| “ | My name... is Amanda | „ |
| ~ Amanda after purging Adam's consciousness |
Adam Jackson is a hotel handyman with dissociative identity disorder (DID). His female alter ego, Amanda, is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds Season 4 episode Conflicted. Adam is portrayed by Jackson Rathbone, while Amanda is voiced by Milissa Skoro.
Early Life[]
Adam was born in Corpus Christi, Texas to Rosemary Jackson and an unknown father. When Adam was five, his mother died, from which point on he was abused by his stepfather, Mark Harrison, who abused him both sexually and physically, making Adam wear girl clothes and molesting him. The abuse triggered his dormant DID, causing him to develop a female split personality known as Amanda, who was the polar opposite of Adam. Amanda would take over when Adam was beaten and molested, shielding him from the worst of Mark's abuse, but also increased his mental instability. Amanda viewed Adam as a sort of brother that needed protection, but also grew to despise him for what she perceived to be weakness and submissiveness. He was taken into the emergency room many times throughout his childhood and Adam was eventually taken away from Harrison and welcomed into a foster home in Dallas where he frequently switched caretakers. To cope with the trauma, Adam began using narcotics which eased his mental strain, but quickly devolved into an addiction. At the age of sixteen, Adam was emancipated and expelled from school soon after for his bad grades, possession of drugs and petty thefts before he could finish high school.
While at the home, he met Julie Riley, a college student who volunteered at the host center. Julie soon became friends with Adam and got him both a job and a place to live at Hudson Street Hotel on South Padre Island, which she managed. Adam was arrested twice for theft and possession of controlled substances, but Julie bailed him out each time. She also supplied him with prescription drugs that helped with his frequent headaches, presumably associated with his DID and possibly an early sign of Amanda remanifesting in his psyche.
Criminal Minds[]
Conflicted[]
The Amanda personality was triggered just a few days prior to the events of the episode, when a guest named William Browder made unwanted advances on an employee of the hotel, Madison Cooke. When Adam stepped in, Browder pushed him to the ground, an act that caused Amanda to take control, who then shoved him into the pool in retaliation. Browder's behavior greatly reminded Amanda of Harrison, leading to her coaxing him to a room where she then raped and asphyxiated him with a plastic bag before stuffing his body into a closet. From then on, Amanda would regularly surface in Adam's place, on one such occasion cross-dressing and seducing Daniel Keller, a loudmouthed womanizer, taking him up to her room, where she rapes and kills him as well, before again placing the body in the room's closet. The next day, Adam finds Daniel and calls the police, who notify the BAU. The next day, Amanda murdered another man named Carl Cade in a different hotel. BAU then concludes that two individuals are a dominant man and a submissive woman, believing that the woman attracted the man and after that, the man raped and killed them. There was more information when Reid interviewed Adam soon as he saw that he fit the profile, the team then deduced that the roles were actually reversed in which Adam was the submissive and Julie dominant. However, when Adam had passed the polygraph, Reid soon began to notice his changes of expressions and Reid soon realizes that Adam suffers from DID.
Back at the hotel, Julie is looking for Adam and discovers various items in his room belonging to the victims. She goes to confront him about it on the roof, but Amanda overrides Adam and pushes her off the edge, which she survives with life-threatening injuries. Amanda, now bent on revenge on the man responsible for her and Adam's sorrows, eventually tracks down Harrison in Corpus Christi and abducts him, tying him to a bed in a hotel and pulling a bag over his head. When the team busts into the hotel room to confront Amanda, she threatens Harrison with a knife. Reid then manages to convince Amanda to back down and surrender for Adam's sake, which she does without further resistance. Amanda is placed into a mental clinic, where Reid questions her. He asks to speak to Adam, but Amanda refuses, claiming that he's gone for good. Reid promises to stick around until Adam comes back, with Amanda looking on with a rather unconfident glare, implying Adam is still present in some form. Reid then has a flashback from Tobias Hankel and ends the episode by stating that Adam deserves to be saved if only he could reach him.
Quotes[]
| “ | Adam doesn't need you anymore...! | „ |
| ~ Amanda |
| “ | I could take it. I was stronger than he (Adam) was. | „ |
| ~ Amanda |
| “ | Adam was special... | „ |
| ~ Amanda |
| “ | Well if he's so special, why don't you tell me how to find him? | „ |
| ~ Reid |
| “ | Because he's in a better place now. | „ |
| ~ Amanda |
Trivia[]
- Adam is very similar to Tobias Hankel since both had a reserved and submersed personality, and he was abused by his fathers figures and also both turned into serial killers in the adulthood. They also had similar personalities who committed the crimes. Amanda by Adam, and Charles Hankel and Raphael by Tobias.
- In a deleted scene that appeared in this episode, Adam shoots Morgan's shoulder. This scene was deleted for unknown reasons, and it can be seen on the DVD Special Features of Season Four.