How Childhood Abuse and Trauma Affected Dean Winchester in Adulthood in Supernatural
Supernatural was a television series that spanned fifteen years from 2005 to 2020 created by Eric Kripke that premiered on The WB, now known as The CW (“Supernatural”). Kripke took inspiration from his own life by making family the prime aspect of Supernatural since family was a central part in his upbringing while also incorporating elements of classic Americana from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and supernatural lore (Rome). The show, Supernatural, followed the brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) as they continued in their father’s footsteps hunting monsters, creatures, deities, and a multitude of other things that went bump in the night while also attempting to stop the next apocalypse. On top of diving into lore from diverse cultures, religions, and the occult, Supernatural at its heart focused on familial bonds and dynamics. When looking at the central characters of the show, it is evident that Dean Winchester struggles with copious amounts of trauma from his childhood and adolescent years that he still carries onto well into his adulthood (“Supernatural”).
Early Childhood
The first episode of the series is where most of Dean’s trauma stems from. In the flashback from “Pilot,” Dean is around four years old while Sam is six months old. In the flashback, their parents, John and Mary Winchester, put them both down for the night before they themselves head to bed after Dean says goodnight to his little brother. They both part ways with Mary sleeping in what is their bedroom and John sleeping in the easy chair downstairs, which signifies their already strained and far from perfect marriage that Dean mentions in “Dark Side of the Moon.,” before Mary stirs out from her slumber, hearing Sam’s cries from the baby monitor. When she goes to check on him, she notices a tall figure in the room that she assumes is her husband before heading downstairs to turn off the television that is still on. There she finds John fast asleep in the easy chair. After the realization that there is a stranger in Sam’s room, Mary races to the nursery where she is murdered and set aflame by the yellow eyed demon after John enters the nursery from hearing his wife’s screams. After the fire breaks out, John hands Dean his brother and tells him to get out of the house while he attempts to save Mary before leaving the house himself and joining his children as they watch their old life fade away into the flames of the fire.
The death of his mother to Dean is the first traumatic event he vividly experiences. Her death is not only traumatic to him by the close relationship they had, but also with it shattering the sense of safety, security, and love he had felt and experienced before that night. This event is the result of other traumas in his life, such as forcing him to grow up quickly to become a caregiver to his brother, exposing him the harsh realities of poverty, and having to emotionally support his father through his trauma of losing his wife and the horrors that came with the new life John thrusted them into. This event results in Dean experiencing parentification, abuse and neglect, and mental illness.
Parentification is the result of forcing children to take on adult roles that they are not well suited to handle. Children can become parentified if one of their parents were neglected or abused, they abuse different substances, or a traumatic event has happened. There are two types of parentification: instrumental and emotional. Instrumental parentification happens when a child is instructed to do certain tasks, which are not age appropriate for them, by their parent. This includes and is not limited to taking care of younger siblings and providing for the family in some way. Emotional parentification happens when the parent of the child expects them to fulfill their emotional needs. Examples of this behavior can be parents ranting about their marital problems to their children. This form of abuse is constant throughout the entirety of Dean’s childhood (Lewis).
In Supernatural, Dean experienced parentification constantly during his upbringing, even before Mary’s death and John throwing them into the hunting life. The first time the audience sees Dean subject to this is in “Dark Side of the Moon.” After John calls Mary, during the time he moved out for a few days after one of their previous spats, Dean comforts and tends to the emotional needs of his mother after seeing the look on her face after hanging up the phone (“Dark Side of the Moon”). This scene singlehandedly shows the parentification of Dean with him comforting his mother, when she most needed it, after the conversation she had with her husband due to him emotionally tearing her down rather than fulfilling her emotionally. Dean, his son, had to take that place to clean up his mess and provide his mother with the emotional fulfillment she needed (Lewis). Parentification is displayed throughout the episode “Something Wicked.” In “Something Wicked,” Sam and Dean investigate an old case their father had left behind for them, that brings back painful memories from when Dean was a child. When John was hunting the shtriga, a type of witch, Dean was left alone to look after his little brother to make sure nothing would harm him while John was out. This included Dean being responsible for a sawed-off shotgun in case something would attack Sam while his father was gone when he was around eight years old. Being the typical kid, he eventually became bored of just hanging around in the dingy motel room they were staying at and decided to stretch his legs and grab a soda before returning to the room where he finds his father killing the witch before yelling at him and blaming him for not being there to protect his brother when he was only a kid (“Something Wicked”). Despite him being just a child when this occurred, John blames and continues to blame him for this for years for not being there to take care of his brother when it is not his responsibility to be taking care of and parenting a child when he is only a child himself. This brings to light that Dean never really had a childhood or was a kid when he was growing up with having to be there to take care of his brother at a small age as well as both of his parents, which John mentions in the episode “In My Time of Dying.” John states that on the first hunts he went on, he would come back a mess from what he had seen on his most recent hunt. However, Dean was the one that was always there to comfort him and emotionally fulfill him, which gets into more of the emotional parentification from his father that Dean experienced as a small child (“In My Time of Dying”). Through the use of parentification in the show, it is clear that Sam and Dean were neglected as young children.
In the episode “Dead in the Water,” Sam and Dean investigate a series of unnatural drownings from Lake Manitoc in Wisconsin. While investigating what could be the cause of all the drownings, they pose as wildlife officers and ask the sheriff and several other people about what has happened in the town to cause something of this destruction. When asking the sheriff peculiar questions about the drownings, they meet the sheriff’s daughter and grandson. Upon getting acquainted with the two, they find out Andrea’s husband was one of the victims and her mute son Lucas was the one that saw what happened to his father and communicates to others using drawings. By the end of the episode, the brothers find out Andrea’s father and one of the drowned victims kept a secret from them about a boy they knew and had inevitably drowned from their involvement, which resulted in the young boy becoming a vengeful spirit to right wrongs of the past and make them feel what his mother had to go through emotionally with his death. In this episode, Dean opens up about the night his mother died to Lucas to give him someone who understood what he was feeling and thinking that he himself was not granted when his mother passed. Also in this episode, the audience finds out that much like Lucas, Dean also had trouble communicating after the death of his mother, which John documents in his hunting journal. (“Dead in the Water”) Dean’s mutism after the death of his mother could be a result of trying to repress the memory and avoid reliving that night.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and talk therapy, is credited with his proposed theory of defense mechanisms. Most of his work is discredited by most psychologists except for defense mechanisms and his three stems of the mind known as the id, ego, and superego, which psychologists that take a psychodynamic approach in their field accept without believing in Freud’s motivational drive caused by aggression and sex. The defense mechanisms include repression, regression, reaction formation, projection, rationalization, displacement, sublimation, and denial. Regression refers retreating to a former stage of development, according to Freud this would be regression of the psychosexual stages (Meyers 557-563). This perspective shifts as the Neo-Freudians believe in different motivational drives compared to Freud’s sexual and aggressive based one. According to Karen Horney, the motivational drive is people’s desires for love and security. Looking at her perspective when looking at the defense mechanisms as a whole can be the result of wanting to be perceived favorably to obtain that love and security (Meyers 565-566). In Supernatural, regression occurs in the episode “Dead in the Water” as a result of Dean regressing in his development by becoming mute after the death of his mother to avoid as much anxiety surrounding the and to avoid becoming a burden to his father by having to take care of his emotional needs. Repression also ties into this with Dean avoiding and repressing what happened to his mother by not talking about it with not having the luxury to talk about this major change in his life due to him having to fulfill those needs for his father (Meyers 557-563).
In the episode “A Very Supernatural Christmas,” Sam and Dean investigate a series of murders that involve people being dragged through the chimney with hardly a trace left behind. In the season this episode is in, Dean sells his soul to save his brother’s life. This causes him to want to celebrate one last Christmas before his soul is dragged all the way to Hell by the hellhounds. Throughout this episode, flashbacks of Sam and Dean celebrating Christmas when they were children occur and contradict the Norman Rockwell Christmas Dean dreams of having as a last hurrah. Due to John’s neglect, both Sam and Dean were never granted the commercialized Christmas, but made do on their own (“A Very Supernatural Christmas”). This is also due to Sam and dean living in poverty. Evidence has proven that poverty is related to child abuse and neglect. The effects of poverty can also be transferred to children in that situation due to it affecting their parents and caretakers. Fathers in families affected by poverty tend to be less emotionally involved in their children’s lives, which can have a drastic effect to be much worse with the greater persistence of poverty (Leverich 72-74) This affects Dean and his brother with their father being more emotionally distant and physically distant from them. This also affects them with not being provided with adequate living conditions with living in ran down motels and the backseat of their father’s car when heading to the next hunt. Their living conditions have also lacked with them being able to access nutritional food and also hardly any food at some times.
Childhood trauma is the result of experiencing either different forms of abuse or living through a traumatic event. Exposure to such things can constitute in the child’s developmental level being affected and cause them to experience problems. Such problems this can cause is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Loggings). PTSD is an anxiety disorder that is triggered by traumatic events reoccurrence in the mind, which can cause people to have nightmares, be socially withdrawn, jumpy, anxious, feel numb, or have insomnia that is recurrent for four weeks or more after the inciting event to the trauma (Meyers 664).
In Supernatural, Dean experiences the loss of his mother due to mysterious causes and circumstances in the episode “Pilot,” but his response to her death and how it affected him is not brought up until “Dead in the Water.” Dean’s response to her passing away was to close himself off from everyone he knew by not communicating in any way with others, including his brother and his father. This lack of social interaction that was unusual compared to before her death signifies a disturbance that causes daily functioning to be more difficult for him. The disturbance of behavior in his daily life then, displays a psychological disorder from the interruption it causes him in his life to experience (Meyers 651). Dean most likely experiences PTSD due to the event and things surrounding it making him irritable and jumpy as seen in “Home.” In “Home,” Sam and Dean visit the place where they grew up and the place where they lost their mother because Sam had a vision in which another woman died in what used to be their home. Dean is reluctant to go back with the events that took place the last time they were there, and he tries to avoid anything he possibly could relating to his mother and the house while still trying to help the woman that could be doomed to face the same fate his mother had. When around the house and when taking about his mother, he is jumpy and wants to move on from the subject and leave the place as soon as he can. This makes it more likely that he has PTSD rather than another anxiety disorder because his trigger is specific and rather than general like most anxiety disorders.
Adolescence
The inadequacy Dean feels from his father’s abuse in his early childhood builds in this stage of his life. In Beyond Bruises: The Truth about Teens and Abuse, children that experience abuse begin to believe the remarks they hear from their parental figures and soon come to feel like they are inadequate. Due to this, children begin to see themselves as their abuser sees them instead of understanding what they are like and how they feel themselves. When this happens children may make up a false persona to distract from what happened to them and to get some fulfillment that they are not receiving at home (Gordon 63). In the episode “After School Special,” Sam and Dean return to Truman High School, one of the many schools mentioned in flashbacks throughout the series with their nomadic lifestyle surrounded by hunting, to work a case after a student drowns another student and claims she was possessed and did not have control over her body when the drowning occurred. The brothers go undercover as school employees to discover the ghost of Sam’s bully at the school has been terrorizing the school. Business as usual, they purify and burn the remains for the spirit to pass on. During the flashbacks from this episode, Dean in his time at that high school portrayed himself as a womanizer and has his fair share of girls while he attends that school, and is even called out by one of the girls he wronged about who he actually is rather that who he portrays himself to be (“After School Special”). This “bad boy” and “Devil may care” attitude of his continues to be present well into his adult years to cover up what he feels and hide his vulnerability from the people he cares about. Due to the nomadic lifestyle Dean and his family lived, the emphasis of school from a parent was not set in place and caused him to not even try, knowing that he would be gone in a couple of weeks or months. Along with the lack of emphasis in education, he was more likely to be concerned about Sam’s wellbeing since he was the one taking care of his needs most of the time when John was preoccupied with a hunt and in general (Gordon 63).
In the episode “Bad Boys,” Dean received a call from an old friend, Sonny, who helped him out during a tough time when he was a teenager. Sonny calls Dean looking for someone to help with his current situation when one of his workers at the boys’ home was mysteriously murdered by a piece of machinery that had not worked in years. When Dean returns to the place he stayed at and called his home for a few months, he begins to remember his time there and how he got there in the first place when he was picked up for shoplifting a loaf of bread and peanut butter at the market. Due to the abuse in Dean’s early childhood, he was more prone to shop lifting and committing a crime later in his juvenile years from the likelihood of children that have experienced abuse committing a crime increasing by fifty-nine percent (Gordon 71).
Adulthood
The trauma and abuse that Dean Winchester experienced in his childhood affected the relationships he formed as an adult, his self-image, and his mental health. Throughout the series Dean is often clingy to those around him, especially his father and brother, from wanting to seek the validation and acceptance he was hardly ever granted as a child and was instead given the opposite from his father. This is also due to Sam and John being the most consistent things in his life because of their nomadic lifestyle and them being the closest representations of a home that he had growing up and into most of his adulthood. When his father, John, would fulfill his emotional needs, it would be to work for his own personal gain while he was off seeking to avenge his wife’s death, but berating Dean the second he made the smallest mistake or attempted to be a kid. The back-and-forth relationship John had with his son caused Dean to not feel secure in any of his romantic or familial relationships from thinking that everyone would eventually leave him once they realized he was damaged goods. This resulted Dean to grow more colder and attempt to push people away from himself before they realized this, so he would no longer be the one ending up hurt anymore. He also kept the womanizer persona he established during his teen years while engaging in high-risk behavior such as drinking copious amounts of alcohol and having unprotected sex with most flings, he has had throughout most of the seasons in the show as a distraction and coping mechanism for the abuse and neglect he received in his childhood. Having experienced abuse and neglect, Dean was more susceptible to engage in high-risk behaviors like this and more prone to have stress, anxiety, and emotional issues throughout his life (“How Childhood Trauma Affects Us as Adults: Mental Health”).
In adulthood, Dean continues to struggle with the trauma, abuse, and neglect from his childhood and adolescent years. There are multiple reasons this occurs with him being parentified at such an early age by his parents to fulfill their own emotional needs and to take care of his brother and coping with the loss of his mother and the effects it her death had on his father in his early childhood. Also, experiencing neglect and abuse from his father that occurred in his early childhood and adolescence caused him to have long lasting effects into his adulthood from the emotional baggage he has had to deal with.
Works Cited
“After School Special.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 4, episode 13, The CW, 2009.
“A Very Supernatural Christmas” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 4, episode 8, The CW, 2007.
“Bad Boys.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 9, episode 7, The CW, 2013.
“Dark Side of the Moon.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 5, episode 16, The CW, 2010.
“Dead in the Water.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 1, episode 3, The WB, 2005.
“How Childhood Trauma Affects Us as Adults: Mental Health.” Mental Health Center, 3 Apr. 2019, https://www.mentalhealthcenter.org/how-childhood-trauma-affects-adult-relationships/.
Gordon, Sherri Mabry. Beyond Bruises: The Truth about Teens and Abuse. Enslow, 2009.
“Home.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 1, episode 9, The WB, 2005.
“In My Time of Dying.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 2, episode 1, The CW, 2006.
Leverich, Jean Marie. Child Abuse. Greenhaven Press, 2008.
Lewis, Rhona. “Parentification: What Is a Parentified Child?” Healthline, Healthline Media, 23 Sept. 2021, https://www.healthline.com/health/parentification#instrumental-vs-emotional.
Loggins, Brittany. “Childhood Trauma in Adults: How to Recognize and Heal from It.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 23 Nov. 2021, https://www.verywellmind.com/signs-of-childhood-trauma-in-adults-5207979.
Myers, David G. Myers’ Psychology for AP. 2nd ed., W.H. Freeman, 2014.
“Pilot.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 1, episode 1, The WB, 2005.
Rome, Emily. “'Supernatural' and 'Timeless' Creator Eric Kripke Details the Real-Life Inspirations behind His Fantasy Series.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 19 Dec.2018, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-st-eric-kripke-timeless-20181219 story.html#:~:text=He%20cites%20Jack%20Kerouac%20and,chase%20reports%20of%20 paranormal%20occurrences.
“Something Wicked.” Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke, season 1, episode 18, The WB, 2005.
“Supernatural.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 13 Sept. 2005, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460681/?ref_=adv_li_tt.
