The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [89]
Their dispute led to several rounds of couples therapy. In one of the sessions, Rita complained, “And when he does talk to me, it’s lies all the time” (“If I Had a Hammer,” 4-6). To make matters worse, Dexter got arrested for assaulting a policeman and became the second husband that Rita had to pick up from jail (“The Getaway,” 4-12). To Rita, he seemed more and more like Paul in his abusive and deceptive tendencies. Their relationship remained tense until its tragic end, when she was murdered by the Trinity serial killer.
In her marriage to Paul, Rita lost control of the relationship due to his abusive tactics and felt powerless, as is true of any real-world battered wife. Her traumatic experiences caused post-traumatic stress disorder, and her subsequent emotional dysfunction rendered her an ideal candidate for Dexter’s cold-hearted scheming. We may want to think that Dexter is better than Paul, or that he saved her from abuse. And it was true that Rita no longer bore any physical marks. But Dexter’s manipulative, controlling ways proved to be just as damaging. The cycle repeats in fiction just as it so often does in the real world.
David Barber-Callaghan is a creative writing major at Vanderbilt University. His short stories and poems have been published in Teen Ink and elsewhere. Barber-Callaghan has long been involved with youth radio in Maine as a journalist, producer, engineer, and peer trainer, and his pieces have aired on national radio. He plays lead guitar in the band West End Detour. Summer finds him in Kamp Kohut, in Maine, where he serves as a counselor in radio communications.
Hailing from Ireland, Nigel Barber received his PhD in biopsychology from Hunter College, CUNY, and taught psychology at Bemidji State University and Birmingham Southern College. Using an innovative evolutionary approach to societal differences, Barber has authored over 50 academic publications. Books for general readers include Why Parents Matter, The Science of Romance, Kindness in a Cruel World, and The Myth of Culture: Why We Need a Genuine Natural Science of Societies. He lives in Alabama and blogs for PsychologyToday.com.
Admit it—you liked Lila more than Rita. You at least thought she was more intriguing. What was it about Rita that made her seem like such a nothing? Did you notice, though, how she grew into a more complex and psychologically interesting person over time? Why did she have to die, just as she was becoming less annoying? Tamara McClintock Greenberg proposes some brilliant answers to those questions that made me slap my head and ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
DENIAL AND RITA
TAMARA MCCLINTOCK GREENBERG
Women, Power, and “Getting Caught”
Dexter is a story of a serial killer with sociopathic tendencies (as he is not entirely void of feeling connected to others, as a true sociopath would be) whose main challenge is living in society while struggling to conceal both his destructive impulses and his acts of brutal murder. One of the “hooks” that draws us to and keeps us enmeshed in the series is the way we viewers are able to connect with Dexter Morgan. It keeps us watching and rooting, even for behaviors that most of us can’t realistically identify with. Dexter’s getting away with murder is something we become very invested in.
Though it might not seem obvious at first, Rita, Dexter’s main love interest throughout most of the first four seasons, was also concerned with “getting away with it,” at least in a psychological sense, as she often seemed to be trying to get away from something: her own aggressive impulses.
There is much that can be said about Rita. She,