Dexter Morgan
Dexter Morgan is the American serial killer who works during the day for the Miami Metro Homicide as a blood splatter analysis; while, at night, he searches for the perpetrators of the crimes and kills them. Dexter lives in two separate lives as he loves his job in Miami as the blood spatter analyst as each day he goes to different crime scenes. He is also able to elucidate how different victims died by looking at the blood from the scene of the crime. In the beginning, of the series Dexter is married to a lady called Rita and they both had a son whom they named Harrison.
Rita was murdered and Dexter was left with the sole responsibility of raising their son single handed (DePaulo, 2010). When he was a young boy, his foster father discovered that unlike the other kids who would pick up models and played with them Dexter would pull other peoples limp. His foster father decided to accept the position of Dexter by converting him to a weapon through instilling in him the rules to kill. Dexter is proficient at targeting the criminals who plan to slip through police loopholes and even the law as he believes that therapy does not exist in Miami. Subsequently Dexter, therefore, matured to be a serial killer, and accrues many killings and in each one of the killings he gets away with it. He does not make mistakes, and he is, therefore, a character who has perfected his art of killing and getting away with murder. However, the rules in which Dexter adheres to are not saving him as it is the police department’s level of incompetence that gives him the freedom to go round taking out criminal guys. He relies on technology to track his targets, and uses the protected information from the police department databases, and he even makes several calls to the criminals, and the police do not even bother to check the phone calls records when someone disappears. Due to the extreme mental trauma that Dexter suffered when he was a kid left utmost emotional desires to kill. The father had the option of saving him when he was a child, but instead, he institutionalizes the desires (Carpenter et al., 2008).
This dark passage in his life was the principal contributing factor for Dexter’s way of life. He was adopted by his father together with his brother in a cargo box, amidst their mother’s pull of blood. The murder of their mother was something that the two brothers witnessed. This made them suffer an irrevocable psychological and emotional damage which left them with a permanent scar. Although they both had a psychological trauma, his brother did not adopt the live of killing as he had the ability to suppress and control his urge for murder (Sams, 2008). Dexter, therefore, ends up killing his brother as he believes that he was on the wrong path. Dexter lives like a normal people as his morning routine is not different from the morning routine of other people. Even though, he is a serial killer, he does his work in the most normal of ways.
Diagnosis of the character using the DSM-IV multiaxial system and the planning of a treatment program.
The multitaxial system is used to assess all aspects of a patient’s mental, physical and emotional health. This system is specially designed to provide a comprehensive picture of the complex mental disorders. This system is intended to promote the applications of the bio psychological models in the clinical and educational settings. The five diagnostic axes specified by the DSM-IV-TR are used below to analyze the character of Dexter Morgan.
Axis I.
According to the axis I dimension, Dexter suffers from clinical disorders. For example, he suffers from an anxiety disorder and other psychotic disorders. For instance, he has psychotic disorders since revealed from the reasoning that when he was a child he would kill animals in the neighborhood and the he would bury them in one heap. He even kills his brother in the same spot where he kills most of his targets. He is anxious to kill his next target and in every incident he feels the satisfaction in taking the lives of the criminals. Dexter’s psychotic disorders are diagnosed when he was a child from the actions he did such as killing of animals. His father discovered his condition when he was a small kid. Furthermore, his child hood trauma and his mothers killing left him with the desires to kill. He also suffers from adjustment disorders as unlike his brother he never got over their childhood trauma, and he did not choose to live a normal life. Axis one is specifically for the provision of comprehensive diagnosis which includes a complete picture of not just the symptoms but all the factors which account for the mental illness of the patient. Some of the adjustment disorders seen in Dexter include his depressed mood, disturbance of ethical conduct, and disturbance of emotions. In addition, he suffers anxiety disorders, which include acute stress, which he had it since childhood, post traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorders.
Axis II.
Dexter suffers from extreme personality disorder, which has led to his mental retardation (Phillips, et al., 2003). Dexter suffered a severe emotional trauma when he was a child who changed his personality and his perception about life. His personality was also affected by the fact that his father shaped it through encouragement of the personality to develop. He encourages his urges to kill as he sets for him the rules that he had to follow before all his killings (DePaulo, 2010). He tells him that it was not wrong for him to kill the criminals as there are loopholes in the department of justice. Dexter suffers lifelong problems, which arouse in his childhood. These problems are the problems which led to the development of his clinical disorders. For example, Dexter has anxiety and adjustment problem as an adult which is an axis I disorder which resulted from his paranoid childhood personality disorder. Dexter has considerable social stigma, and unlike his kids he does not adapt well to the community. It is impossible to detect the personality disorders of Dexter as he seems to live abnormal life in spite of the fact that he is a killer. He does not fail to go to work, and all the neighbors and even his close friends do not even notice his differences. The disorders witnessed in Dexter’s life are caused primarily environmental causes. He suffers extreme adaptation disorders. The treatment program, which could be adopted in this case, is the adaptation of the mechanisms which gets emotions under control. Although most of the patients with Axis two disorders are the first ones to seek out therapy, they are also the first ones to drop the therapy process. It is, therefore, essential to appreciate the emotional trauma and the therapist needs to teach their patients mindfulness which allows their patients to observe their emotions without reacting to them.
This is because this clinical disorder manifests in endurance of inner experience and behaviors which deviates from the expectation of an individual’s culture and the ways of living. This is manifested in the live of Dexter as he works at the police department and yet he is the serial killer which is the complete opposite of what kind of life he was supposed to live. His character is manifested in his cognition on his perception of other people and his affectivity manifested in his appropriateness of the emotional response (Badal, 2003). For a positive diagnosis to be made endurance to the pattern of the inner experiences and behaviors, have to lead to extreme distress and impairment. Dexter suffers from impairments in his social and occupational distress.
Axis III.
Dexter does not suffer from any of the generalized medical conditions. His actions are defined by his emotional distress and trauma. There are no known medical illnesses which are related physiologically to his mental disorder, which are severe to affect his actions. He has not suffered any server illness to affect the function of his mood and, therefore, affect the choice of medication for the treatment of these mental disorders.
Axis IV
Dexter suffers from extreme psychosocial and environmental disorders (Badal, 2003). He was brought up in a foster home, with his father encouraging him to be a serial killer. There are several conditions in his life, which affects the diagnosis and prognosis of Dexter’s mental disorder. He has extreme family disorder and at some point he even murders his own brother. For instance, Dexter is married to a lady called Rita, and they both had a son whom they named Harrison. Rita was murdered and Dexter was left with the sole responsibility of raising their son single handed. Furthermore, Dexter was adopted by his father together with his brother in a cargo box, amidst their mother’s pull of blood. The murder of their mother was something that the two brothers witnessed. This made them suffer an irrevocable psychological and emotional damage which left them with permanent emotional trauma. The kind of profession that he chooses is the profession, exposed to different criminal activities. This propels him to kill as he takes the matter to his hands. He believes that the legal system will only let the criminals pass through their hands. Dexter is skilled at targeting the criminals who plan to slip through police loopholes and even the law as he believes that therapy does not exist in Miami.
Axis V
Global assessment of the patient functioning is essential for helping the patient in the treatment plan and in the evaluation of the treatment program. According to the universally used Global functioning assessment scale (GAF) scale Dexter can be rated 80 on a scale of 1-100. From the Axis I, II, III and IV Dexter suffers from all the extreme mental disorders characterized in axis I, II and IV are exhibited by Dexter except for Axis III (Garcia, & Petrovich, 2011). In axis I, Dexter’s psychotic disorders are diagnosed when he was a child from the actions he did such as killing of animals. His father discovered his condition when he was still a young child. Furthermore, his child hood trauma and his mothers killing left him with the desires to kill. He also suffers from adjustment disorders as unlike his brother he never got over their childhood trauma. In axis II, Dexter suffers lifelong problems, which arouse in his childhood. These problems are the problems which led to the development of his clinical disorder (DePaulo, 2010). For example, Dexter has anxiety and adjustment problem as an adult which is an axis I disorder which resulted from his paranoid childhood personality disorder. In addition, in axis IV, Dexter suffers from extreme psychosocial and environmental disorders. He has been brought up in a foster home, with his father encouraging him to be a serial killer. There are several conditions in his life, which affects the diagnosis and prognosis of Dexter’s mental disorder. Dexter does not suffer from any significant illnesses which could affect his mental reasoning and his actions.
In conclusion, the DSM provides a most effective way for the diagnosis of the different mental and psychotic disorders. This is achieved through the relation of the clinically observed characteristics of patients with their experiences at different levels of their lives. This type diagnosis helps in the determination of the primary focus which could be adopted for counseling. In the analysis of Dexter Morgan character, it is clear that most of his problems are due to his traumatic childhood experiences which shaped his life in a different way. He witnessed the killing of his mother in cold blood, which instilled in him the desire to kill. There are many diagnostic ways which could be adopted which are inclusive of the disorders from infancy and childhood and adulthood which describes the long-term or the short term clients concerns. The long term mental disorders such mental retardation and other disorders such as personality disorders cover a wider range of behaviors of the patients.
The dark passage in Dexter’s life was the main contributing factor for Dexter’s way of life. He was adopted by his father together with his brother in a cargo box, amidst their mother’s pull of blood. The murder of their mother was something that the two brothers witnessed. This made them suffer an irrevocable psychological and emotional damage which left them with a permanent scar. It is possible to use this system to assess all aspects of a patient’s mental, physical and emotional health. This is because this system is specially designed to provide a comprehensive picture of the complex mental disorders.
References
Badal, D. W. (2003). Treating chronic depression: psychotherapy and medication. Northvale,
N.J.: Jason Aronson.
Carpenter, J., Hall, M. C., & Lindsay, J. P. (2008). Dexter. Los Angeles, CA.: Showtime
Entertainment .
DePaulo, B. (2010). The psychology of Dexter. S.l.: BenBella.
Garcia, B., & Petrovich, A. (2011). Strengthening the DSM: incorporating resilience and
cultural competence. New York: Springer Pub. Co.
Phillips, K. A., First, M. B., & Pincus, H. A. (2002). Advancing DSM Dilemmas in Psychiatric
Diagnosis.. Arlington: American Psychiatric Pub.
Sams, A. D. (2008). Contemporary authors new revision series a bio-bibliographical guide to
current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television, and other fields. Detroit, Mich.: Gale.
