I would say my only issue with that theory is that I can’t imagine someone who is either suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder or sociopathy to be able to achieve a stable Drift with anyone.
The Drift, from what I understand, basically requires one essential element: implicit trust.
NPDs and sociopaths are, by nature, all on a certain level paranoid with everyone around them. This includes their children, spouses, siblings, parents, etc.
They do not implicitly trust anyone.
They manipulate and harm people not because they believe themselves to be villains or even want to hurt others. But mainly because they see everyone else around them as being as manipulative and dangerous as they are.
They expect the worst out of people and it’s a dog eat dog world to them. If they get you? Well, that only proves they are the smartest ones, and managed to fool you before you managed to fool them.
There’s no guilt involved there, because if they hadn’t done anything to disable or control you, you would inevitably have been trying to disable or control them one day.
They just won. It’s as easy as that. And if you’re suffering, it’s all your fault.
“If you’re dumb enough to ALLOW ME to use and abuse you, then you DESERVE to be used and abused. That’s all on you. I’m just the smartest, and we both deserve to be where we are today - me in the dominating position - in power, and you put back in your rightful place - powerless.”
The kind of love they experience for their children, for example, is roughly the same kind of love they experience for their car. If their children are useful to them (ex: feed them narcissistic supply, are helping them acquire social status, etc.), they “love” them. If they try to oppose them and are becoming more trouble than they are worth, then they either must be fixed (coerced into giving them what they need again), or discarded (ignored, abandoned, driven to suicide, etc.).
With these kinds of impairments, I’d say achieving a stable Drift would be doomed to fail from the get go. Drift partners need to be best friends with each other for it to work.
Putting someone inside a Conn-pod who is unable to achieve any form of genuine emotional intimacy with anyone because they don’t emotionally empathize with anybody or implicitly trust them is probably not going to allow a stable Drift.
At least, I personally have very strong doubts. Unless Herc would share a similar personality disorder and they would both be driven to each others’ malicious nature and be of one mind on this, and that’s even more troubling to think about. Lol!
That’s actually one of the reasons why I see Herc as a father with a lack of ‘know-how’ in terms of parenting and who struggles with expressing his emotions; rather than a self-absorbed parent with a personality disorder and the inability to emotionally empathize with his child.
He’s able to drift with Chuck (and used to drift with Scott). That should technically mean that there’s some measure of love, trust, and ability to emotionally connect with people involved there. It’s managing those emotions, understanding what they mean, and knowing how to express them that’s the challenge, I think.
Someone truly sociopathic or malicious at the helm of the Jaeger would be piloting that Jaeger alone, probably…
So all Jaeger pilots would technically need to be very “good people”* at the core in order to be able to achieve a successful Drift, I think. They can have various psychological and emotional issues that may cause them to occasionally be jerks to others, develop inappropriate coping mechanisms, and make some significant mistakes; but that ability to love and trust in others would need to be there. At least, from how I understand it.
*Note: “good people” is used very subjectively here, because I don’t think a sociopath is a “bad person” per say, more suffering from a mental illness impairing their ability to emotionally empathize and relate to others in a healthy and safe way. I’m having a hard time calling them “bad” because I’m aware that they do not consciously and willingly choose to develop a personality disorder - but that still makes them very dangerous and “bad” to others.
