This is a pic I had not seen before, courtesy of Barbara Bouchey and CBC.  It’ll be fun to listen to one of the podcasts.  There is some new information there.

One tidbit is the idea of a traumatizing narcissist.  The concept is real, but it seems to be championed only by the one psychologist Daniel Shaw.  In terms of Raniere Shaw says “His behaviour (sic) seems driven by an insatiable need to constantly prove his own superiority.”

That is the thing about NXIVM and Keith Raniere:  It is all about him.  He leaves his victims, i.e., the people he comes into contact with, traumatized.

Among them Ms. Bouchey is still the star.  Her appearance on 20/20 helped bring that episode to life.  Frank Parlato is still at it too and he mentioned that she would be on the Today show.  Then he followed-up with more–he seems to spend a lot more time with guests and commenters than he used to–from a poster who describes Bouchey as still conflicted.  She is conflicted (or traumatized) and that is why she is so interesting.  On the one-hand she comes off as proud that she was his girlfriend, that she chauffeured him around, and people moved over on the couch to make room for him.  Elsewhere we’ve seen her crying and lamenting the lost $1.2 million and her personal bankruptcies.

Mr. Parlato still spends a ton of time studying the whole thing; in particular, he will dissect every court appearance and legal filing ad nauseam.  Of course he is still fighting his own indictment.  He insists it is bogus, but it will not go away.

The CBC series points out that when Raniere found out about his intelligence gifts at the age of about eight he changed into a real egotist and people-abuser.  As a teen he lived with his divorced, alcoholic mother who died when he was 17.  That’s when he started attending college, racking up debt, and pursuing his goal to change the world.

Later on, after the dramatic collapse of Consumers’ Buyline, he met Nancy Salzman and that cemented his final vision.  Bouchey says he was into Scientology and we all know Salzman was the critical neurolinguistic programming link.  It is not a pretty picture, these people who are 60 years old, don’t have a dime to their name, and the rest of their lives are only about staying out of prison.  (Paul Manafort, age 69, is another.)  Anyway, Ms. Salzman–her daughter indicted too–is now ill or recuperating.  It is not a pretty picture at all.