What do you think about Natascha Kampusch's mental state?Shall we believe what she says in her letter?

Question

She sounds like a loyal wife while speaking anout her kidnapper.At the same time she is not aware of the damage done to her in all these years.It is more than Stock holm syndrome.My sympathies are with her.She wants to be left alone but time is up.She should be left alone more.What's your opinion?

Answer 1

Edit: Read another article in passing, things seem to be more horrific than I had originally realized. (See newspaper link below.) It doesn't really change the gist of what I was saying, but hearing the details of the crime leaves me even more sickened...

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I haven't researched the case extensively, but here are my thoughts based on the basics of what has appeared in the news:

In a sense, Natascha was this man's wife AND his daughter -- the basic female object of his attention and energy.

Priklopil was a mixed bag, apparently, which contributes to her ambivalence over being held captive for so long. The fact is that he educated her throughout the captivity, kept her up to date with current events, conversed with her regularly. The police were astonished to find her so articulate, considering the normal poor mental/social state of someone kept in captivity that long.

He sounds like a man with a weak self-image who felt that he could not maintain a relationship unless the woman was much younger than him (so that he could dominate her thinking and be the authority figure) as well as kept physically captive so that she could not leave. His motivations did not seem sadistic like some of these people; he simply wanted a female who would not be able to reject him.

His crime becomes obviously heinous only when you step back and reduce it to the bare essentials: He took a young girl away from her family against her will and kept her locked downstairs in his house for his own benefit. Looked at it that light, all the "good" he might have done evaporates, leaving only the crime behind.

But Natascha did not have the option to step back. She could only see the world around her, and this man held the keys to her life. Her current attitudes are understandable. She could only live in the moment, because that was all she had.

Note that she fled when given the opportunity. She might not want to criticize Priklopil openly, but she still ultimately viewed her situation as a captivity and left when she had the chance.

There's definitely some "stockholm" in there -- but the period of captivity was so long, and during such an important developmental state of the girl's life (her entire adolescence, where she would have been learning how to relate to her peers, as well as romantically to men), that I think there has to be a lot more to be dealt with than simply a bond with her captor.

There's also the distinct possibility that there was sexual intimacy during the captivity. If so, that could also cause a lot of emotional issues.

Natascha should be seeing a counselor, to work through what happened to her; but she also needs to be given her privacy -- having been violated once, why should she be violated more by having her life scrutinized?

Answer 2

This is her struggle and no one else's. For the generaly public to berate former captives for not having the same repulsed and indignant response that we do is presumptuous at best. Stockholm Syndrome is an overwrought term for a simple human response - empathy. You do understand that no matter how horrified we are by the captor that person is a breathing and bleeding individual who is not composed of poison but of billions of cells - they often have human responses and emotions just like other people. So if Natascha managed to recognize a core of humanity in the shell of this bastard, and that helped her through, and perhaps she is enlightened by it, do we really need to be questioning why she isn't out of her head and broken right now, railing angainst this person? We've all been damaged. We've all felt what it is to be the captive. For her it lasted longer but she is resilient and will go on to a normal enough life if she chooses.

Answer 3

They should leave her alone because I think she doesn't want to talk about what really happened and go throught the past again. They should respect that! she need time for herself!