55 Minutes, Two Models
Case Study #1 -- Michelle Curtis Subject is a graduate student in
psychology
who reports a recent traumatic event. While studying one evening while
her
husband was at work, a thief broke into her apartment and bound her.
Despite her denials, the intruder continued to insist that she was hiding
large
amounts of money and/or valuables. Subject was briefly freed,
threatened,
then re-tied and silenced with a gag while the thief ransacked her
apartment.
Most significantly for our study, subject reports that, despite
understandable
high level of fearful emotion, her mind continued to function rationally
as
she
analyzed her situation, her captor's motivations and other relevant
matters.
Once the intruder convinced himself that subject was not actually in
possession of large amounts of money, he departed after restraining
and
silencing the subject again. In a surprising postscript to the event,
subject
reports that though husband naturally freed her on his return, he found
her
plight rather intriguing and used the ropes left behind by the intruder to
restrain her and also replaced the mouth gag before going off to a bar
with
a
friend. Recommendation: Query subject on stability of marriage in three
months.
Case Study #2 -- Holly Lane Subject is an attractive professional
woman
in
her 40s who reports a bizarre encounter while interviewing for a new
position. The interview began normally while subject's prospective
employer
examined her resume. He noted in apparently friendly fashion that both
he
and subject had attended the same university at the same time some
20
years earlier. Subject responded innocuously, whereupon interviewer
questioned her with rising agitation about supposed encounters with
subject
at the university, alleging that subject had humiliated him by rejecting
his
requests for dates, encouraging her friends to laugh at him, and
otherwise
treating him with contempt. As he became increasingly irrational,
subject
attempted to break off interview and leave, at which time he seized her
and
used rope bindings to hold her. Subject was rendered
helpless and the obviously deranged man inundated her with threats
intermingled with crazed suggestions about their "date"; subject was
by
now
unable to cry out for help and was naturally terrified. In contrast to
subject
#1, she reports limited memory of her ordeal, noting only a vague sense
of
being freed momentarily, then tied more uncomfortably for an
indeterminate
period before regaining a sharper sense of her disturbing situation after
being tied to a bed. Subject mentions a sensation of near surreal clarity
as
her criminal approached the bed with obvious intent to himself
upon
her, only to collapse in a fatal heart attack. Subject struggled out of
bindings
and notified authorities; physically unharmed but still troubled by
nightmares.