Netflix’s Adolescence: The Itch of Being Seen

Article

Apr 2

Trauma vs. Sociopathy

There’s a moment in Adolescence — just a flicker — where Jamie scratches his neck. We’ve already been told to watch for bodily cues; the show invites us to read the body like a confession. And then, Jamie says: “funny tummy.” It sounds like a throwaway phrase—childish, almost sweet—but it lands like a Freudian slip. His body hears it and instantly reacts. He starts scratching his neck, his arms, a twitchy unraveling that happens more than once. It’s not random. It’s his own nervous system reacting to the truth bubbling up, the kind he’s not ready to say out loud. His words crack the surface. Beneath that gesture lies the show’s central question: Is Jamie a sociopath, or is he traumatized?

The brilliance of Adolescence is that it refuses to answer cleanly. Jamie is both victim and perpetrator, emotionally stunted and emotionally strategic. He is a child and, at moments, something much colder. He’s 13, an age where empathy isn’t fully formed, where the self is still under construction, where acting without remorse doesn’t always mean you’re incapable of feeling it. He doesn’t fit neatly into the sociopathy box—yet. And that’s the terrifying gray zone where the show sits.

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I loved this show and I’m writing about it because this is what xanyland is all about: mental health, mental illness, trauma, and everything in between. That's the terrain I explore, sometimes with comedians and with you. It’s chaotic and disorienting… and absolutely fun to talk about. If you haven’t seen Adolescence yet, its a must watch.

The Therapist as Fantasy and Fixation

Let’s start right away with the third episode. Jamie is attracted to Briony, the psychologist! That’s not a guess—he tells her she’s “dead pretty.” Creepy if you think about the words he uses, and at the end of their session, he tells her he “likes” her—not in a sexual way, he insists. But we know better! That’s often unconscious talk for “I do.”

His attraction isn’t just about desire and for our analysis, it's about something more important, how he treats an object of affection! Briony represents something he's never had: attuned attention. A woman who looks at him and doesn’t look away. Who notices when he scratches his neck. Who watches him eat. Who offers a sandwich not as a test, but as a tether to safety. In return, he tries to seduce her—not sexually, but psychologically. He wants to impress her, to manipulate her, to control the narrative. if he can own the story, maybe he won’t be at its mercy.

But when Briony asks intimate questions, his tone shifts. He gets defensive. Then mocking. Then cruel. He begins the session soft and boyish, then turns cold when she gets too close. This is not just a moment of discomfort—it’s a clear cycle. Idealization, followed by devaluation. Warmth, then hostility. Briony becomes a stand-in for every woman Jamie wants something from but can’t create.

This isn’t just a character flaw—it’s a pattern seen in men who objectify women. Who can’t tolerate being seen emotionally, so they flip the script. They punish the woman for being both witness and boundary. It’s how misogyny hides behind charm.

But she sees him anyway. And that is intolerable.

During this session, Jamie tells Briony he didn’t touch Katie. He says something like, “That makes me better than other guys, right?”—because other guys would have touched her. He believes that not sexually assaulting her somehow makes up for what he did do. He didn’t touch her. He just killed her. It shows how sick he really is—how deeply warped his understanding of harm, intimacy, and morality has become.

Then the chilling moment when Jamie takes his first bite of the sandwich. He’s just confessed—and then calmly opens the sandwich to eat. This is the moment you wonder if he might be a sociopath. His nervous system regulates, the performance resets. The body has discharged just enough truth to settle, and now he can chew. It’s not subtle. It’s haunting.

It is important to observe that he isn’t just a sick boy, he is reenacting learned behaviors. When pushed, Jaime get’s in Briony’s face in the same way his father looms over his mom in the final episode of the series. Same posture. Same pressure.

But somehow it feels worse when Jamie does it, doesn’t it? It shouldn’t. But it does. That’s what we’re talking about here.

But He Was a Good Dad… Right?

Here’s something wild: my mom watched the show and said, “I thought the dad was a good dad.” And honestly? She’s not wrong.

He is, in some ways. He loves his kids. He works hard. He doesn’t hit them like his father hit him. But that’s also the point. We are just beginning—as a culture—to fully recognize how deeply misogyny and emotional suppression are baked into even the “good guys.” We're still catching up to the idea that male rage, entitlement, emotional unavailability, and the normalization of women as emotional caretakers or targets of frustration… isn't just a character flaw. It’s part of a broader system.

So yes, Eddie is a good dad by old standards. But that bar is low. And the damage still gets done.

Attachment in a House of Rage

Jamie doesn’t have a safe attachment figure. His father is emotionally volatile—kind, then withdrawn, then explosive. His mother is loving but cautious, always tiptoeing around the emotional landmines her husband leaves behind. This is a household where feelings are neither regulated nor named. Where anger is the only emotion allowed to take up space.

And Jamie? He’s been absorbing it like secondhand smoke.

This kind of emotional atmosphere creates what's often called disorganized attachment—where a child doesn’t know what kind of parent will show up. Will I be comforted or criticized? Held or ignored? Jamie learns to perform calm while chaos brews underneath. His voice tries to stay soft, his hands start to itch. His body becomes the container.

That’s why the scratch matters. It’s a micro-expression of what hasn’t been metabolized. A signal that there’s something too big to name, something leaking through the skin.

Eddie survived physical abuse. Jamie was raised in something quieter but, in many ways, more insidious: emotional neglect and a digital world that feeds on dehumanization. Jamie’s pain wasn’t invalidated with a belt—it was ignored into something unnamable. In today’s world, objectification of women is mainstream, bullying online is relentless, and the performance of masculinity is curated and policed through social media algorithms. Jamie is not just acting out Eddie’s legacy—he’s also a product of the time. He internalizes online misogyny, absorbs the social cruelty of his peers, and retreats into numbness.

In the language of object relations theory, sociopathic traits emerge from early ruptures in the attachment system. Without a stable emotional mirror, the child may learn to suppress vulnerability and instead develop a fragmented sense of self. They may mirror others not out of empathy but out of vigilance, constantly scanning for cues to maintain safety. These adaptations can also be shaped by external trauma: bullying, for instance, can reinforce the belief that closeness is dangerous. In our current cultural landscape, men and boys are still taught to suppress vulnerability. I’m theorizing that because men are conditioned to avoid intimacy, men suffer from some level of disorganized attachment. It’s everywhere and it’s dangerous. The truth is, we don’t really notice it. Maybe we don’t want to. Maybe we can’t. By the time we’re paying attention, it’s already exploding.

Eddie’s Scratch: The Legacy Continues

In the last episode, we see Eddie scratch his neck the same exact way Jamie does. He lets go of Manda’s hand in a department store, a tiny rupture in connection, and then—he unconsciously scratches. This scratch, it’s not just a gesture. It’s a clue—a signal that everything Eddie thought he was hiding is actually on display. This is the moment that ties Eddie’s behaviors to everything Jamie has mirrored and acted out. From the suppression of vulnerability to the flashes of rage masked as calm, Jamie has absorbed more than just mood. He has inherited his father’s coping strategies, down to the tells. The scratch comes exactly at the moment of separation—just as the façade drops. They are both trying to appear kind and normal, but the rage is breaking through.

Eddie may be flooded with guilt, with grief or with the unbearable knowledge that love without language isn’t enough. What matters most is the give away: he is trying to hold back the beast, and it’s breaking through. It’s a flag that Jamie and Dad are the same. That scratch is a leak, not just of feeling, but of the very rage he’s spent his life pretending doesn’t exist.

The scratch is not subtle. It’s the body’s way of saying: I’m not being honest. It’s a moment of unconscious truth—a crack in the mask. A signal of dissociation. A psychosomatic leak.

The Adult in the Room Jamie Needed

In the police station, Jamie chooses Eddie as the adult to stay in the room with him. Why? He doesn’t ask for his mother. He wants his father to show up. Throughout the series, Jamie reaches out to his father in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. He tells us directly—during his session with Briony—that his father didn’t acknowledge him at his weakest moments. He pretends to protect his father—and this is classic in object relations theory: protect the main object at all costs. But here, Jamie can't protect Eddie any longer. He reveals the deeper truth: his father didn’t protect him.

Maybe—unconsciously—Jamie wanted his dad to see the truth. Not just about what he did, but what they both did. Not just the act, but the impact. The damage passed down, and acted out.

The final moments of the series build to a different kind of recognition—not just of what Jamie has done, but of how deeply entangled it is with everything Eddie refused to face. That mirrored scratch isn’t just about tension—it’s the moment the emotional inheritance becomes visible. Jamie didn’t just mimic his father’s behaviors—he embodied them. That scratch is more than a tell. It’s a tell within a tell. It happens in both father and son at the moment they’re trying to appear soft, even childlike. But underneath, the rage is gathering. We see the tragedy: Jamie was hoping to be seen, yet Eddie still couldn't look.

Jamie tells his father he’s going to plead guilty and Eddie says nothing. He abandons his son one final time, retreating into that familiar quiet that has shaped so much of Jamie’s inner world. The show calls it out many times and just minutes before, Manda explicitly names it “emotional blocking.” The creators of the series tell us, then show us again and again. Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham are geniuses.

So… Trauma or Sociopathy? Yes.

Jamie doesn’t fit in a box. That’s what makes Adolescence so devastating. He is a vessel for intergenerational pain, algorithmic indoctrination, emotional abandonment—but he’s also someone who chose to do something horrifying. The show doesn’t ask us to excuse him. It asks us to witness him. In all his contradictions. In all his discomfort. In all his human, twitching, scratching complexity.

While sociopathy can’t be diagnosed in childhood (the clinical term is Antisocial Personality Disorder, used only after age 18), younger children may be diagnosed with conduct disorder, especially when empathy is absent and behavior becomes harmful.

The psychologist in the show recommends Jamie receive ongoing mental health care. And she should. Because he is not beyond help. He is not done developing. He is thirteen.

He is not a monster but he might become one.

Unless someone finally teaches the world what to do with that itch.

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