I've said before -- and BTW, my apologies for hijacking this story thread with S3 meta; I can't shut up sometimes -- that I suspect what lies underneath all of Neal's issues is not being a conman at heart, but being a runaway at heart. The con life is just the way to facilitate that. (Not that he doesn't get a rush out of it, too, but I think that's a side effect, and not what sent him down this path.) So I get where you're coming from with the personas changing, and the effect on the mark approaching incidental.