Posted by Jan den Breejen on March 12, 2001 at 02:40:15:
Barry John Gray (master con man during the 1980's)
In the Discovery Channel documentary the portrait is painted of a highly perfectionistic character. He was so succesfull because he was very task focussed (no wife could stand him for long) and put so much work in preparing his con trick; he outsmarted to police because he had studied the shop very carefully and used proven methods and tactics which he applied in a very controlled/disciplined manner. Barry read lots of newspapers; a good researcher. He couldn't forgive himself for having made errors. He choose a basic method to deceive and he improved meticulously on the details. The perfection of a succesful method however also made him more rigid over time; and he failed to incorporate the world of the 1990's when he got older; talking about the Mossad when the newspapers were interested in Madonna. There was also a curious 'ethics' based indignation and criticism about fellow con man wo didn't behave 'properly' and said 'sorry' when they didn't mean it. Finally he was idiosyncratic that he needed an idealistic facade to justify the works of his Machiavellan mind and egoistic acts; he 'only' robbed succesful businesses and not individual citizens.
Classification: probably Conscientious Style (Compulsive Personality)
Jan