World: Smoothing the Way

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Medical experts expect that some of the hostages could suffer from a variety of psychological disturbances as well as psychosomatic disorders triggered by prolonged stress. Says Dr. David Barry, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry: "Their anger is mobilized, and they have no way to discharge their feelings. This results in anxiety, long-term repressive feelings and psycho-physiological conditions such as high blood pressure. The hostages will be irritable, jumpy, and display a short fuse." They may also display everything from memory lapses to lost appetite, insomnia and nightmares. While the severity will vary, the psychological scars are sure to be deep in every case. Says David G. Hubbard, a Dallas psychiatrist: "Some individuals are strengthened in a situation like this, and some are crippled."

One of the biggest question marks is to what degree the propaganda of the Iranian militants may have rubbed off on their captives. When Marine Corporal William Gallegos was interviewed by NBC last December he expressed sympathy for the Iranian revolutionaries; this aroused some suspicions that the hostages may have been subjected to brainwashing, perhaps of the sort employed by the North Koreans against American P.O.W.s, as became evident after Operation Big Switch in 1953, when 3,313 U.S. prisoners were returned. Most experts, however, doubt that the Iranian militants have resorted to systematic brainwashing. What has probably happened, at least with some of the hostages, is a degree of identification with their captors—a temporary reaction often referred to as the "Stockholm syndrome."* Says Stanford University's Donald T. Lunde, a psychiatrist who has treated Kidnap Victim Patty Hearst: "I'd expect the hostages to have some quite positive feelings for their captors for the single reason that these people have been playing a parental role with them and kept them in a dependent state." As a result, says Lunde, "they'll be making anti-Shah, anti-CIA statements in the first couple of weeks." Most experts share Lunde's belief that the Stockholm effects will soon wear off.

The speed and facility with which the hostages succeed in re-entering normal life will depend in large part on the tolerance and understanding they receive from their families and from the American public. The unthinking could all too easily confront them with two opposed dangers: either a hostile reaction to possible pro-Iranian utterances or excessive public adulation. Warns Psychology Professor Murray S. Miron of Syracuse University: "The more we lionize the returning hostages, the more inconsistent their attitude could be about themselves." Hubbard agrees that two much notoriety could aggravate their psychological problems. "These folks need privacy and gentleness. It's like coming out of the dark, dark room into bright light"

—By Thomas A. Sancton.

Reported by Lee Griggs/Wiesbaden and Roberto Suro/Washington