Dexter Morgan, a complex man, but an even more complicated killer...
“A sociopath is one who is affected with a personality disorder marked by antisocial behaviour. A psychopath is a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behaviour without empathy or remorse. The two might sound the same to some, however the differences between sociopaths and psychopaths are very real.”
Jean Marie Kerns
Dexter Morgan by design would probably be quickly classed as a psychopath, but hold on a minute…his ‘dark passenger’ according to the TV series lore (not the books) would suggest that he is a psychotic, as we the audience, witness Dexter on a regular basis talk to his dead father. We have also seen Dexter interact with his post-mortem serial killer brother too, so surely he is a psychotic episode?
Perhaps Dexter is to be regarded as an exception, I don’t think there can be a straight forward psychological definition for him as after the trauma of seeing his mother brutally slain, he wasn’t left to his own devices to become a text book psycho, he had the code of Dr. Evelyn Vogel mixed with the discipline of a cop’s morality code from his father.
And so with all these elements Ingrained into his psyche, these additional factors make Dexter one of the most complicated TV ‘brains’ to diagnose. as technically (I think) he is actually a psychotic sociopath, who has an inbuilt and controllable psychopathic psychosis…does that even make sense?
I think I’ll stick to the film reviews :-/
“A sociopath is one who is affected with a personality disorder marked by antisocial behaviour. A psychopath is a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behaviour without empathy or remorse. The two might sound the same to some, however the differences between sociopaths and psychopaths are very real.”
Jean Marie Kerns
Dexter Morgan by design would probably be quickly classed as a psychopath, but hold on a minute…his ‘dark passenger’ according to the TV series lore (not the books) would suggest that he is a psychotic, as we the audience, witness Dexter on a regular basis talk to his dead father. We have also seen Dexter interact with his post-mortem serial killer brother too, so surely he is a psychotic episode?
Perhaps Dexter is to be regarded as an exception, I don’t think there can be a straight forward psychological definition for him as after the trauma of seeing his mother brutally slain, he wasn’t left to his own devices to become a text book psycho, he had the code of Dr. Evelyn Vogel mixed with the discipline of a cop’s morality code from his father.
And so with all these elements Ingrained into his psyche, these additional factors make Dexter one of the most complicated TV ‘brains’ to diagnose. as technically (I think) he is actually a psychotic sociopath, who has an inbuilt and controllable psychopathic psychosis…does that even make sense?
I think I’ll stick to the film reviews :-/
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