The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [7]
The thrill of the kill doesn’t end for Dexter when the blood stops shedding, but continues past the last drop. Like many organized sexual homicide offenders, Dexter collects trophies from his victims. A killer’s trophies, like Dexter’s box of slides, are typically kept in the killer’s home or in an accessible place where the killer can revisit them to relive the excitement of their crimes. Sexual offenders often maintain close physical proximity with their victims’ remains, either through cannibalistically consuming their flesh, keeping bodies in their homes, or by revisiting their body dump sites. Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment contained a nightmarish collection of body parts at the time of his arrest, and Ted Bundy kept the heads of several of his victims in his home before burying them at Taylor Mountain, a site he would revisit for hours at a time. Similarly, Dexter revisits his victims in calm spans of slack tide aboard his boat, the Slice of Life.
Harry taught Dexter to channel his sadistic impulses toward inflicting pain only on those who inflict pain on others. In reality, the Code of Harry is simply window dressing on darkly driven impulses. Dexter’s true killing motivation is satisfaction, a satisfaction that comes from subjugation, humiliation, and torture of his victims: the hallmarks of a sexual sadist.
Dexter Morgan. Family man. Forensic specialist. Psychopathic, organized, sexual sadist. It’s complicated. Under the bright light of the Miami sun, everything seems so festive and safe. But there’s a lethal predator on the prowl out there, and the night is coming. And it’s going to happen. Again and again, it has to happen . . .
Jared DeFife, PhD, is a clinical psychology research scientist at Emory University and associate director of the Laboratory of Personality and Psychopathology (www.psychsystems.net). A former clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School, he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from Adelphi University.
Dr. DeFife specializes in the study of personality, mood disorders, and psychotherapy. He also frequently publishes and teaches on psychodynamic therapy, research methods, media, politics, film, and literature. He serves on the editorial board of the American Psychological Association journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training and contributes a regular blog to Psychology Today. He is currently working on a National Institute of Mental Health-funded investigation of alternative approaches to personality disorder diagnosis for ICD-11 and DSM-V.
What if Harry was all wrong about Dexter? What if Dexter actually wasn’t the psychopath that Harry thought he was? And even if Dexter did fit the psychopath description, what if the conventional wisdom about those people is wrong, and they actually can be treated effectively? That’s what Lisa Firestone argues in this provocative chapter. Of course, Dexter was seared by his childhood experience of watching his mother get murdered and dismembered, then sitting in a pool of her blood for days. The result, though, was not psychopathy but something else. Other contributors to this anthology make a compelling case for the development of Dexter’s humanity over the course of the show. Dr. Firestone notices ways in which it was there even when he was very young. If only someone had noticed. (But then what fun would that be for us fans?)
RETHINKING DEXTER
LISA FIRESTONE
In season one, Dexter entered therapy with the purpose of getting close to a homicidal psychologist. When a fellow patient asked him how he liked therapy, Dexter candidly replied, “I’m a sociopath; there’s not much he can do for me” (“Shrink Wrap,” 1-8). Although he was half kidding, the statement is indicative of what Dexter truly believes about himself. He is convinced that there is no way he can stop his violent urges, and why shouldn’t he be? However, there are two problems with Dexter’s