The Epstein Affair as a Case Study in Power Continuity

A Coaching and Theoretical Analysis of Ritual, Domination and Ethical Regression

by Barbara Wilde

The case of Jeffrey Epstein has been widely discussed in legal, journalistic and political terms. Far less explored, however, is its value as a theoretical case study in the persistence of power dynamics across historical epochs.

When examined through the lenses of analytical psychology, critical theory and contemporary power studies, the Epstein affair appears not as a deviation from modern ethical norms, but as a manifestation of their unresolved contradictions.

From a coaching perspective, this case reveals the structural failure to integrate power with ethical embodiment.

Triumph of Titus - Arch of Titus: Relief of the Roman triumph on the Arch of Titus (Rome, c. 81 CE), where procession and display of conquered peoples and spoils of war visually encode elite dominance.

Ritual, Power and the Body: A Historical Framework

In ancient societies — notably Roman civilisation — power was enacted through ritualised practices that made hierarchy visible and incontestable. The body functioned as a primary site of inscription: domination was not symbolic alone, but somatic. For example, the Roman triumph, a ritual parade celebrating a military commander’s victory, involved the public display of captives, often stripped and paraded through the streets, their subjugation reinforcing the authority of the elite. Similarly, in elite banquets, the presence of enslaved individuals and the orchestration of eroticised spectacles served to demonstrate the social distance between ruler and ruled.

Sexual access to subordinate bodies was less about desire than about sovereignty. Historical accounts reveal that in certain rites, such as initiation ceremonies for young nobles or political apprentices, sexual acts with slaves or concubines were used as demonstrations of loyalty, obedience, and assimilation into elite power structures. These acts were not private indulgences: they were codified, expected, and integral to the reinforcement of hierarchy. Anthropological research confirms that ritualised transgression, including controlled violence and sexual exploitation, functioned to reaffirm elite cohesion and moral exemption, creating a culture in which those at the top were explicitly absolved of the moral norms that applied to ordinary citizens.

What modernity has abandoned is not the ritual itself, but its visibility. Today, hierarchical power continues to rely on the body — whether through control, coercion, or symbolic gestures — but it operates in the shadows: private islands, elite parties, or closed networks substitute for the open spectacle of the Roman forum. The mechanics remain strikingly similar: bodies are used as instruments to signal power, loyalty is enforced through complicity, and ethical boundaries are suspended for those within the inner circle.

Arch of Titus (Rome, c. 81 CE)

Foucault: Power Beyond Law

Michel Foucault’s analysis of power is particularly illuminating here. In Discipline and Punish and later works, Michel Foucault dismantles the notion of power as merely juridical or repressive, instead conceptualising it as diffuse, relational and embodied.

From this perspective, the Epstein network exemplifies a form of power that operates below the threshold of law, sustained by social capital, surveillance inversion (the powerful being unsupervised), and the internalisation of silence.

Power does not need to announce itself when it is already normalised.

Jung and the Civilisational Shadow

From an analytical psychology standpoint, Carl Jung provides a crucial interpretative key. Jung’s concept of the shadow refers to the aspects of the psyche — individual or collective — that are disowned, repressed, and therefore enacted unconsciously.

The repetition of elite abuse across history suggests the existence of a collective shadow of power: domination, exploitation and cruelty disavowed at the level of discourse, yet perpetuated through behaviour.

In Jungian terms, what is not made conscious does not disappear; it repeats.

The Illusion of Moral Progress

A central error of modern thought lies in equating technological and institutional development with ethical evolution. Power studies repeatedly show that systems advance faster than the moral capacities of those who inhabit them.

In this sense, the Epstein affair exposes a structural lag: a civilisation equipped with advanced legal frameworks but insufficient psychological and ethical integration of power.

From a coaching lens, this reflects a failure of embodiment. Power is exercised cognitively and strategically, but not somatically or relationally.

A Coaching Reflection on Collective Responsibility

The temptation is to position cases like Epstein as external monstrosities, safely detached from our daily lives. But the true coaching question is more uncomfortable:

• Where do we normalise silence in exchange for safety or advantage?

• Where do we confuse authority with superiority?

• Where do we still tolerate power without embodiment?

Until power is lived as a relational responsibility rather than a private entitlement, history will not evolve — it will merely disguise itself.

Coaching, Accountability and Embodied Ethics

Coaching, when practised beyond self-optimisation, becomes a technology of awareness. It addresses precisely what power systems avoid: reflexivity, accountability, and the capacity to remain in contact with the other as a subject.

The Epstein case demonstrates what occurs in the absence of such practices: dissociation replaces responsibility; secrecy replaces relationship; bodies become instruments rather than sites of mutual recognition.

This is not an individual failure alone, but a cultural one.

Conclusion: Power Without Integration Regresses

The Epstein affair should not be read solely as a scandal, but as a symptom. It reveals the persistence of ancient power logics beneath modern surfaces, and the insufficiency of progress when not accompanied by ethical embodiment.

History does not repeat itself mechanically. It persists where consciousness fails to intervene.

Until power is integrated psychologically, relationally and somatically, civilisation will continue to reproduce its most archaic patterns — not despite its advancement, but because of its denial.