Protagonist Syndrome is a mental disorder in which a person believes that they are one or more characters from a work of fiction. I have discovered two documents - a list of movies from 2001 or 2002, and a list of characters from 2015 - which document several facts that show I experienced this problem.
I believe that I suffered from Protagonist Syndrome coupled with Dissociative Identity Disorder, because in early 2015 - while attempting to recover from the psychological issues I experienced in late 2014 and early 2015 - I created a long list of people from history, and from works of fiction, whom I thought I was. It also felt, at times, if these characters were different personalities of mine.
The fact that I experienced delusions in late 2014 and early 2015, should not be construed to suggest that what I remember about the abuse I suffered as a child, is not credible. I experienced these delusions because I had been molested at the ages of 8 and 9, and then brainwashed into thinking that the abuse had not happened.
The reason why I suffered delusions - like the ideas that I was Jesus, or Odysseus, or Rasputin, or God, or the Devil - was because those things seemed more likely to me, than the possibility that my father had molested me, and then deceived me about it for almost two decades.
Recovering more vivid memories of molestation helped me recover from my delusions, because it allowed me to admit that I was, in fact, not Jesus Christ - and did not come to this Earth solely in order to suffer - and therefore my father was not God, and it was not acceptable for him to torture me.
I believe that my father's emotionally abusive and psychologically manipulative treatment of me over the years, eventually caused Martyrdom Complex to manifest in my mind, so severely that I began to suspect that I was Jesus Christ and that I came to this world in order to suffer.
This is why I say that I suffered from Protagonist Syndrome perhaps as early as 2013. I also got scrapes on my wrist from climbing over a chain-link fence on the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin. That occurred in the late summer of 2013, when I left Madison to hitchhike to Oregon.
I have also been aware, for several years, of the ideas of "theosis", "messianosis", and "Christosis"; i.e., the ideas that a person is supposed to identify with the suffering of Jesus Christ, in order to become more like God, or like the Messiah. Jesus and his suffering, and my relation to Jesus and his suffering, were things that I have thought about a lot, in relation to the way my father treats me. My father's bad advice about jobs, and his domineering way of speaking to me, impacted my emotional and financial well-being a lot in those days.
In late February 2015, I moved from Portland, Oregon to Lake Bluff, Illinois. For the next three years, I lived with my father and childhood sexual abuser, Richard Steven Kopsick, at 132 Welwyn Street, in the Knollwood neighborhood of west Lake Bluff.
I believe that I suffered from Protagonist Syndrome coupled with Dissociative Identity Disorder, because in early 2015 - while attempting to recover from the psychological issues I experienced in late 2014 and early 2015 - I created a long list of people from history, and from works of fiction, whom I thought I was. It also felt, at times, if these characters were different personalities of mine.
The fact that I experienced delusions in late 2014 and early 2015, should not be construed to suggest that what I remember about the abuse I suffered as a child, is not credible. I experienced these delusions because I had been molested at the ages of 8 and 9, and then brainwashed into thinking that the abuse had not happened.
The reason why I suffered delusions - like the ideas that I was Jesus, or Odysseus, or Rasputin, or God, or the Devil - was because those things seemed more likely to me, than the possibility that my father had molested me, and then deceived me about it for almost two decades.
Recovering more vivid memories of molestation helped me recover from my delusions, because it allowed me to admit that I was, in fact, not Jesus Christ - and did not come to this Earth solely in order to suffer - and therefore my father was not God, and it was not acceptable for him to torture me.
I believe that my father's emotionally abusive and psychologically manipulative treatment of me over the years, eventually caused Martyrdom Complex to manifest in my mind, so severely that I began to suspect that I was Jesus Christ and that I came to this world in order to suffer.
This is why I say that I suffered from Protagonist Syndrome perhaps as early as 2013. I also got scrapes on my wrist from climbing over a chain-link fence on the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin. That occurred in the late summer of 2013, when I left Madison to hitchhike to Oregon.
I have also been aware, for several years, of the ideas of "theosis", "messianosis", and "Christosis"; i.e., the ideas that a person is supposed to identify with the suffering of Jesus Christ, in order to become more like God, or like the Messiah. Jesus and his suffering, and my relation to Jesus and his suffering, were things that I have thought about a lot, in relation to the way my father treats me. My father's bad advice about jobs, and his domineering way of speaking to me, impacted my emotional and financial well-being a lot in those days.
In late February 2015, I moved from Portland, Oregon to Lake Bluff, Illinois. For the next three years, I lived with my father and childhood sexual abuser, Richard Steven Kopsick, at 132 Welwyn Street, in the Knollwood neighborhood of west Lake Bluff.
While in Portland, I experienced sexual dysfunction, due to the genital pain I was experiencing - at the site of my circumcision scar - when having too much sex and masturbating too much. I begun to develop resentment towards my father regarding his making the decision to have me circumcised.
That resentment about my father's decision to circumcise me, is what prompted me to ask myself whether he had ever molested me as a child. While in Portland, I only had questions and images in my mind's eye; it wasn't until I was back, living with my father - in his face all the time, dealing with him shouting at me nearly every day - that I recovered vivid memories of sexual abuse.
Between December 2014 and February 2015, I suffered from a psychotic break, after developing symptoms of what I now recognize to be Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) and probably also schizophrenia. D.I.D. is the new term for Multiple Personality Disorder.
Victims of abuse will often suffer from a "splitting" of their personality, resulting from their abuser provoking the victim's angry side that remembers the abuse, and then soothing them to get the happy side that doesn't remember the abuse, to come out. This is what my father did to me. Although I still haven't been diagnosed with any psychiatric disorder(s) - and / because I still haven't been given a full psychiatric evaluation - I suspect that my father's treatment of me resulted in splitting and D.I.D..
I also believe that my father has Martyrdom Complex - probably due to his mother dying at a young age - and I believe that he transferred his Martyrdom Complex onto me.
Additionally, I believe that I experienced schizophrenia in late 2014 and early 2015, due to extreme loneliness and isolation from most other people (aside from a few close friends and my landlady in Portland, Ann Theroux, whom I didn't trust).
That sort of thing will happen to a person who is alone for extended periods of time; for example, the Tom Hanks movie Castaway depicts a man befriending and naming a volleyball. To anyone else, such a person might look insane, but "Wilson" was probably the only thing keeping Hanks's character connected to society and reality.
I suspect that the long periods of silence I had to endure, living by myself without a girlfriend or any friends, increased my desire to believe that I was hearing voices that weren't really there. Believing that I was hearing imaginary voices, comforted me, because it made me believe I was special (because nobody else could hear the voices).
Between December 2014 and February 2015, I believed that I was hearing voices (including coming from inanimate objects), and I believed that I was other people (including people from history, and characters from works of fiction).
Victims of abuse will often suffer from a "splitting" of their personality, resulting from their abuser provoking the victim's angry side that remembers the abuse, and then soothing them to get the happy side that doesn't remember the abuse, to come out. This is what my father did to me. Although I still haven't been diagnosed with any psychiatric disorder(s) - and / because I still haven't been given a full psychiatric evaluation - I suspect that my father's treatment of me resulted in splitting and D.I.D..
I also believe that my father has Martyrdom Complex - probably due to his mother dying at a young age - and I believe that he transferred his Martyrdom Complex onto me.
Additionally, I believe that I experienced schizophrenia in late 2014 and early 2015, due to extreme loneliness and isolation from most other people (aside from a few close friends and my landlady in Portland, Ann Theroux, whom I didn't trust).
That sort of thing will happen to a person who is alone for extended periods of time; for example, the Tom Hanks movie Castaway depicts a man befriending and naming a volleyball. To anyone else, such a person might look insane, but "Wilson" was probably the only thing keeping Hanks's character connected to society and reality.
I suspect that the long periods of silence I had to endure, living by myself without a girlfriend or any friends, increased my desire to believe that I was hearing voices that weren't really there. Believing that I was hearing imaginary voices, comforted me, because it made me believe I was special (because nobody else could hear the voices).
Between December 2014 and February 2015, I believed that I was hearing voices (including coming from inanimate objects), and I believed that I was other people (including people from history, and characters from works of fiction).
In early 2015, while trying to jog my own memory about my childhood, I wrote down several lists of terms that I thought would help jog my memory more. I published those lists of terms in my April 2021 article "Correcting the Record: How I Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse at the Age of Twenty-Eight", which can be read at the following link:
In attempts to jog my memory about my childhood, I also went through my childhood toys, and some writing and projects from school that I did between the ages of six and eighteen years old. The smell of my toys helped me remember smells from my childhood. I also tried to remember the smell of Nintendo game cartridges, to help myself remember the way our basement smelled. I did this because I was molested in the basement on our gray couch.
One of the documents I found in 2015 was a list of movies I had watched before the year 2001 or 2002. I created this list at the age of 14 or 15, and even asked Walt - the owner of Center Video in Lake Bluff - for some help remembering a few of the titles.
Incidentally, when I rented the 1983 film WarGames, that video store owner told me that the movie featured a young Ally Sheedy doing yoga while wearing a leotard. Sheedy was about 20 years old when she filmed that movie. Still, looking back on it, it seems inappropriate that Walt told me about what Sheedy was wearing in the film; because I was only 14 or 15 years old at the time. It seems obvious that that video store owner was attracted to much younger women.
I am reproducing the list below, here, in order to help explain why I believe that I suffered from Protagonist Syndrome especially in 2015 (and also to some extent during the two years prior). The fact that I saw hundreds of movies before the age of 14 or 15, should help explain why I experienced Protagonist Syndrome years later.
What follows is an excerpt from a list that I created in early 2015.
That list consists of people from history, and fictional characters, whom I thought I was at various times.
At the top is an excerpt from the portion of the list which focuses on religious figures whom I thought I was, and at the bottom is the part of the list consisting of fictional characters whom I believed I was.
Readers will notice that one of those fictional characters was Ally Sheedy's character from WarGames.
That list consists of people from history, and fictional characters, whom I thought I was at various times.
At the top is an excerpt from the portion of the list which focuses on religious figures whom I thought I was, and at the bottom is the part of the list consisting of fictional characters whom I believed I was.
Readers will notice that one of those fictional characters was Ally Sheedy's character from WarGames.
Greek
Legends
Atlas
Hercules
Icarus
Homer
Cassandra (from The Iliad)
Odysseus, esp. as Nohbdy (from The Odyssey)
Paris
(from The Iliad)
Shakespeare
Banquo (from Macbeth)
Hamlet (from Hamlet)
Macbeth (from Macbeth)
From
Peanuts
Linus
Pigpen
Schroeder
From
“The Brady Bunch”
Bobby Brady
Oliver Brady
From
“The Breakfast Club”
Ally
Sheedy’s character, Alison; and Sheedy’s character from WarGames
John
Bender
From The Simpsons
Abraham
J. Simpson
Agnes
Skinner’s change purse
Apu
Nahasapeemapetilon
C. Montgomery Burns
Chester
J. Lampwick
Comic
Book Guy
Shelbyville Manhattan
From King of the Hill
Bobby Hill
Kahn Subanusenphone
Lama Sanglug
Luanne Platter
The
Exterminator (composite with Dale Gribble’s occupation)
The
Ghost of Rusty Shackleford
From
“Futurama”
Bender
the Robot
Cubert Farnsworth
Philip
J. Fry
Professor Hubert Farnsworth
Robot
Nixon
Turanga
Leela
Figures from the Bible
Bartholomew
the Apostle
Doubting
Thomas the Apostle
Esau
Enoch
God
Jesus
Joseph (all of them)
Job
Jonah
King
David
King
Solomon
Lucifer
Moses
Noah
Samson
St.
Anthony of Padua
St.
Emerentiana of Rome
St.
Francis of Assisi
The
Devil
The
Pharaoh
This is only a partial list. These 55 personas represent less than twenty percent (20%) of the more than 350 people whom I thought (or suspected) that I was, in early 2015. I created that list in March and/or April of 2015.
Again, I realize how ridiculous it sounds to ask people to believe that I was molested as a child, while explaining that I, at one time, believed that I was hundreds of other people (including fictional characters, figures from religious, and inanimate objects).
I do not now believe myself to believe any of those things. But I also firmly resent the idea that I "am" Joe Kopsick. First, because I share a last name with my child molester. Second, because my last name sounds awful. Third, because I and my name are not the same thing. I "am" not Joe Kopsick; I was named Joseph William, by the clan Kopsick, which is my family. I am not Joe Kopsick; I am a person who was named "Joe Kopsick".
This feeling of lack of identification with my name - coupled with my resentment of my father (over naming me, allowing me to be circumcised, molesting me, and mistreating me), and also losing my best friend and girlfriend - are what caused my feelings of dissociation to grow so badly that they began to manifest as more recognizable and nameable disorders such as Martyrdom Complex, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Protagonist Syndrome.
I repeat: My delusions resulted from trying to remember whether I had been abused, and from struggling to come up with alternative explanations about why I was suffering so much. The fact that I suffered from mental distress and confusion about reality should therefore not be used to suggest that my memories about the abuse are not reliable.
Moreover, I did not recover the vivid memories about the abuse on the gray couch (the incidents which I remember the most clearly) until mid-2017, a full two years after I stopped suffering from schizophrenic and dissociative delusions.
On the other hand, I did recover at least one memory in early 2015, when I was still in the midst of trying to recover psychologically; this was the memory of my father caressing the back of my head at the Union League Club Hotel in Chicago in December 1996 (after which I blacked out). I referred to this incident as "Incident #20" in my second statement to Lake Bluff police.
That statement can be read at the following link:
But the vast majority of vivid memories regarding sexual abuse, were recovered two whole years after I stopped experiencing delusions.
List of movies created in 2001 or 2002,
and found in 2015
List of personalities created in March and/or April 2015
This article written and published
on May 20th, 2021
List of religious figured added on May 24th, 2021
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