NOTE: This is a spoilerful analysis that expects you to already be familiar with the contents of the book. You can read it for free online!

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is inherently about abnormalities in mental health, but the mental illness in question is up to viewer interpretation which is so fun.

I want to start this by comparing Jekyll and Hyde's split to that of a dissociative disorder. To my understanding, a psychogenic system forms when an individual is forced or forces themselves into multiplicity and experiences enough trauma during forced multiplicity for that individual to actually split. But to get to the point! Jekyll first uses Hyde as an escape and is mostly conscious during his active times, even taking credit and vague accountability for some of the things Hyde did. But with time he begins to lose control of his ability to transform, and can turn into Hyde even without using a potion. While we're talking about DID stuff, I don't really think of Jekyll and Hyde as two separate people in a traditional sense, but rather a separation of one's feelings into two separate personalities, like in a dissociative disorder. Sometimes he feels comfortable as Jekyll, sometimes he does not and takes the potion, same reversed with Hyde. But even with that dividing it can scramble and one can end up in the other's position, especially if switches get out of control. I think the sudden physical and part-mental switches Jekyll experiences greatly represent the same feeling of displacement felt during a mental switch. Also, it is very possible his feelings of duality in his past were symbolic for a REPRESSED DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER ALL ALONG! since he had the urge and careful planning to change his appearance in the first place (Hyde feeling displaced in Jekyll's body), something that is contradicted later with him feeling wrong in Hyde's body! His entire arc could mean a million fucking things and I love it.

Enough with DID, there's another Queer As Fuck Symbolic Meaning in town. The entire story is about the conflict of the persona (the self you show to the world) and the True Self, which applies for a million different labels. Jekyll's last name was taken from a gay man the author knew, apparently. Yeah he's gay! Hold on let me go on a detour, there's so much gayness in this book. Lanyon steals shit from Jekyll's house because he told him to do so in a letter, and then Fucking Dies. Utterson is absolutely jealous of Jekyll possibly being Hyde's sugar daddy. They're all GAY FOR EACH OTHER. ALL OF THE MEN. But anyway. Jekyll can very much be interpreted as a closeted gay or trans man, with Hyde being his true ideal self, the pure evil he evokes in everyone being because everyone in the 19th century was very much homophobic or transphobic. The killing people part is because we're quirky like that.