Although Harry is the only person who knew of this psychotic personality of Dexter, his actions and behaviors affected many people close to him. Dexter was only 5 or 6 when Harry found him and his brother drenched in the blood of their mother who was murdered right in front of them. They had been sitting in her splattered blood for days when he found them. Harry was a police and had a family of his own.
He took Dexter and left his brother. Dexter never knew of this brother until eventually he came into contact with him in later episodes, and found out he was a murderer.Dexter’s traumatic past led to a sensation to kill. Like Hans Eysenck studied, Dexter was an introvert as a teenager, very quiet and to him self. He was also found to be much of a psychotic.
Harry found him killing animals for no reason. He knew that he had an urge to kill because of what he witnessed in his past. Eysenck said that psychopaths were insensitive to others, hostile, cruel, and inhumane, which Dexter showed by harming animals who had no control over their selves.When Harry saw this he began mentoring Dexter into channeling his aggression the right way. Harry gave Dexter a code to follow, which explained that you could only murder someone who absolutely without a doubt deserved it and was harming others. He also told him to disguise the real him and pretend to be a friendly sociable guy to the plain eyes view.
Dexter soon began killing people who he felt were a threat to society. Early development played a lot on his personality as an adult. For one his mother was murdered right in front of him as a child.He comes into a life already with violence, so the only way he knows how to handle with the uncontrollable deviant thoughts is to backlash and take action.
Mirroring is also a big part to personality development. Kohut explains in his theories that children have a need to be mirrored. Individuals crave self-objects whose confirming and admiring responses will increase their feelings of self-worth. Dexter looked to Harry for self worth. Harry gave him an alternative way to release this negative energy and increased his feeling of self worth.Harry spent his time mentoring Dexter which probably made him feel good that someone cared so much for him, so he listened to everything Harry told him, and idealized him for it.
They also could relate to each other, falling under the Ideal-hungry personalities, since Harry was a police and worked with murders already. Dexter faced difficulties in his two dimensional personality also. Neurotic individuals are quite emotionally unstable. Dexter tried to yield all emotions for any one but soon realized how cared greatly for his ex girlfriend Rita and her children.
His psychotic ways would not pass him though, and he felt as if his darker side was a part of him that would never go away. So he pushed away the people he loved and show psychotic tendencies. This caused Rita to not want anything to do with him, resulting in all his relationships being fake, or emotionally disturbed. I would imagine that if I witnessed someone killing my mom, it was also be difficult to maintain relationships.
When you have two different personalities and crazy delusions going through your head, you are not sure whom to trust.Dexter’s future is also another thing to take a look at. I feel as if in the future his real life will come to contact with his fake life and he will be forced to show who he really is. When you are emotionally disturbed it is hard to not show how you really feel, which is something Dexter is beginning to struggle with.
Once these two different lives coincide all will come to the light and the world will not see him for his past but see him for a psychotic individual who needs to be locked up, no matter if he is killing the bad people.
