• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 599 0

age, in large part because research shows that people who exhibit psychopathic traits in childhood tend to gravitate toward the mean later in life. According to studies done by J. F. Edens and M. Cahill, “some transient developmental characteristics that are relatively common to adolescents can be mistaken for long standing adult psychopathy traits.” Additionally, there is limited data on whether or not juveniles who demonstrate psychopathic traits will continue to possess these traits in adulthood. For example, it is common for children to experiment with animal cruelty at a young age, but for most this will never extend past sprinkling salt on a snail or putting ants under a magnifying glass; not every child who kills animals will turn into a serial killer.

Children are not born with a sense of right and wrong; however, they arrive in this world with the innate ability to develop the neural circuitry for empathy. Given the proper attachment experiences as they grow up, humans develop empathy. Research shows that a child’s cruelty toward animals almost always arises out of an abusive violent family environment. Although Dexter’s early years were shaped by such an environment, his adoptive family provided a potentially reparative experience. Research has also demonstrated that interventions such as humane education that focuses on developing empathy toward animals generalizes to empathy for human beings. The National District Attorneys Association suggests, “If we pay attention to children and youth who perform acts of cruelty on animals and take immediate action to stop their behavior, future crimes can be prevented and lives can be saved.” Unfortunately, Harry did not stress the inherent wrongness of killing animals, nor did he take action to stop Dexter from acting sadistically toward them. Instead he assumed that Dexter was on an inevitable course of destruction and encouraged him to commit these “small” acts of murder in the hope that it would keep him from harming people, when a more appropriate response would have been to get Dexter psychological help.

The mistake Harry made with Dexter is the same mistake the criminal justice system often makes with psychopathically labeled juveniles. Studies find that juvenile offenders who are categorized as psychopaths receive less therapeutic attention due to the misconception that they are lost causes. However, the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment study of adults found that “psychopathic patients appear as likely as nonpsychopathic patients to benefit from adequate doses of treatment in violence reduction.” Such studies indicate that society is wrong in its view that all that can be done with these people is to lock them up and throw away the keys; research suggests that psychopaths almost always are treatable if they receive intensive therapy for a proper duration of time.

Dr. Randy Borum’s research has shown that intensive intervention, with an emphasis on improved interpersonal relationships and increased self-control, reduced the number of additional offenses in juveniles. This treatment helped young people form essential attachments that cut the risk to reoffend in half. Attachments such as these could have ultimately saved Dexter from his fate as a violent criminal. Had he received a proper psychological evaluation and subsequent therapy, Dexter might have been able to overcome the violent tendencies of his youth.

Childhood Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

I propose that the show’s implication that Dexter is a psychopath is a misdiagnosis and that, in fact, Dexter is a victim of childhood post-traumatic stress. At the age of five, Dexter experienced the most horrendous type of trauma imaginable. He watched as his mother was brutally murdered and dismembered before his eyes. He was then trapped in a storage container with her corpse for three days, confined to complete darkness and imprisoned in a two-inch thick pool of blood. In the field of trauma, this combination of witnessing a violent murder, losing a primary caretaker, and subsequently