The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [36]
A final note, then, before I begin: Although work-life issues occur throughout the first three seasons of Dexter, they really come to a head in season four. Married, with kids, everything Dexter had to deal with previously is suddenly taken up several notches. Because of this, I’m going to primarily rely on the first three seasons to describe the models, then treat the fourth season on its own. This approach has the added benefit of allowing anyone who hasn’t seen the fourth season to know when to stop, to avoid spoilers!
The Compensation Model: Does Dexter Compensate?
Compensation theory says that we seek to “round out” our lives by obtaining experiences we can’t get in one part of it through another. We work because our home lives don’t give us enough of a sense of accomplishment, for example, but because the workplace isn’t notably good at meeting emotional needs, we rely on our families to fulfill those. Each compensates for the other.
Dexter, at the beginning of season one, embodied a compensation perspective. He worked in part because the culture demanded that he do so. If he wanted to have a place to sleep and food to eat, he needed a job. There may never be a shortage of work for people who want to kill murderers, rapists, and other forms of human sludge, but it’s never been the kind of employment that pays well.
A natural interest in blood and the ability to examine horrific scenes in a detached fashion, plus a quick scientist’s brain, made work as a blood spatter analyst a good fit. Add in that Dexter had a strong role model for police work in his adopted father, Harry, and Dexter has found a job that allows him to meet a number of basic needs and to fake several others.
One of the things that motivates “normal” people is human contact. Most of us have social needs; human beings tend to be gregarious, or herd-like. The ones who aren’t, who float toward the fringes of society, attract attention. A classic sound-bite from neighbors of captured serial killers is, “He was quiet, kind of a loner.” Which, of course, implies that there is something wrong with such a person, that someone who doesn’t interact socially is somehow broken.
It’s a description that certainly applies to Dexter, who neither wants nor needs human contact (at least at the beginning of the series), and who feels a compulsion to kill. Because social interaction is assumed to be a basic human need, and because its lack can draw attention, Dexter needed to put himself in situations where he could be part of “the group” and thereby hide himself out in the open. This helped him satisfy another basic need: safety. Harry taught Dexter many things, but the most important was to follow the code. One aspect of the code involved blending in, appearing normal to a world unlikely to appreciate Dexter’s perspective and distinct set of values.
So, from a compensation theory perspective, work satisfies Dexter’s basic physiological needs (food and water) by providing an income, and it satisfies some of his safety needs by appearing to meet the social needs that he doesn’t possess, whose absence could give him away.
What work does not do is fulfill him. Some would suggest that we work in order to gain esteem, or to improve how we view ourselves as providers and contributors to the community. Self-esteem, as a value judgment of personal worth, is not relevant to what Dexter does at Miami Metro; he has a job to do, and he does it while maintaining something close to an emotional flat-line. Dexter does his job well not because he needs to feel good about himself, and not because he wants people to speak well of his work, but because being good at it allows him to blend in more effectively. People remember negative information much more strongly than positive information. Being mediocre or bad at his job would cause