A central question implicit in Thomas Harris' 1981 thriller Red Dragon is whether serial killers, or psychopaths, are born or made. What plays the largest role in pathological criminal acts, nature or nurture, or a combination of both. The controversy of nature versus nurture is based on definitions of human behavior as evolving from two opposing theories. Nurture theorists contend that behavioral development is learned and that deviant or criminal behavior is based in cognitive behavior that begins with child rearing. Nature theorists on the other hand contend that behavioral development is attributed to genetic inheritance.
In Harris' viewpoint, the answer is largely nurture with regard to rapist serial killer Francis Dolarhyde, dubbed the Tooth Fairy by the media, and The Red Dragon by himself. The psychiatrist Dr. Bloom terms Dolarhyde "the child of a nightmare" (Harris, 1981, p. 202). In the case of serial killer psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter the answer is largely nature. As Lecter tells FBI special agent Will Graham, "We don't invent our natures, Will; they're issued to us along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?"(Harris, 1981, p.348). Not all children who live through a traumatic childhood like Dolarhyde's become psychopaths or serial killers, although no doubt the early shaping of Dolarhyde's psychosexual and moral development impacted his youth and adulthood. So the question remains, how much of Dolarhyde was shaped by his genes and how much by his emotionally impoverished, abusive, unloving environment.
Considering the unstable, deviant behavior of Dolarhyde's mother and maternal grandmother as well as his own deviance and murderous acts it may be argued that both innate and external forces played a role to make him a serial killer. To date, there is no final word on whether biological determinism or psychogenic determinism plays the greater role in determining violent criminal behavior....