Conversation

Epstein’s pattern of inveigling himself into power networks is strikingly familiar. I’ve met too many such operators both close-up and from a distance. Most are merely after money, but now I can’t help doing an unconscious double-take, looking for signs of darker currents.
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Working networks with that level of desperation suggests a drive at work far stronger than ordinary greed for money or power. Which isn’t to say the drive has to be dark, but it has to run deeper than mere ambition.
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Narcissistic personality disorder. I can almost imagine what delight he took in tricking and trapping scientists. How their falling prey to the same desires that ruled him lessened the shame.
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Yeah but I’m guessing in most cases of NPD that sense of control is just a side dish. The main course is whatever that access and entryism enables. In this case apparently laundering reputation and buying a sort of force field around his predatory activities.
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Elevation of his false self as a superior being. Being acknowledged as such by high reputation others. Deserving of the best of everything as he conceived it. That's the narc supply. The control required to pull it off needed the costly force field.
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