondered about, but haven't had the guts to ask him (my dad). The way he treats his family (i.e. me, my sister, and my mom) is totally different from the way he treats everyone else... for some weird unknown reason.

When he's in public, he's literally loved by everybody. He's also socially active and gets along extremely well with others. No one I've met so far has anything bad to say about him. I've had a few other girls come up to me and tell me, "I wish your dad was my dad." Sadly... what I wish is the exact opposite of that.

So here's the deal - whenever he comes home, he's very irritable and will shout/yell loudly at us if one of us does or says something he doesn't like. Believe me, when I say "loudly", I mean VERY loudly... to the point where you think you're about to have a heart attack. It doesn't help that he tends to slam doors - also very hard. Once he was angry with us and slammed the door so hard that I was worried that the pictures on the wall would fall down. He is always rushing us to get to places on time, which would not be so bad if this didn't entail screaming at us in the car all the way to the intended destination and telling me and my sister how lousy we are for not being able to follow simple directions and for being lazy and making him late, etc., etc. And whenever this happens, we often are not late at all. In fact, we've always showed up early every time. He just sets these really unreasonable times for us to get ready. Also, don't even let me get started on the double standards he has of his own children and others' children! He is so supportive and encouraging to other kids and offers them awesome incentives if they improve their grades, if they get into their first choice universities... and then for us? He keeps criticizing me and my sister, telling us how we're "bookworms" and "socially inept" and "lazy" and (insert adjective with negative connotation here)...

The most disturbing part about all of this is that he acts like a completely different person when we're outside. He tells other people how proud he is of his kids, and boasts about the fact that my sister and I are multilingual, have musical/artistic talents, and excel in school. (This is probably just my own personal bone to pick with him, but because I'm very gifted with languages, he often tells me to speak to the guests in one of the languages both of us know. I don't have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with the fact that it feels like he's "showing me off" because then everyone around us goes silent and waits to hear how good I am at X or Y language.)

Anyway, other people obviously assume that he must really love and care about me and my sister, when we're actually both frightened of him. We do not consider ourselves close to him in any way. We only obey him out of fear and not out of respect, which I think is very unfortunate.

We're also stuck in a sticky situation because neither of us know how to confront him. We are considered a relatively affluent family thanks to his income, so we don't want to offend him because we still owe him for his financial support. But I know my sister has already made up her mind to study really hard in high school (she's entering this year) so she can get a full scholarship for whichever university she goes to and won't have to depend on him anymore.

This is getting much longer than I expected. Bottom line is, is there a way I (and my sister) can deal with my dad about his behavior? If he really ends up having split personality disorder, what can we do about it? I was just on the Wikipedia page about the disorder and he definitely exhibits some of the symptoms. But this is by no means a proper diagnosis. I just want to know why he's always acted this way

[Iris. ♥]

Is there any way you would be able to talk to a professional about this? They'll definitely be able to give you a proper diagnosis. I'm so sorry that you and your family have to deal with something like this. I hope you get everything sorted out soon. None of you deserve to have that kind of negative energy around all the time.

[PlayingPretend]

Being quite honest, though I can't say this with any 100% certainty, he seems to fit more the profile of an abuser (yes, how he is treating you is abusive) than anything. A lot of the time, abusers tend to be very charming people, very well loved outside of the household and other places where the abuse takes place.

As the above poster said, perhaps you could speak to a professional about this, but more for your own sanity and the sake of the situation than for a diagnosis.

[OMFG!You'reActuallySmart!]

As you probably know, there's no such thing as a split personality disorder. What you mentioned may not be psychiatric at all because many abusers will put on a false mask for strangers. This can occur in certain psychiatric disorders as well, however, there is very limited information to rule any of the suspected ones out. This can be a personality disorder as well as a personality trait: narcissism. Various researchers have made countless typologies of narcissism but the one I like the best is Bruce Stevens' typology because it has the most types of classes. The link is a summary from his book:

http://hackvan.com/etext/psychology/...aded-hydra.htm

The book this typology is found in is "Mirror, Mirror: When Self-Love Undermines Your Relationship", published in 2001 by Bruce Stevens. The link also has some references you could check out, I haven't looked them up yet so I cannot tell you how good they are.

The DSM-IV-TR doesn't have a typology so its view of narcissistic personality disorder is pretty narrow and is the reason for the many typologies.

[Freakshow]

@ Everyone: Thanks for all your opinions! And to the last post, I think you might have hit the problem on the head. On second thought, it really seems to be more of a character trait than an illness. I posted the title of this thread out of pure frustration after all...