**CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!**
Dr. Spencer Reid is the youngest member of the profiling team on "Criminal Minds". Although an extremely adept psychological profiler, Reid's strengths lay in geographic profiling, cryptology, and discerning patterns. He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words per minute. He holds doctorate degrees in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering as well as Bachelor's Degrees in Psychology and Sociology. He is currently studying for a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy as well. Some of his more obscure talents include sleight of hand and magic tricks. He is proficient at chess, though sometimes the long term strategy eludes him and he often loses to Jason Gideon. Though often it seems he is not as physically capable as his colleagues, he has shown fine marksmanship and extreme bravery on several occasions. He doesn't like spinach, is afraid of the dark, is a Star Trek geek, and is rarely seen driving. He often drinks coffee with alot of sugar, to fight the exhaustion caused by nightmares the BAU sometimes causes him. He is almost always introduced as Dr. Reid instead of Agent Reid, as stressed by Gideon, so that others will respect him despite his youth, and he tends to keep to the back when being introduced and waves instead of shaking hands.
Though he gets along well with all of his colleagues, his mentor was Jason Gideon. When Gideon left the BAU, he left a letter for Reid and the departure seems to have hurt Reid the most. Reid has a tendency to confide most of his problems to Derek Morgan, who seems to be a bit of an older brother figure. Morgan often gives Reid advice on women, as well as handling the mental strain of BAU. Reid and Penelope Garcia are godparents to Jennifer "JJ" Jareau's son, Henry.
In temperament, Dr. Reid is for the most part socially awkward, often answering rhetorical questions literally and giving unwanted facts and statistics at inappropriate times. However, he is well-loved by his colleagues and when pushed a bit can be successful with women. He once had a brief relationship with a famous and beautiful television actress. He also charmed an attractive bartender into giving him her number with amusing magic tricks.
Dr. Reid grew up in Las Vegas, the son of 15th-century Literature professor Diana Reid and attorney William Reid. His child was in many ways quite traumatic. When he was 4 years old a neighborhood boy named Riley Jenkins was raped and murdered by a pedophile. When the pedophile began to target young Spencer, Diana Reid informed Riley's father and Mr. Jenkins killed the pedophile by beating him to death. The mentally fragile Diana found Mr. Jenkins standing over the dead pedophile, slipped in his blood which got on her clothes. William Reid later burned the blood-stained clothes in the backyard, and unbeknownst to him, Spencer saw him do it [Authentication: Season 4, episodes "The Instincts" (6) and "Memoriam" (7)] . All three adults covered up the crime, and Dr. Reid repressed the memories, though they often resulted in terrifying dreams.
Diana Reid suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and it was after this incident that her mental state deteriorated enough to cause William Reid to abandon his wife and son two years later; he also states that he no longer knew how to care for his brilliant son. Spencer basically raised himself from this point on as his mother lived in bouts of depression, rarely leaving the house. However, she continually read to him from a variety of books, including Proust and medieval poetry. He graduated from public school in Las Vegas at age 12. While in school he was bullied repeatedly, including an especially damaging incident where he was lured to the football field bleachers by a pretty girl who he thought liked him, only to be stripped naked by the football team and taped to the football field goal posts (a story told in 3.16, "Elephant's Memory").
Though he loves his mother deeply, Dr. Reid had her committed to a mental institution when he turned 18, believing it to be the healthiest place for her. She remains there to this day, and Dr. Reid writes her detailed letters about his life and the cases he works on every day. He rarely visits, but her presence is widely felt in his life and he clearly feels guilty for committing her. Paranoid Schizophrenia is genetically inherited disease, and Dr. Reid occasionally worries that he might also develop it. There have also been hints that he might have mild autism or Asperger's syndrome, though neither has been confirmed.
When another child abduction case (4.6) causes Dr. Reid to remember his repressed memories of Riley Jenkins, he carries out his own investigation of the case and in the process discovers his father still lives in the Las Vegas area. The facts he gathers, mixing with his own somewhat muddled memories, causes him to suspect his father of killing of the young boy. When the truth comes out about the real killing and the events that led to his parents' divorce, father and son reunite somewhat, though Reid is still clearly angry; after all, William Reid never let his so know that he was merely 9 miles down the highway, though he followed him extensively in newspapers. (4.7)
There have been a handful of B.A.U. cases that have affected Dr. Reid particularly hard. In "L.D.S.K." (1.6) Dr. Reid loses he license to carry despite extra training from Hotch. He feels that this makes him less effective in his duties and not like a real FBI Agent. However, at the crucial moment during a stand-off with the unsub, Hotch manipulates the circumstances so that Reid can get at his hidden, ankle gun and Reid shoots the unsub dead - right between the eyes. After that, he regains his license to carry.
In "Derailed" (1.9), Reid insists on walking into a hostage situation with an unsub in the midst of a psychotic break. Using his sleight of hand skills he manages to trick the unsub into thinking that he has removed a computer chip from his arm. This is one of the first times that Dr. Reid's tendency to throw himself into harm's way is evident.
In "Sex, Birth, Death" (2.11) Dr. Reid is approached by a young man with a sexual-sadist profile, though he has yet to kill anyone. Reid identifies strongly with the young man, and when the young man tries to kill himself Dr. Reid manages to save his life. This is also the episode where we get the quote most linked to Dr. Reid's mental state, "I know what it's like to be afraid of your own mind."
In "The Big Game" (2.14) and "Revelations" (2.15), Reid is kidnapped and held hostage by an unsub with a severe dissociative identity disorder. One of the personalities tortures Reid (Raphael); However, another injects him with a highly addictive cocktail of heroin and narcotics to help him escape the pain. This personality (Tobias) also brings Reid back to life after Raphael had killed him. In the end, Reid manages to disarm the unsub and shoots him, later removing the cocktail from the body. During the next episodes, Reid is suffering from PTSD and shows signs of a drug addiction.
In "3rd Life" (3.12) a young unsub is shot dead in front of Reid, who is left in shock that he was unable to save him. The stress of this confrontation causes him to start craving Dilaudid again, though he has been clean for 10 months and has been attending local NA meetings.
In "Elephant's Memory" (3.16) a young unsub who strongly reminds Dr. Reid of himself and causes Reid to by-pass the team's efforts to capture him and confront the unsub directly in order to save him by talking him out of a "suicide-by-cop" scenario, again putting himself and the team in jeopardy. Hotch gives Reid a warning, which he takes to heart.
In "Memoriam" (4.7) Reid's repressed memories come to the forefront, causing him to relive the murder of Riley Jenkins and come to terms with his childhood and his father.
In "Amplification" (4.24) Reid risks himself severely to save Washington D.C. from anthrax and almost dies as a result. Even while in pain, he refuses medication, so he is clearly still clean from his drug use.
In "Proof" (7.2) Reid is shown to be giving JJ the "cold shoulder" because he felt that she lied to him about Prentiss's faked death. He ends up forgiving her and they become friends again.
In "Epilogue" (7.06) Reid reveals he experienced the "white light" when he died in "Revelations", before he was resuscitated.
In "True Genius" (7.11) Reid meets a young genius who started his own business to battle tumors who makes him question his job choice. He confides in Prentiss that he's unsure if he's doing the right thing with his life and his intelligence. Prentiss shows him that there's nothing else Reid would want to dedicate his life to. At the end of the episode, the team celebrates Reid's 30th birthday.
company.