The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [15]
Lisa Firestone, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the Director of Research and Education at the Glendon Association. She conducts clinical training and research on suicide and violence, including developing The Firestone Assessment of Self-destructive Thoughts (FAST) and The Firestone Assessment of Violent Thoughts (FAVT). Dr. Firestone is the coauthor with her father, Dr. Robert Firestone, of Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice.
Was Dexter born bad, or was he shaped into a killer? The nature versus nurture issue is one that has been debated for decades. In biological families in which the parents and children live together, heredity and environment can get hopelessly entangled. If a child is like his father, is it because he emulates his dad’s behavior, or because he inherited his genes? With Dexter, though, those two strands are separate—he is raised by Harry, his foster father, and not by his biological father. When siblings are similar to one another, it could be because they were raised by the same parents under the same roof, or because they have inherited some of the same tendencies. Dexter and Deb, however, were raised together but have no biological parents in common. Genetically, they are strangers. The reverse is true for Dexter and Brian; they share heredity, but differ dramatically in their upbringing. So what does it all mean? Follow along as Joshua L. Gowin draws from a long history of thinking and research to show how “even a truly sinister individual can be molded into a heroic, if twisted, adult.”
NAUGHTY BY NATURE, DEXTER BY DESIGN
JOSHUA L. GOWIN
It’s unprecedented that a television series can cast a serial killer as the protagonist and still attract 2.6 million viewers as it heads into its fifth season. Most of us shudder at the thought of murderers, psychopaths, and evil-doers. We don’t want to get to know them—we want to see them come to a well-deserved bitter end. Not so with Dexter. We’re drawn in by his glibness, but also by his humanity, even as he professes to not really experience human emotions. The fact that Dexter can stay up all night dismembering a murder victim and then turn up to work chipper the next morning fills our minds with curiosity. We want to know how he became a cold-blooded antihero with a warm personality and a wry sense of humor, and this is the crux of what makes his character compelling. Was Dexter born bad, or is he just the product of his environment? By nature, Dexter is a merciless killer, cut from the same cloth as Jack the Ripper. By nurture, however, Dexter becomes someone we can relate to; by following the Code of Harry he’s courteous, amicable, and comprehensible.
Dexter’s two most distinguishing characteristics are his extreme urges for violence and his strict moral policy. Although his violent streak epitomizes his atypical nature, psychopathy, his ethics reflect his even rarer nurture, the Code of Harry. The result is a truly singular personality: a psychopath with a social conscience. Dexter is rife with clues to both Dexter’s nature and his nurture. Flashbacks to Dexter’s childhood and the lessons Harry taught him are a recurring motif, and we watch Dexter restrain his violent urges as often as he adds another blood sample to his collection of victims. In consequence, we’re presented with a rare opportunity to objectively observe the development of a psychopath, from troubled youth to nefarious adulthood. The picture we’re left with is the darker, less explored side of human nature and the uplifting vision that even a truly sinister individual can be molded into a heroic, if twisted, adult.
Nature and Nurture
The debate about nature and nurture is entirely modern. Throughout most of Judeo-Christian history, a person’s character was largely understood to be the result of divine nature.