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above as common to adult survivors from these families. Like her brother, Deb obviously suffers from a strong desire to please others and seek external validation as a result of her own inability to identify and follow personal feelings, needs, and wants. Again, this seems to stem from a lifelong desire to please and gain the affection of her father Harry at the expense of learning her own needs. Deb also possesses a tendency toward anger that is closer to the surface than her brother. Although we know Dexter is angry (he does murder, after all), Dexter has trained himself to conceal his anger, whereas Deb shows hers frequently. Her swearing is our biggest clue to her anger, and it occurs often, with little provocation. In addition, Deb also has the misfortune of suffering from characteristic depression, chronic dissatisfaction, indecisiveness, and poor self-confidence. This is evidenced by frequent tearful-ness, low mood, feelings of not being good enough, self-degradation, and constant consultation with Dexter.

These personal traits affect Deb’s interpersonal relationships and work behavior. Like her psychological traits, Deb’s tendencies in both arenas are consistent with individuals identified as having narcissistic family origins. Interpersonally, Deb lacks friendships, particularly with other women, and has an abundance of failed romantic relationships. In addition, she is easily hurt by her tendency to foolishly trust in others and responded, for a time in season two, by constructing a protective wall around herself. At work she has difficulty acknowledging her success and, in seeking new goals to attain, she works long hours to the detriment of her personal life. Even when she attains those goals, she never seems satisfied.

Elements of a Narcissistic Family System

Clearly Dexter and Deb show personality traits consistent with adult children of narcissistic families. To understand how this came to be we need to take a look back in time at the Morgan family. Through Dexter’s flashbacks we can learn more about Harry’s parenting style and its role in his children’s personality development and psychological growth across time.

All narcissistic families, according to Donaldson-Pressman and Pressman, display three common elements, introduced briefly above. Perhaps most prominent initially is a skewed sense of responsibility, which reverses the caretaking roles of parents and children. This creates the second element, a behavioral pattern in which the children react and reflect parental needs. The cumulative effects of the first two elements produce the third: problems with intimacy that follow the children into adulthood.

SKEWED RESPONSIBILITY

Healthy families have parents that accept responsibility for meeting the needs of the children in a developmentally appropriate manner. Parents attend to needs that children are unable to meet on their own without help. As children grow more capable through age and psychological maturity parental responsibilities lessen. Thus, children are responsible for learning to gradually meet their own needs over time. Parents make sure that their own needs are met or get help from other adults to meet them.

Parents in narcissistic families invert this sense of responsibility over time. Children of narcissistic families are often well cared for in infancy as their needs are simple and meeting them produces a response that is reinforcing to the parents. When a hungry baby is fed or a wet child is changed his or her mood quickly brightens, which pleases the parent. These needs are easy to anticipate and psychologically simplistic. As children grow older, their emotional demands become more complex and disruptive as they seek to differentiate themselves from their parents. This process is upsetting to a self-centered parent who may have entwined his or her identity with that of the child. The parent begins to view the child as self-centered and disobedient and stops responding to the child’s needs. In doing so, the parent also increases attempts to have the child meet his or her needs.