“Along Came a Spider” by James Patterson (post 2): The first novel featuring detective/psychologist Alex Cross misclassifies multiple personality.

Alex Cross is both a police detective and a psychologist (Ph.D.). Do the protagonist’s name, “Cross” (as in, a cross between this and that), and his dual occupations, imply that he has a split personality? Just a thought.

One of the main issues in this novel is whether the murderer/kidnapper, Gary Soneji/Murphy, has a real or fake case of multiple personality. Doctor/Detective Alex Cross says:

“A lot of what he’s told us so far suggests a severe dissociative reaction. He appears to have suffered a pretty horrible childhood. There was physical abuse, maybe sexual abuse as well. He may have begun to split off his psyche to avoid pain and fear back then. I’m not saying he’s a multiple, but it’s a possibility. He had the kind of childhood that could produce such a rare psychosis” (1, p. 221). Another doctor continues:

“Dr. Cross and I have talked about the possibility that Soneji/Murphy undergoes ‘fugue states.’ Psychotic episodes that relate to both amnesia and hysteria. He talks about ‘lost days,’ ‘lost weekends,’ even ‘lost weeks.’ In such a fugue state, a patient can wake in a strange place and have no idea how he got there, or what he had been doing for a prolonged period. In some cases, the patients have two separate personalities, often antithetical personalities…” (1, p. 221).

Cross does mention “dissociative,” but he and the other doctor are in error when they refer to multiple personality as a “psychosis” and fugues as “psychotic.” The widely available psychiatric diagnostic manual, the DSM, includes one chapter for Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders, and, separated by literally two hundred pages, an unrelated chapter for Dissociative Disorders, which includes multiple personality and fugues.

At another point, Cross refers to Gary as a “severe schizophrenic” (1, p. 346). At yet another point, Cross expresses belief in Gary’s split personality, saying that the Gary Soneji personality framed the Gary Murphy personality, “and he’s innocent” (1, p. 382). Near the very end, Cross says, “I was certain he was playing games” (1, p. 432), but it is not clear in what sense Cross means this.

Meanwhile, the novel’s Prologue had fantasized that, back in 1932, it had actually been a twelve-year-old boy who had kidnapped the Charles Lindbergh baby, and that the kidnapper had said to himself, expressing self-satisfaction, “Cool beans” (1, p. 4). (Never mind that, outside this novel, the phrase “cool beans” is not known to have been used before the 1960s.) And Gary, who has sometimes referred to himself as the Son of Lindbergh, also sometimes thinks to himself, “Cool beans” (1, p. 394), perhaps implying that he is the reincarnation of the evil soul of the Lindbergh kidnapper.

To summarize, Alex Cross, psychologist, detective, and, often, first-person narrator, does not understand the distinction between multiple personality and schizophrenia, and never does clearly decide whether or not the villain has been faking mental illness. Meanwhile, a third-person narrator seems to suggest that the villain, Gary, is the evil soul of the Lindbergh kidnapper, reincarnated.

What can account for this inconsistent muddle? It is not stupidity or laziness. The writing shows evidence of high intelligence and hard work. My guess is that the novel was written by a committee of more than one personality.

There is a saying that a camel is a horse made by a committee. But a camel is a noble beast in its own way.

1. James Patterson. Along Came a Spider [1993]. London, HarperCollins, 2004.

Added Feb. 16, 2019: Since I saw that this post has been read recently, I reread it. And I should have elaborated on the idea that the author seems to be giving a possession-by-a-reincarnated-spirit theory of the villain's mental condition. That is, forget schizophrenia or multiple personality: the problem was possession by an evil, reincarnated spirit. Or, that's the real cause of those conditions. I don't know whether the author believes in spirit possession, or just thinks that such an idea would appeal to many readers, as it may have.