The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [2]
The other contributors concur. One after another noted that the portrayal of Dexter and the people around him is right on target—it’s psychologically real.
That left me reminding myself that Dexter is a creation. He came out of the mind of Jeff Lindsay, author of Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and the minds of all of the subsequent writers who shaped Dexter into the lovable murderer, colleague, partner, friend, brother, and father that we see on screen. And what a set of minds that is! Together, they’ve crafted one of the most psychologically rich heroes on television, and the essays you’re about to read will help you appreciate just how complex and well-written Dexter and Dexter really are.
After watching just the first few episodes, I thought I had a pretty good sense of what this Dexter character was all about. Not too interested in sex. Not very emotional. Eerily dispassionate about blood. None of those infamous delusions of grandeur we expect serial killers to have. He’s a killer, sure. But he’s a killer with a cause. Dexter snuffs out human lives, but it’s not for his own satisfaction, sexual or otherwise. He’s making the world a safer place. He’s doing it for us. I don’t usually like to be wrong, but reading Jared DeFife’s essay and having my initial assumptions pulled apart, limb by limb, was a delight.
PREDATOR ON THE PROWL
JARED A. DEFIFE
Is Dexter a Psychopathic, Organized Sexual Sadist?
Dexter Morgan. America’s favorite serial killer. We’re charmed by the man in the emotional mask and even more curious to find out what’s underneath it. How do we get inside his head (without using a sixteen-inch carbon steel bone saw)? While Dexter’s ever-present voiceover is an excellent entrée to his inner thoughts, even Dexter isn’t always quite sure what makes Dexter tick.
Behavioral scientists and law enforcement officials have spent decades attempting to understand and classify serial killers: their motivations, their methods, their personalities. But no two serial killers are exactly alike. They run the gamut from the psychotically disorganized—such as David Berkowitz, who claimed that his involvement with a Satanic cult and orders from a demon-possessed neighbor’s dog led him to terrorize New York City through a series of impulsive fatal shootings—to the cold and calculating—such as Theodore Kaczynski, who resigned from a prominent university position and sent bombs to academics and airlines.
Despite the range of ritual and motivation among serial killers, the work of mental health professionals and criminologists investigating serial homicides can still help shed some light on Dexter and his dark secrets. Unlike the delusional visionary killer acting on orders from a hallucination, or the mission-oriented killer seeking to change society through flagrant displays of violence, Dexter would be classified as a particularly rare and exceptionally dangerous type of serial killer known as a “lethal predator.” Like a predator on the prowl, these killers are efficient and organized:
They are deliberate, sadistic, and often highly intelligent. Their crimes tend to be carried out in a ritualistic manner, have a strong sexual component, and often involve rape or torture. They are hunters. They plan, then pursue, charm, capture, torture, and kill their prey . . . They lack feelings of guilt or remorse. Their violence and cruelty typically escalate over time, driven by fantasies that feed their predatory nature and lead them to compete with themselves in a twisted game of “practice makes perfect.”1
It’s fitting that our first introduction to Dexter had him prowling