The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [59]
For most of us, the Shadow represents a small but powerful part of our psyche, but for Dexter, the Shadow dominates his personality, at least when we first meet him. As Dexter said in the quote that opened this essay, he doesn’t want to fight his Shadow because he feels it is all he has. However, what Dexter said next may give the audience hope. After describing the needs of his Dark Passenger, Dexter said, “Lately there are these moments when I feel connected to something else . . . someone. It’s like the mask is slipping and things, people who never mattered before are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me” (“An Inconvenient Lie”). This last comment suggests that the Shadow is losing some of its grip on Dexter and that other parts of his psyche are starting to emerge. He is becoming more than just his Shadow.
Dexter’s struggle against his Shadow can also be seen in his connections with others—in particular his relationships with Rita, his wife, and Debra, his sister—and how these have evolved over the course of the series. In the first season, Dexter admitted that he started a relationship with Rita to create a cover. He purposefully selected a partner who was as damaged as he was, so that her relationship (and sexual) needs would be minimal. Similarly, Dexter struggled in the beginning of the series to truly feel an emotional connection with his sister Debra.
The problem for Dexter is that maintaining authentic relationships can, at any moment, threaten his ability to express his Dark Passenger. First, from a practical point of view, close relationships with others makes it harder for Dexter to hide his behaviors, and so they increase the likelihood that he will get caught. For example, when Dexter moved in with Rita, he had a very difficult time finding a safe place to hide the tools of his trade. Second, from an emotional point of view, these relationships make Dexter more vulnerable. His emotional connections with others create cracks in his armor that his enemies can (and eventually do) use against him.
Yet despite the added difficulty that comes with these relationships, Dexter continues to nurture his connections with others. This was most clearly seen in the evolution of his relationship with Rita across the first four seasons. Although Dexter started out by using Rita as a cover, as their relationship developed, it was clear that he slowly started to truly feel something akin to affection for her. Eventually, Dexter moved in with Rita and her children, and by the fourth season, he even started a family of his own with her. Similarly, when Dexter’s sister Debra told him in the fourth season that she loved him, he replied, “I’m so thankful” (“The Getaway,” 4-12). Dexter is slowly becoming whole, right before the audience’s eyes.
But it is important to remember that Dexter is not the only one with a dark side. According to Jung, we all have a Shadow-side to our personality. One needs only to watch the opening credits of Dexter to see how our daily mundane tasks are rife with possibilities for brutality and violence. Dexter himself highlighted this fact in the very first episode of the show when he said, “Needless to say, I have some unusual habits, yet all these socially acceptable people can’t wait to pick up hammers and smash their food to bits. Normal people are so hostile” (“Dexter,” 1-1). And as reluctant as we may be to admit it, Dexter is correct in this statement. All of us have had times when we had a violent thought or wished we could harm another person—these represent our own Shadow selves. Thankfully, most of us do not act on our darkest impulses, but, according to Jung, it may be just as harmful to deny the existence of our Shadows.
Jung strongly believed that for a person to be mentally healthy, he or she must find a way to incorporate the Shadow into the whole psyche. If the individual simply tries to repress his dark side, the Shadow will find a way through the cracks in the psyche and often express itself in disturbing