![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
candygrammeI've looked at both Sam and Dean from a profiling point of view, and this is what I've come up with.
When the show began, we saw Dean Winchester as a devil-may-care scamp who was somewhat reckless, didn't much care for or respect authority and who was also something of a philanderer. As the season unfolded, and canon began to emerge, we began to discover more about him, and by the time we reach the present day we can see just exactly how damaged the character actually is.
There's a term for what made Dean the way he is: Parentification.
There are three kinds of parentification:
.
1: Emotional Parentification
This occurs when a child is expected to take care of and fulfill the emotional needs of the adult. Some examples of emotional parentification are: reassuring the parent that they will be all right when upset, shielding the parent from the emotional consequences of their actions and adjusting behavior to suit the parent’s emotional interests. This type of parentification is sometimes known as 'emotional incest'.
2: Instrumental (Physical) Parentification
You get this when the child is expected to take care of physical needs, such as housework, care of younger siblings and management of parental affairs.
3: Narcissistic parentification
Narcissistic parentification occurs when a child is forced to take on the parent's idealized projection, something which encourages a compulsive perfectionism in the child at the expense of their natural development. In a kind of pseudo-identification, the child is induced by any and all means to take on the characteristics of the parental ego ideal.
I hope we can agree that Dean suffered extreme Instrumental Parentification, with possible (although more fanon than canon) overlap into Emotional Parentification. I think that stitching daddy up after a hunt would lead to some of that, and there's ample evidence that this kind of thing occurred in Dean's youth. Add to that the way John Winchester imposed his values and training on the two boys, Sam and Dean, and you have a complete set!
Adults who were parentified as children experience the following things:
a: Fear that they cannot adequately meet their own expectations and demands
b: Poor self-esteem
c: A feeling of disconnection from their real self
d: Feelings of incompetence
e: Underestimation of their own intelligence
f: Overestimation of the importance of others
g: Shame, guilt, anxiety and depression
h: Feeling like they’re still children, who can’t cope with being adults
i: Taking on the role of caretaker
j: Work addiction
k: Codependency/Acceptance of too much responsibility
l: Unacknowledged anger and resentment
m: Difficulty forming and maintaining romantic relationships
"A defining contextual feature of parentification is the child's developmental stage. The earlier and the more age inappropriate the caretaking charge (e.g., assigning unsupervised sibling caretaking responsibilities to a 6-year old), the more destructive the consequences for the child. Young children simply do not have as many internal or external resources to cope with caretaking assignments as do their older counterparts, especially those in adolescence. Moreover, disruptions in their negotiation of early stage-salient tasks (e.g., formation of a secure attachment to a primary care-giver, exploration of the environment) because of excessive demands to accommodate to parental figures affect their mastery of subsequent tasks."
Gregory Jurkovic: 'Lost childhoods: the plight of the parentified child'
So from the age of 4, when young Dean was told to "Take your brother outside as fast as you can, - don't look back. Now, Dean! Go!" he began the long, lonely road into parentification. This is where Dean's pain began. He took care of Sammy and came to view that role as defining him; not only that, but he also took on the need to become perfect in his father's eyes. By the time "The Pilot" aired, it's no wonder that John's disappearance has freaked him out. His very existence has been predicated on something (Dad) that has been yanked out from under him. Is it any wonder that he turned to the only thing he had left - the child he raised, Sam Winchester?
You see a really good example of the destruction of Dean's self esteem first hand in the episode "Something Wicked"
"Dad just... grabbed us and booked. Dropped us off to Pastor Jim's about three hours away; by the time he got back to Fort Douglas the Shtriga had disappeared, it was, was just gone. Never resurfaced until now. You know, Dad never... spoke about it again. I didn't ask. But he uh, he looked at me different. You know? Which was worse. Not that I blame him. He gave me an order and I didn't listen, I almost got you killed."
In this one sentence, he demonstrates the feelings of incompetence, the shame, the failure he took on to himself - or which rather was imposed on him by his father.
And again, even more sadly, this following sentence shows just how enormous the weight he carries on his shoulders is:
"This isn't about you Sam! All right, I'm the one that screwed up! It's *my* fault, there's no telling how many kids have gotten hurt because of me."
All his fault, every death since, because as a 9 year old he felt the need to escape crushing responsibility for half an hour.
We've seen the unacknowledged resentment and anger first hand when, driven by grief and fury he began to trash the Impala - his baby - in the episode "Everyone Loves a Clown."
There's ample evidence of Dean being unable to sustain a romantic relationship, other than the quasi-romantic one he has with Sam. In the episode "Croatoan" that is revealed in the scene where they are waiting for Sam to be taken by the Croatoan virus:
Sam: "Dean, I'm sick. It's over for me. It doesn't have to be for you."
Dean: "No?"
Sam: "No, you can keep going."
Dean: "Who says I want to?"
Sam: "What?"
Dean: "I'm tired, Sam. I'm tired of this job… this life. This weight on my shoulders, man, I'm tired of it." Sam: "So what, you're just gonna give up? You're just gonna lay down and die? Look, Dean, I know this stuff with Dad had –"
Dean: "You're wrong. It's not about Dad. I mean part of it is, sure, but –"
Sadly at that point they are interrupted, and we never hear the rest of what he's thinking, but it's pretty obvious from what there is that the thought of losing Sam, along with the massive responsibility he shoulders, is enough to make him want to give up.
So this is how Dean Winchester sees himself, forever doomed to be responsible for the tragedy in the world, and why is this?
Let's look at part of Dean's monologue at John Winchester's gravesite in the Season 2 episode, "What Is and What Should Never Be."
You'd say, "Go hunt the djinn. It put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness over all those people's lives? No contest."
And so that's what Dean does. He saves people, takes care of Sammy, because that's what he was programmed to do. By now I don't foresee any change for Dean, because that's what he is.
Take this to the present day, and his feelings about his duty to Sam. He's come a long way, but he's still programmed to care for Sam, and to see Sam as his lodestar. In his eyes, he wasn't able to protect his brother from the dangers of having to undergo the trials, so his problem with that isn't a matter of trust, as Sam seems to think. It's the knowledge that once again he isn't good enough. In his eyes, he's failed his most important duty, protecting his little brother.
Most parents will admit that it's hard to accept when a child becomes independent. We do let go, but it's tough for us to step back. Maybe Dean can do it, but it will be hard for him.
According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the UN a child soldier is defined as “any child – boy or girl – under 18 years of age, who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity..."
Sam Winchester was not parentified in the way that his elder brother was, and escaped most of the guilt that has always characterized Dean, mainly because of the care given to him by his brother. However, it can't be denied that as a child he was subjected to many things that a young child should not experience if he is to develop into a healthy adult and was showing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder even before Jessica burned up on the ceiling right in front of him.
Symptoms of PTSD:
1. Re-experiencing symptoms:
Flashbacks—reliving the trauma over and over, including physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweating
Bad dreams
Frightening thoughts.
Re-experiencing symptoms may cause problems in a person’s everyday routine. They can start from the person’s own thoughts and feelings. Words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event can also trigger re-experiencing.
2. Avoidance symptoms:
Staying away from places, events, or objects that are reminders of the experience
Feeling emotionally numb
Feeling strong guilt, depression, or worry
Losing interest in activities that were enjoyable in the past
Having trouble remembering the dangerous event.
Things that remind a person of the traumatic event can trigger avoidance symptoms. These symptoms may cause a person to change his or her personal routine. For example, after a bad car accident, a person who usually drives may avoid driving or riding in a car.
3. Hyperarousal symptoms:
Being easily startled
Feeling tense or 'on edge'
Having difficulty sleeping, and/or having angry outbursts.
Hyperarousal symptoms are usually constant, instead of being triggered by things that remind one of the traumatic event. They can make the person feel stressed and angry. These symptoms may make it hard to do daily tasks, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating.
"The Pilot" confirms that Sam was certainly avoiding when he took himself off to Stanford and cut both John and Dean out of his life for the almost 4 years that he was there. We don't know much about those years other than that he hated Halloween - with good reason! His life had been one perpetual Halloween in pre-Stanford years. PTSD overlays much of Sam's development to maturity and beyond, but there's more.
Left for days with only his brother - himself still a young child - he swiftly learned to manipulate Dean, as witnessed by the Lucky Charms incident in 'Something Wicked.' Dean protected Sam from the things that go bump in the night as well as he could, but he couldn't protect him from his father, and from John Winchester's plans for Sam. Once more in "The Pilot," we find this conversation:
Dean: Come on, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad.
Sam: Oh yeah, when I told dad I was scared of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45.
Dean: Well what was he supposed to do?
Sam: I was 9 years old, he was supposed to say don't be afraid of the dark.
Dean: Don't be afraid of the dark, are you kidding me. Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Men are what their mothers made them."
Unfortunately for Sam, he didn't have the input from Mary that would have provided him with the tools to learn, and there are many things that are taught by a mom to a boy when the boy is still very young:
a: Empathy with others - understanding how another person feels. Instead of providing insight into how Dean might feel when Sam whacked him, Dean was told to grow up and take care of Sammy, so Sam learned to exploit his brother at a very early age.
b: A place of safe refuge - kiddies between 18 months and 2 years old are learning to explore their environment away from their primary caregiver. It's important that they have a safe haven to return to at need. Sam had Dean, who was not much older than himself, and a militaristic father who didn't have the skills needed to compensate.
c: Know when to let go - Moms, as a rule, allow their sons to develop their independence skills at their own pace. Dean STILL doesn't know when to let go, and to a degree, Sam is still locked into that co-dependency.
d: How to recognize emotions - Society gives a clear message to boys that they shouldn't cry or feel scared. Sam was given a gun rather than the comfort he needed by a father who didn't understand the need.
So Sam is somewhat less shaped emotionally than a healthy adult, and therefore less perceptive. He understands well enough the pain, anger and desire for revenge that he's learned to perceive from his father, the only adult who was consistent throughout his childhood, but without his mother's input, and without any female teacher or caregiver in his life for more than a week or two throughout that childhood, he hasn't really developed the empathy that would help him avoid hurting people, particularly his brother. Caregivers other than John himself were all male hunters - Bobby, Pastor Jim and Caleb in particular are mentioned, but no females. We see several examples of this ignorance of others' feelings in the episode "Dark Side of the Moon."
Dean: Wait so – playing footsie with brace-face in there, that’s a trophy moment for you?
Sam: Dean, I was eleven years old. This was my first real Thanksgiving.
Dean: What’re you talking about? We had Thanksgiving every year.
Sam: We had a bucket of extra crispy, and Dad passed out on the couch.
The scene progresses, and we find that not only are Sam's happiest memories about shaking himself loose from the Winchester Family Business, but that he hasn't really even considered the effects that his actions had on Dean:
Sam: I mean I was on my own for two weeks. I lived off of funions and Mr. Pibb.
Dean: Wow.
Sam: What?
Dean: You don’t remember, do you? You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you, I thought you were dead. And when Dad came home…”
Sam: Dean, look, I’m sorry, I never thought about it like that.
And later in the same section of the show:
Dean: Wait a minute. This? This is the night you ditched us for Stanford, isn’t it? This is your idea of Heaven? Wow. This is like one of the worst nights of my life.
Sam: I can’t control this stuff.
Dean: Seriously? I mean this is happy memory for you?
Sam: I dunno. I was on my own, I finally got away from Dad.
Dean: Yeah, he wasn’t the only one you got away from.
Sam: Dean, I’m sorry, I just…
Dean: Oh I know, you didn’t think of it like that.
Sam: Dean
Dean: Come on! Your Heaven is somebody else’s Thanksgiving! Okay? It’s bailing on your family! I mean what do you want me to say?
Sam: Man, I never got the crusts cut off my PB and J. I just don’t look at family the way you do.
Dean: Yeah, but I’m your family. I mean we’re supposed to be a team. It’s supposed to be you and me against the world, right?
Sam: Dean, it is.
Dean: Is it?
Remember in "Metamorphosis," Dean was driven to say, "If I didn't know you, I would want to hunt you."
Let's not forget either in "Lucifer Rising," Sam is actually quite content to harm the meat suit that the demon nurse is wearing, despite the fact that the demon allows the poor girl to feel everything that she's subjected to. Eventually he drains her of her blood so that he has the power to kill Lilith.
Setting aside the fact that killing Lilith was a real error of judgment, Sam's desire to kill her was founded on a need to save the world by halting the apocalypse. Sam ploughed on regardless of the anguish and pain inflicted on those that were affected, because he was convinced that the end was worth it.
So my premise is that Sam Winchester is a man who grew up without the benefits that mothering would have provided him. He is an intelligent man as amply demonstrated in the show, and has learned to protect himself from some of the effects of PTSD inflicted on him in his early childhood, but who hasn't really learned how to fully empathize with others, and who has a somewhat weaker sense of right and wrong than most of us, because he lacked positive guidance as a young boy, but received plenty of the other kind. This leads him to believing that the means justifies the end and that leads him in turn to letting Ruby manipulate him into drinking demon blood and finally bringing about the apocalypse. He's judgmental, but without that early input from his caregivers, his sense of right and wrong are limited to the bigger picture and don't take into account the pain caused along the way.
Don't think that I am bashing Sam. I love Sam, and he's slowly learning to overcome his early conditioning. At the start of the series Sam always seemed to me to be full of rage, often expressed in a passive aggressive way. ('lollipops and candy canes', anyone?) He's overcoming that somewhat after the things he's been through, but passive aggression is still sometimes his 'go to' when he needs to express emotion. It's obvious that he loves and admires Dean, but he's still the bratty little brother, and IMHO that's part of his charm.
I could go on...and on, and on, but I'll stop there and invite thoughts from others. Over to you.
When the show began, we saw Dean Winchester as a devil-may-care scamp who was somewhat reckless, didn't much care for or respect authority and who was also something of a philanderer. As the season unfolded, and canon began to emerge, we began to discover more about him, and by the time we reach the present day we can see just exactly how damaged the character actually is.
There's a term for what made Dean the way he is: Parentification.
There are three kinds of parentification:
.
1: Emotional Parentification
This occurs when a child is expected to take care of and fulfill the emotional needs of the adult. Some examples of emotional parentification are: reassuring the parent that they will be all right when upset, shielding the parent from the emotional consequences of their actions and adjusting behavior to suit the parent’s emotional interests. This type of parentification is sometimes known as 'emotional incest'.
2: Instrumental (Physical) Parentification
You get this when the child is expected to take care of physical needs, such as housework, care of younger siblings and management of parental affairs.
3: Narcissistic parentification
Narcissistic parentification occurs when a child is forced to take on the parent's idealized projection, something which encourages a compulsive perfectionism in the child at the expense of their natural development. In a kind of pseudo-identification, the child is induced by any and all means to take on the characteristics of the parental ego ideal.
I hope we can agree that Dean suffered extreme Instrumental Parentification, with possible (although more fanon than canon) overlap into Emotional Parentification. I think that stitching daddy up after a hunt would lead to some of that, and there's ample evidence that this kind of thing occurred in Dean's youth. Add to that the way John Winchester imposed his values and training on the two boys, Sam and Dean, and you have a complete set!
Adults who were parentified as children experience the following things:
a: Fear that they cannot adequately meet their own expectations and demands
b: Poor self-esteem
c: A feeling of disconnection from their real self
d: Feelings of incompetence
e: Underestimation of their own intelligence
f: Overestimation of the importance of others
g: Shame, guilt, anxiety and depression
h: Feeling like they’re still children, who can’t cope with being adults
i: Taking on the role of caretaker
j: Work addiction
k: Codependency/Acceptance of too much responsibility
l: Unacknowledged anger and resentment
m: Difficulty forming and maintaining romantic relationships
"A defining contextual feature of parentification is the child's developmental stage. The earlier and the more age inappropriate the caretaking charge (e.g., assigning unsupervised sibling caretaking responsibilities to a 6-year old), the more destructive the consequences for the child. Young children simply do not have as many internal or external resources to cope with caretaking assignments as do their older counterparts, especially those in adolescence. Moreover, disruptions in their negotiation of early stage-salient tasks (e.g., formation of a secure attachment to a primary care-giver, exploration of the environment) because of excessive demands to accommodate to parental figures affect their mastery of subsequent tasks."
Gregory Jurkovic: 'Lost childhoods: the plight of the parentified child'
So from the age of 4, when young Dean was told to "Take your brother outside as fast as you can, - don't look back. Now, Dean! Go!" he began the long, lonely road into parentification. This is where Dean's pain began. He took care of Sammy and came to view that role as defining him; not only that, but he also took on the need to become perfect in his father's eyes. By the time "The Pilot" aired, it's no wonder that John's disappearance has freaked him out. His very existence has been predicated on something (Dad) that has been yanked out from under him. Is it any wonder that he turned to the only thing he had left - the child he raised, Sam Winchester?
You see a really good example of the destruction of Dean's self esteem first hand in the episode "Something Wicked"
"Dad just... grabbed us and booked. Dropped us off to Pastor Jim's about three hours away; by the time he got back to Fort Douglas the Shtriga had disappeared, it was, was just gone. Never resurfaced until now. You know, Dad never... spoke about it again. I didn't ask. But he uh, he looked at me different. You know? Which was worse. Not that I blame him. He gave me an order and I didn't listen, I almost got you killed."
In this one sentence, he demonstrates the feelings of incompetence, the shame, the failure he took on to himself - or which rather was imposed on him by his father.
And again, even more sadly, this following sentence shows just how enormous the weight he carries on his shoulders is:
"This isn't about you Sam! All right, I'm the one that screwed up! It's *my* fault, there's no telling how many kids have gotten hurt because of me."
All his fault, every death since, because as a 9 year old he felt the need to escape crushing responsibility for half an hour.
We've seen the unacknowledged resentment and anger first hand when, driven by grief and fury he began to trash the Impala - his baby - in the episode "Everyone Loves a Clown."
There's ample evidence of Dean being unable to sustain a romantic relationship, other than the quasi-romantic one he has with Sam. In the episode "Croatoan" that is revealed in the scene where they are waiting for Sam to be taken by the Croatoan virus:
Sam: "Dean, I'm sick. It's over for me. It doesn't have to be for you."
Dean: "No?"
Sam: "No, you can keep going."
Dean: "Who says I want to?"
Sam: "What?"
Dean: "I'm tired, Sam. I'm tired of this job… this life. This weight on my shoulders, man, I'm tired of it." Sam: "So what, you're just gonna give up? You're just gonna lay down and die? Look, Dean, I know this stuff with Dad had –"
Dean: "You're wrong. It's not about Dad. I mean part of it is, sure, but –"
Sadly at that point they are interrupted, and we never hear the rest of what he's thinking, but it's pretty obvious from what there is that the thought of losing Sam, along with the massive responsibility he shoulders, is enough to make him want to give up.
So this is how Dean Winchester sees himself, forever doomed to be responsible for the tragedy in the world, and why is this?
Let's look at part of Dean's monologue at John Winchester's gravesite in the Season 2 episode, "What Is and What Should Never Be."
You'd say, "Go hunt the djinn. It put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness over all those people's lives? No contest."
And so that's what Dean does. He saves people, takes care of Sammy, because that's what he was programmed to do. By now I don't foresee any change for Dean, because that's what he is.
Take this to the present day, and his feelings about his duty to Sam. He's come a long way, but he's still programmed to care for Sam, and to see Sam as his lodestar. In his eyes, he wasn't able to protect his brother from the dangers of having to undergo the trials, so his problem with that isn't a matter of trust, as Sam seems to think. It's the knowledge that once again he isn't good enough. In his eyes, he's failed his most important duty, protecting his little brother.
Most parents will admit that it's hard to accept when a child becomes independent. We do let go, but it's tough for us to step back. Maybe Dean can do it, but it will be hard for him.
According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the UN a child soldier is defined as “any child – boy or girl – under 18 years of age, who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity..."
Sam Winchester was not parentified in the way that his elder brother was, and escaped most of the guilt that has always characterized Dean, mainly because of the care given to him by his brother. However, it can't be denied that as a child he was subjected to many things that a young child should not experience if he is to develop into a healthy adult and was showing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder even before Jessica burned up on the ceiling right in front of him.
Symptoms of PTSD:
1. Re-experiencing symptoms:
Flashbacks—reliving the trauma over and over, including physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweating
Bad dreams
Frightening thoughts.
Re-experiencing symptoms may cause problems in a person’s everyday routine. They can start from the person’s own thoughts and feelings. Words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event can also trigger re-experiencing.
2. Avoidance symptoms:
Staying away from places, events, or objects that are reminders of the experience
Feeling emotionally numb
Feeling strong guilt, depression, or worry
Losing interest in activities that were enjoyable in the past
Having trouble remembering the dangerous event.
Things that remind a person of the traumatic event can trigger avoidance symptoms. These symptoms may cause a person to change his or her personal routine. For example, after a bad car accident, a person who usually drives may avoid driving or riding in a car.
3. Hyperarousal symptoms:
Being easily startled
Feeling tense or 'on edge'
Having difficulty sleeping, and/or having angry outbursts.
Hyperarousal symptoms are usually constant, instead of being triggered by things that remind one of the traumatic event. They can make the person feel stressed and angry. These symptoms may make it hard to do daily tasks, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating.
"The Pilot" confirms that Sam was certainly avoiding when he took himself off to Stanford and cut both John and Dean out of his life for the almost 4 years that he was there. We don't know much about those years other than that he hated Halloween - with good reason! His life had been one perpetual Halloween in pre-Stanford years. PTSD overlays much of Sam's development to maturity and beyond, but there's more.
Left for days with only his brother - himself still a young child - he swiftly learned to manipulate Dean, as witnessed by the Lucky Charms incident in 'Something Wicked.' Dean protected Sam from the things that go bump in the night as well as he could, but he couldn't protect him from his father, and from John Winchester's plans for Sam. Once more in "The Pilot," we find this conversation:
Dean: Come on, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad.
Sam: Oh yeah, when I told dad I was scared of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45.
Dean: Well what was he supposed to do?
Sam: I was 9 years old, he was supposed to say don't be afraid of the dark.
Dean: Don't be afraid of the dark, are you kidding me. Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Men are what their mothers made them."
Unfortunately for Sam, he didn't have the input from Mary that would have provided him with the tools to learn, and there are many things that are taught by a mom to a boy when the boy is still very young:
a: Empathy with others - understanding how another person feels. Instead of providing insight into how Dean might feel when Sam whacked him, Dean was told to grow up and take care of Sammy, so Sam learned to exploit his brother at a very early age.
b: A place of safe refuge - kiddies between 18 months and 2 years old are learning to explore their environment away from their primary caregiver. It's important that they have a safe haven to return to at need. Sam had Dean, who was not much older than himself, and a militaristic father who didn't have the skills needed to compensate.
c: Know when to let go - Moms, as a rule, allow their sons to develop their independence skills at their own pace. Dean STILL doesn't know when to let go, and to a degree, Sam is still locked into that co-dependency.
d: How to recognize emotions - Society gives a clear message to boys that they shouldn't cry or feel scared. Sam was given a gun rather than the comfort he needed by a father who didn't understand the need.
So Sam is somewhat less shaped emotionally than a healthy adult, and therefore less perceptive. He understands well enough the pain, anger and desire for revenge that he's learned to perceive from his father, the only adult who was consistent throughout his childhood, but without his mother's input, and without any female teacher or caregiver in his life for more than a week or two throughout that childhood, he hasn't really developed the empathy that would help him avoid hurting people, particularly his brother. Caregivers other than John himself were all male hunters - Bobby, Pastor Jim and Caleb in particular are mentioned, but no females. We see several examples of this ignorance of others' feelings in the episode "Dark Side of the Moon."
Dean: Wait so – playing footsie with brace-face in there, that’s a trophy moment for you?
Sam: Dean, I was eleven years old. This was my first real Thanksgiving.
Dean: What’re you talking about? We had Thanksgiving every year.
Sam: We had a bucket of extra crispy, and Dad passed out on the couch.
The scene progresses, and we find that not only are Sam's happiest memories about shaking himself loose from the Winchester Family Business, but that he hasn't really even considered the effects that his actions had on Dean:
Sam: I mean I was on my own for two weeks. I lived off of funions and Mr. Pibb.
Dean: Wow.
Sam: What?
Dean: You don’t remember, do you? You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you, I thought you were dead. And when Dad came home…”
Sam: Dean, look, I’m sorry, I never thought about it like that.
And later in the same section of the show:
Dean: Wait a minute. This? This is the night you ditched us for Stanford, isn’t it? This is your idea of Heaven? Wow. This is like one of the worst nights of my life.
Sam: I can’t control this stuff.
Dean: Seriously? I mean this is happy memory for you?
Sam: I dunno. I was on my own, I finally got away from Dad.
Dean: Yeah, he wasn’t the only one you got away from.
Sam: Dean, I’m sorry, I just…
Dean: Oh I know, you didn’t think of it like that.
Sam: Dean
Dean: Come on! Your Heaven is somebody else’s Thanksgiving! Okay? It’s bailing on your family! I mean what do you want me to say?
Sam: Man, I never got the crusts cut off my PB and J. I just don’t look at family the way you do.
Dean: Yeah, but I’m your family. I mean we’re supposed to be a team. It’s supposed to be you and me against the world, right?
Sam: Dean, it is.
Dean: Is it?
Remember in "Metamorphosis," Dean was driven to say, "If I didn't know you, I would want to hunt you."
Let's not forget either in "Lucifer Rising," Sam is actually quite content to harm the meat suit that the demon nurse is wearing, despite the fact that the demon allows the poor girl to feel everything that she's subjected to. Eventually he drains her of her blood so that he has the power to kill Lilith.
Setting aside the fact that killing Lilith was a real error of judgment, Sam's desire to kill her was founded on a need to save the world by halting the apocalypse. Sam ploughed on regardless of the anguish and pain inflicted on those that were affected, because he was convinced that the end was worth it.
So my premise is that Sam Winchester is a man who grew up without the benefits that mothering would have provided him. He is an intelligent man as amply demonstrated in the show, and has learned to protect himself from some of the effects of PTSD inflicted on him in his early childhood, but who hasn't really learned how to fully empathize with others, and who has a somewhat weaker sense of right and wrong than most of us, because he lacked positive guidance as a young boy, but received plenty of the other kind. This leads him to believing that the means justifies the end and that leads him in turn to letting Ruby manipulate him into drinking demon blood and finally bringing about the apocalypse. He's judgmental, but without that early input from his caregivers, his sense of right and wrong are limited to the bigger picture and don't take into account the pain caused along the way.
Don't think that I am bashing Sam. I love Sam, and he's slowly learning to overcome his early conditioning. At the start of the series Sam always seemed to me to be full of rage, often expressed in a passive aggressive way. ('lollipops and candy canes', anyone?) He's overcoming that somewhat after the things he's been through, but passive aggression is still sometimes his 'go to' when he needs to express emotion. It's obvious that he loves and admires Dean, but he's still the bratty little brother, and IMHO that's part of his charm.
I could go on...and on, and on, but I'll stop there and invite thoughts from others. Over to you.
