THE HOSTAGE DRAMA : Experts Say Freed U.S. Hostage Will Experience ‘Time Warp’ : Stress: They predict Edward Tracy will need time to recover and adjust to changes in the world and in family and friends.

Edward A. Tracy--who spent most of his five years of captivity without access to newspapers, television or radio--almost certainly will experience his first hours of freedom as a kind of “time warp,” according to experts experienced in dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.

When Tracy was abducted, “the Berlin Wall was standing, we were still in the midst of the Cold War and almost all of Eastern Europe was part of the Communist world,” said Jack Smith, who directed the National Center for Stress Recovery under the old Veterans Administration. “Since then, we’ve been through a war in the Middle East and Syria has become an ally, after being an enemy.

“For many of these people, it has been years since they’ve been in touch with the same world that we have,” Smith added. “He’s going to walk out into daylight into a whole different world.”

Indeed, Robert Polhill, released last year after 39 months of captivity in Beirut, recalled: “The entire Communist world had fallen apart on me and I’d had no idea--it was a terrible shock.”

Dr. Edna J. Hunter, deputy chairman of the advisory committee on former prisoners of war for the Department of Veterans Affairs, recalled that the same phenomenon occurred during her work with Vietnam prisoners of war in the 1970s.

“When they were told we’d had a man walk on the moon, they thought we were kidding them,” she said. “People will talk about world happenings and they will feel like they don’t quite fit--almost as if they’ve had amnesia for several years.”

Tracy--and other hostages who may be released in the coming days--not only will find dramatic changes in the outside world and in their families and friends, but they may also feel overwhelmed by the abrupt turnaround in their own circumstances: one moment a prisoner, the next moment a free man, experts said.

“They need time to really realize that they are free,” Hunter said.

Studies have shown that most hostages, even without training, instinctively will adopt basic techniques of coping with their plight, Hunter and others said. Among other things, they learn to structure their time within “tight quarters with very little outside stimulation,” and, if alone, often become quite introverted, she said.

Polhill, in fact, who was isolated for nearly two months, described that period “as the worst kind of punishment I can think of. You start talking to yourself, making marks on the wall--it’s maddening to be alone.”

“There are so many long hours for self-examination,” Hunter said. “Many of them say that this was an ‘opportunity’ to find out for themselves what is really important in life. When released, it’s like they’ve been reborn--given a second chance in life.”

Those, in fact, were the 60-year-old Tracy’s very first words Sunday after he was set free.

“It makes a man reborn. . . ,” he said in a brief Syrian television interview. “I’m ready to go outside and do the 100-yard dash.

“I’m really happy to see a tree, hear an airplane, hear an automobile,” he added. “I am amazed and baffled by it all. I can’t find words, I must find words.”

While in captivity, hostages also learn to keep their emotions severely in check, a discipline that is hard to lose once released.

“They learn to dampen their emotions, to level out,” Hunter said. “This is one thing the families will notice. They cannot allow themselves to get angry, or look happy. They have this dampened effect which families find hard to deal with. The longer they’ve been held captive, the longer it will take to adjust.”

Employing another common coping technique, they often deal with their austere or brutal captive environment by traveling to a different location--in their minds.

“Some have called it ‘going to the movies,’ but it’s simply fantasizing--just thinking of another place,” said Dr. Charles Figley, director of the psychosocial stress research program at Florida State University. “If I were being held captive I’d think about the scene outside my window right now: the beach, porpoises jumping up from time to time, the image of my daughter playing with her friends in the dunes.

“You can’t remove the blindfold from your face but you can in your mind,” Figley added.

David P. Jacobsen, a former hospital administrator from Huntington Beach, who was held for 17 months in Beirut before his November, 1986, release, said that he and his fellow hostages sustained themselves by, among other things, constantly thinking of their loved ones.

“It’s critical to make it through the first month--coming to terms with the denial of all your rights,” he said. “After you get by that, it’s a waiting game.”

Thus, after years of total dependence on others--their captors--initially the hostages may react to freedom with a certain numbness, followed by wild swings in emotion, experts said.

“They’ve gone from a situation where someone else was in total control to one where they’ve got all kinds of choices,” Smith said, adding this can be both “terrifying and bewildering.”

Figley agreed. “They’ve been able to cope with boredom and lack of stimulation, and now it’s all flipped over,” he said. “Now they’ll have to deal with an avalanche of stressors and stimuli, and the old coping methods of going someplace else in your mind just don’t work. You go from a passive state to an active state. It’s too much of a change.

“Instinctively, we want to return them to what they’ve been missing for so long,” he continued. “We think, ‘Gee, if I were in that situation I’d want to drink a Coke or eat a hot dog,’ but for many of these men, all these choices are extremely stressful.”

Jacobsen, however, insisted that he had no re-entry trouble after his release, saying that he and others who have been freed “could think clearly and take control of our lives immediately. We had no problems whatsoever. The experts are wrong; they’ve never been there themselves. I had no nightmares, no flashbacks--none of the things people think you will have. It doesn’t happen. What happens is this: You’re reminded of your friends who remain there. You know the hell they are going through.”

Jacobsen said it wasn’t difficult “to catch up on the big issues, like who got elected President.” But, he said, “I’ll never know what the weather was like in my hometown for that year and a half. I’ll never be able to experience one of the lousiest winters Southern California had--when the Huntington Beach pier went down--and I’ll never be able to experience what happened during UCLA football and basketball seasons.

“That time will always be a blank, since I wasn’t here to live it. You can reclaim the big generic things but not those individualized experiences--you can never reclaim them.”

Polhill, a diabetic, was diagnosed with throat cancer shortly after his release. He said that he believes the need to deal with his medical problems dwarfed any other readjustment difficulties he and his wife might have otherwise encountered.

“The day-to-day adjustments just didn’t get in our way because we had something major to deal with right away,” he said. “So, in a way, dealing with my throat was a blessing.”

Hunter, noting that “the ones who come back are the survivors,” said that a year after the return of the Vietnam POWs, the former prisoners and their families both were asked: What was the biggest surprise you had?

“For the POWs, it was how much the family members had changed,” she said. “For the families, it was how little the POWs had changed. The experience appears to solidify basic personality traits--it doesn’t change them but sets in concrete basic traits they had before. So those who were really red white and blue before were even more patriotic when they got out. And those who were left-wing were even more so.”

The hostage families--many of whom already have undergone dramatic changes throughout their ordeal--will experience further transitions with the return of their loved ones, experts said.

“The family members who’ve kept this vigil suddenly have no reason to continue,” Figley said. “It’s over. And you can count on the fact that the first time this person they have waited for and worked so hard for disappoints them, it will be very hurtful--more so than it would be under ordinary circumstances.”