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One of the four experts appointed by the court to determine if Patty is mentally competent to stand trial is Dr. Louis J. West, chairman of the department of psychiatry at U.C.L.A. and a leading student of thought control. Three days before Patty's lawyers released her affidavit, he discussed her case with TIME Correspondent Patricia Delaney. "It would be a mistake for people to judge the case prior to a careful examination of Patricia Hearst and all the facts," he said. "The Hearst case may be an example of someone enmeshed by the forces within a small group which has a profound ability to affect behavior. Such a group suddenly becomes an individual's only relationship with the rest of the world. Patty Hearst began as a victim [of kidnaping]. Any subsequent behavior has to be related to that fact. Prisoners under stress have a strong tendency to identify with the aggressor. The victim is dependent upon him for protection, food, for life itself. Identifying with the abductors may seem to be his or her only mechanism for survival. A helpless captive ends up fusing with the ideas of a group and doing things he or she as an individual would never have done. Life on the run with the S.L.A. was one of constant stress, at war in a hostile country with a friendly underground." West thinks that Patty could make a healthy adjustment to normal life, "depending upon how carefully she is handled by family, friends, doctors, and presumably the courts."
After reading Patty's affidavit, other experts are skeptical about her account. Chalmers Johnson, a University of California political scientist who has studied brainwashing, doubts that Patty was ever as strongly influenced as she claims. "She may have been driven into hysteria and even into a catatonic state after her kidnaping," Johnson says, "but she was not brainwashed. No one can persuade me that Cinque [S.L.A. Chief Donald DeFreeze] was bright or skillful enough to brainwash anyone."
Albert Raven, a psychology professor at Michigan State University, feels that if Patty had been brainwashed she would not have snapped back as rapidly as described in her affidavit. Says Chicago Psychiatrist Marvin Ziporyn: "If people believe that this girl sat around for 18 months because she was brainwashed, then I'm going to start robbing banks tomorrow because they'll believe anything."