Adam Kane is a character from the science fiction show "Mutant X". Once a leading scientist at "Genomex", a facility of genetic engineering and experimentation on humans, he deserted to found "Mutant X", a resistance group for the protection of civil rights of mutants. Until his untimely disappearance when trying to escape from an exploding building (2008), for Mutant X, Adam was their leader and material sustainer. During the first 1-2 years of depicted Mutant X missions, he also was their "moral centre", which makes the moral standards of Mutant X a bit questionable.

Little is known about Adam, and much can only be found by deduction. Adam's date of birth, place of birth or family are unknown. Adam started his professional career at Genomex on 13 October 1978, immediately after his graduation from the University of Stanford, which he had entered in 1971. Adam is believed to be a stepson of Austrian-American geneticist Paul Breedlove (alias Kurt von Schuler), who seemed to foster a loving attitude towards Adam. Natural descent, however, is not likely, as Adam has dark eyes and dark hair, while Paul Breedlove was blue-eyed and blond.

Note on Paul Breedlove. Paul, who was born in Salzburg in 1931, is believed to have witnessed the key crimes against humanity after he had entered university at the age of 8. However, several aspects speak against this assumption:

  • The Nazis had poor knowledge about genetics, mainly pseudo-science derived from phenomenology, gained from "methods" such as eye-colour charts or measuring the size of heads). Projects of breeding "Aryan" or Nordic-looking offspring, namely the "Lebensborn" (lit. fountain of life) did not apply genetic engineering. They were not more than brothel-camps for high-ranking Nazi officers, who themselves mostly did not correspond to "Aryan" standards at all. Joseph Goebbels, for example, had a degenerated foot). Children of the Lebensborn mostly were abandoned to stepfamilies or orphanages. Most never had a real family and could only learn with difficulty who their fathers were.
  • Seeing a Nazi death camp at an age of 14 (as suggested by the canon) is way too young. My own grandfather (born 1924) who was keen to be selected as a military pilot at the age of 17, was only recruited for the military when he was 18 years old.
  • The particle "von" (Kurt of Schuler) indicates the adherence of the von Schuler family to ranks of (low) nobility enlisted in special genealogical registers. Therefore, Kurt von Schuler's origins should be well traceable. It should also be established whether Paul Breedlove was indeed Kurt von Schuler by matching samples of his remains against samples of living members of the von Schuler dynasty.

After graduation, Adam immediately entered Genomex, a facility of genetic engineering - a task he might have been prepared for by his mentor Paul Breedlove, who was the founder of Genomex. Paul had developed a method to induce humans with manipulated DNA (often derived from animals) to give them superhuman abilities. Military implications of this procedure are evident, but it is only known that these procedures were developed "to cure sick children". At the beginning of the narrated time (2007), most mutants are in their 20s-30s. Therefore, the modifications likely were performed at any point before their 10th birthday - even before their birth. Most parents to the mutants are in their 40s-50s.

However, there is also a mutant in his 50s, the father of Daniel Benedict [Stephen Benedict], who appears to have been modified even before the creation of the "First Mutant", Gabriel Ashlocke, who was born in 1968.

Many mutants are prone to special "mutant diseases", which are often infectious and may only be cured by further genetic modification. Adam, who is intellectually gifted, is almost the only person sufficiently qualified to induce these modifications. As the modifications have to be performed individually, this takes most of his time. Likely the fictional universe of Mutant X (in contradiction to science) allows genetic changes to be induced to a fully developed individual, who would suffer from immunological troubles by consequence. Chimeras or persons with organic material from two or more different genetic sources, such as receivers of organ transplants, are obliged to take immunosuppressants all their life.

The "ideal human" should be free from disease.


On the issue of Incident X

Genetic modification of developed individuals show a striking parallel to bone marrow transplantation. Marrow cells are the cause of the immune system. Marrow cells [and, by consequence, the immune system] are always "programmed" to their original body. They are able to recognise "foreign" cells, which they destroy. This is the reason why bone marrow cannot be transplanted randomly. One has to find a genetically compatible donor [who has similar bone marrow], often family. Partly altering the genetic make-up (the genotype) - or, by analogy, transplanting foreign material - requires the weakening or the destruction of the original immune system.

Many mutants who were subjected to Adam's experiments are affected by immunological deficiencies. However, the character who blames Adam most passionately for immune system destruction is not a mutant (although he originally may have been designed as one).

Mason Eckhart was injured in Incident X, suffering a full destruction of his immune system, in 1991. Adam and Mason still worked together until 1998. They know each other very well, and had become very close friends. There is no evidence that Adam had acted in harmful intent against Mason, nor is there any evidence that Mason had not initially agreed. Moreover, if Adam had intended to kill Mason, a person with Adam's medical education could have easily chosen a method which is "effective" and not traceable in necropsy, as "Who knows to heal also knows to kill".

Adam left Genomex in 1998. Reasons for this may be found in his personal conscience. The fact that he (probably) was aware of the military application of the Genomex project does not contradict that he came to realise its ethical implication only later. A good analogy could be Sir Joseph Rotblat, (1908-2005), a British physicist of Polish origin who joined the "Manhattan Project", the project to build the first atomic bomb. However, Rotblat became the only physicist to leave the Project as he came to realise that continuing it meant feeding the nuclear race in the Cold War. Rotblat then became one of the most prominent critics of the race in nuclear armament.

Adam may also have left Genomex accepting a better-funded offer by from the military. In any case, he cannot have made a fortune in the stock market. The 1990s were a difficult time for stock market investigations, marked by the 2002 stock market downturn, which was a consequence of the Dot-com stock market bubble and the governmental mis-handling of the companies involved.

No matter how he earned his fortune, Adam is back at least in 2007, with futuristic technology, a lot of money, recruiting young people of whose some were already recruited around 1992. Shalimar, Adam's first "find" from 1992, was picked up at the age of 15, together with Nikki Rogers, a former friend of the same age. Danielle Hartman, whom Adam encountered in 1985 when he had been charged to treat her immunological deficiencies, was even younger, only 13 at that time. She managed to escape from Genomex at the age of 20, pregnant, after she likely had managed to uphold parallel relationships with Adam and Mason at the same time.



Adam and women

Despite the strong hints of Adam having sexually abused his underage patient, his overall attitude towards Danielle is oddly asexual. In fact, there is a type of men who are asexual and engage in sexual acts very rarely. They hold women in contempt and choose submissive women, well below their level, whose function is to bear witness to the man's personal moments of glory.

At the same time, men of that type have a very strong (if subdued) need for touch, a dominant emotional personality trait and certain self-destructive impulses, which may stem from a potential interest in men (out of the need to be emotionally close to the father), and feelings of guilt and inadequacy (as they could never quite measure up to their father's standards).

The characteristic and recurring trait in Adam's (fictional) biography is the violation of boundaries by treating children like adults and treating an adult partner as if she was a child. Adam is openly hostile to heterosexual relationships between adults, and shuns bodily contact. At the same time he is overly tactile and reclusive, hostile and emotional, overly rational and emotional. He also has a strong sense of self-sacrifice and is driven by feelings of guilt.

If this short analysis is true for Adam, then, according to material by Sam Vak, the behaviours of Adam would amount to a personality disorder called (cerebral) narcissism. For more on the issue, look here.

For a narcissist, admiration functions as a drug, and people who fulfil his need for admiration are preferred company. They are so-called secondary narcissist supply or providers of admiration. The primary narcissist supply is admiration itself.

The ideal sources of supply to a narcissist are individuals who are sufficiently intelligent, gullible, submissive, reasonably inferior, in possession of a good memory (in order to retell the moments of glory), who are interchangeable and not demanding. They may be manipulative (but not explicitly or overtly) and available to the narcissist, but not imposing.

At the same time, the narcissist devalues his Sources of Supply because he resents his dependence on his hand-picked company. He offends them for the very qualities that made them such sources in the first place; for example, by holding sickness against patients or by telling intellectually inferior or inexperienced company that they are stupid.

A narcissist rarely seeks contact with the "real world" as it might shatter his own image of how great he is.

Relationship with Charges

If this analysis is true, then what would be the role of dependants / charges / children in a narcissist's personal life?

To understand this issue, it is important to realise that despite the narcissist's outward reclusiveness, his most horrible fear is to be abandoned; by consequence, the key to his actions is his most deep-rooted fear.

Children (charges, patients) are not likely to abandon their sustainer, as they find themselves in a state of dependence. Adam's children or patients subjected to genetic engineering may satisfy his need for greatness as they reproduce their engineer's natural or designed genetic makeup. In that way, they ensure the "immortality" of their father, or at least the physical survival of his works and ideas.

Children may also be extorted into "being grateful", into selflessly giving without ever receiving proper emotional responses. Adam's protègès may feel compelled to put themselves into a position of "proxy", settling Adam's open scores with the outside world.

However, the relationship between a narcissist parent and his children is rarely harmonious. In order not to lose his "providers of admiration", a narcissist parent begins to manage this child's life through a myriad of control mechanisms, attempting to perpetuate the dependence of the charge. Relationships between a narcissist parent ant his charges are often symbiotic, as the parent will try to sustain the illusion that the child is a part of himself.

As demonstrated in Mutant X, such sustenance calls for extraordinary control on the part of the parent. It is also the reason for the depicted relationships to be turbulent and symbiotic, as such a lifestyle demands an extraordinary level of obedience from the child. The psychological mechanisms used to establish obedience may be:

  • guilt-driven ("I sacrificed my life for you..."),
  • dependence-driven ("I need you, I cannot cope without you..."),
  • goal-driven ("We have a common goal which we must achieve")
  • explicit ("If you do not obey my instructions - I will impose sanctions on you").

Conflicts arise if the children finally refuse to comply with the wishes of the parent, as they are supposed to fulfil his grandiose fantasies and dreams.

In some cases, narcissist behaviour may be "hereditary", in a way that a narcissist abuser may have been subjected to the wishes of narcissist parents himself. According to the canon faux sites, Adam was supposed to be the successor of the Genomex founder Paul Breedlove, who, for this reason, ambitiously sent to the University of Stanford when Adam was only 12 years old.

By the end of Season 3, Adam also finds his alleged natural father, a half-legendary weirdo called The Creator, who is obsessed with enhancing the human race.

Unfortunately, it slips to Adam's judgement that the Creator is apparently more interested in genes and numbers, and that he considers cloning and abandoning a suitable way to pursue a personal agenda.

It would be the question whether in the course of virtual or actual plot continuation, Adam would be able to break with an unhealthy father imago, or rather remain within his blind admiration for the man who claims to genetically have set the conditions for Adam's acts.

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Mutant X as a CultThe Shaolin TempleNotes on Incident X - Poems [1] / [2] - Nazi Art - Frank Thorne - Screencaps [1] / [2]

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Mutant X belongs to Tribune Entertainment. Inspiration taken from various sources including Internationalhero.co.uk, the former Mutant X faux sites and former PureMX / Masonesque.net. Dates based upon timeline presented on Masonesque .

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