PSYCHOLOGY : When People Leave Their Lives Behind : Many who move far north to Alaska’s remote wilderness do so to search for their inner selves, a study says.

Marilyn Jesmain was living in a nine-bedroom home with her husband, a Midwestern business executive, when she decided that something was terribly wrong with her life.

She was tired of the materialism, of being known simply as someone’s wife. So she dumped it all.

After getting a divorce, Jesmain moved to a one-room cabin outside Fairbanks. The cabin, which she rents for $300 a month, doesn’t even have running water, but Jesmain says she loves it more than the “mansion” she left behind.

Jesmain came to the far north in search of herself, says psychology professor Judith Kleinfeld, director of the Northern Studies Program at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Kleinfeld is trying to answer the question of why some people leave their lives behind and move to the Alaska bush--where staying alive can be a constant challenge.

“When I first started this project, I thought people were going to say they came for the beauty of the land,” says Kleinfeld, who moved to Alaska from Cambridge, Mass., 25 years ago. “It’s a part of it . . . but they came because life here opens up so many possibilities.”

Kleinfeld has done several surveys asking people why they moved to the far north, and she says the results reveal common reasons among people of extremely diverse backgrounds.

“Personal freedom always comes out on top,” she says. “The freedom to do your own thing, start something new.”

In addition to the surveys, she has done in-depth studies of 20 individuals, including Jesmain. Each case is different, but there are common threads.

Kleinfeld’s work deals mostly with those who have moved into some of Alaska’s most remote wilderness. She was a consultant for the “Northern Exposure” TV show.

Anchorage residents cite the same reasons people move anywhere--jobs, family, friends, environment.

“There might be as many reasons as there are people,” says Wallace Olson, professor emeritus at the University of Alaska’s Juneau campus.

But Olson and Kleinfeld also believe that people who move into remote areas of the far north are different.

“One of the most common themes that comes through is a chance to be who you are, exactly who you want to be,” Kleinfeld says.

In the austere life of the far north, people are accepted for what they can do, not for who they are married to or where they came from. Jesmain, who is in her 60s, says she realized late in life that she is a lesbian and that that would have caused her expulsion from the society she left behind. So she moved to Alaska and went back to college, earning a master’s degree.

With no financial security, she has had to learn to do everything for herself, including fixing her car when it breaks down. “I feel I am at the beginning,” she says. “My whole life is ahead of me.”

“Marginal people” who would have been sidelined in a more competitive society find their talents needed in the sparsely settled far north and “are more integrated into society,” Kleinfeld says.

But it doesn’t always work out that way. The economic veneer is very thin, and life is difficult, so many are unable to adapt to the demands of being a pioneer.

Alcoholism, divorce, suicide and homicide are common among those who venture into the wilderness.

“Being cut away from customary social ties and restraints works two ways,” Kleinfeld says. “It can develop the best, and it can also let out the worst. I’ve interviewed people who confessed that they came north and they stayed in order to drink. When they were back in Iowa, there was Auntie Mae right around the corner who was going to keep them under control.”

Others, Kleinfeld says, seek the wilderness for opposite reasons.

“We have a lot of people who go out into the wilderness, not for freedom, but for restraint. To restrain themselves from drinking,” she says.

Most who settle in the far north feel they did not fit in where they came from, Kleinfeld adds. Many seek to recover from shattered personal lives or professional failures. But many others come just because they want a life that will make unusual demands on them.