When the mind transcends the impossible

By Julian Sudre

I would have to take a leaf out of her book for her indefatigable determination but most importantly her intellectual stamina and unwavering belief that the light, one day will be seen at the end of the tunnel.
Natascha Kampusch was held in captivity for eight years in a cellar below the garage no bigger than the size of a bed.
She had her teenage years snatched and buried in the gloom of confinement; her dreams of reassuring her parents that she was alive were shattered. The harrowing thoughts of her mother fading away with grief that she was dead ravaged her mind with tempestuous pain. And there stood her captor Wolfgang Priklopil, a paranoid psychopath who had prepared with a methodical modus operandi the kidnapping that will become the most talked about in modern history.

Yet psychologists have voiced their surprise over her fortitude and level-headed frame of mind. Also, she is known for having developed the Stockholm syndrome -- the coping mechanism whereby abductees exhibit loyalty to their kidnapper -- Natascha remains wedged between grief about Priklopil’s death and relief about getting her freedom back.
On a strictly personal level, I believe Natascha has made it through for the simple reason that she persistently believes in herself: “ I promised my future self that I would never abandon the thought of escape.”
In those circumstances, having faith and maintaining a high level of curiosity in terms of why, of all the million people, it had happened to her had enabled her to have an edge over her captor. She was resolute to find the answers and this is what has brought her leverage to fuel her insatiable desire to flee.
Of course I would not go as far as to say that her eight years confined to solitude was a form of meditation but to some extent it has brought her the clarity perhaps about the meaning of life she did not have before she was abducted at the age of ten.

Could it have her given assertiveness and self-confidence that life was more a mental freedom than a physical one? Once she would have grasped the essence of freedom as it is experienced in meditation, no sooner than she would have generated her own physical escape. By all means, she has accomplished a soul-destroying passage of life.
The analysis of her reactions are indeed more complex that that; she’ll have learned over the years to feed off her own dreams and fantasy so as to maintain a certain level of hope. Later on, she realised that her captor needed her more than she needed him and this will become a weapon that she will manipulate with dexterity.

During her first interview I was struck by the poker-faced, stoical mean of a person that possessed the intelligence of a self-composed adult who knew how to remain calm under any circumstances. Her mind is agile, tactical and tacful. She had mastered for all intent and purposes a control over the relationship with her abductor but also with her emotional side. But I would be inclined to say ther logistical approach to men could be affected and any amourous relationships are very probably unconceivable for some time.

Today, Natascha leaps from her dungeon existence to the blinding spotlight of the media. Her life seems to be going from one extreme to another. After learning to acclimatise herself to a near-decade of isolation she will have to learn the aggression and superficialness of the real world.

Lest she interprets the lime light as a sort of satisfying benefactor that provides contentment and reassurance, I hope her team of psychologists do know how to wean her off the attention that she has needed so that she will get hardened up during the wintry period of her self future and appreciate the very liberty of being simply herself.