All right, Dr. Kuriansky, thanks so much for joining us.
DR. JUDY KURIANSKY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TEACHER'S COLLEGE: Oh, you're welcome, Fredricka. Indeed being over the years, of counseling couples, there's no question that before a wedding, anyone, no matter who they are, how rich they are, whether there's 600 guests or 10 guests, there's still a lot of anxiety. But to have pulled off such an event as she did, there's deeper issues, then in a sense, it's a cry for help. There's something...
WHITFIELD: Yeah, we're not talking about just butterflies, we're talking about going 1,400 miles away, just days leading up to the wedding. We heard the pastor earlier this morning and a family member, spokesperson who said "clearly, Jennifer had issues that we didn't even know about."
KURIANSKY: Yes, and those issues should have really have been noticed a bit before, because such a dramatic act to add to this would have small clues along the way. This, in a sense, is a cry for help, really. And a very -- there are clues even to what she did. To go to Las Vegas, was that not where she first went?
WHITFIELD: Yeah, and that's some strange irony, given that a lot of people go to Las Vegas to get married.
KURIANSKY: Exactly. So the psychology of this is very deep, the psycho dynamics. They go there to get married or they go there on their honeymoon. Think about also what that means, it's a quickie sort of marriage. It's also one of the -- it's a very gambling place and it's a place where people are, you know, playing fast lives. So, this has some deep psycho dynamics for her in terms of her confusion and her conflicts over getting married, and being even a drama queen, because that is a dramatic kind of statement. She didn't go quietly off to Mexico, she went to New Mexico. There's a reason to go from Las Vegas to Albuquerque, even. All this will come out. But the point is that...
WHITFIELD: A reason beyond, perhaps, just running out of money or...
KURIANSKY: Well, it's like a -- there's something inside her that I would suspect has some kind of an addictive-type of personality that is in a psycho-analytic, psycho-dynamic way. Just even from seeing some brief pictures of her, she's very thin, isn't she?
WHITFIELD: Yes, she appears to be very thin in the photographs. You know, earlier we heard from...
KURIANSKY: Well, you put that together -- when put that together with potentially, I'm just speculating here because I don't know...
WHITFIELD: WE'LL that's a tough one because we are jumping to conclusions because we haven't had a chance to speak with her...
KURIANSKY: Oh, yes, but...
WHITFIELD: Nor anyone else who is willing to speak publicly about what's going on through her mind.
KURIANSKY: Exactly. But if you make a profile, like the FBI -- you just spoke to an FBI agent, psychologists, you know, make profiles of people and try to figure out what's going on. The fears and everything could come from some kind of eating disorder and then that puts together with going to Las Vegas as a -- you know, as a gambling addiction, fears of -- and not to say that she had those things, but those are personality traits of people who do unpredictable things who are very frightened of others really seeing their deep self. Clearly, she couldn't communicate with anyone because people did not know what was going on inside of her. Thank goodness she didn't do something rash that would endanger her life.
WHITFIELD: Now apparently, according to the pastor, the couple did get some premarital counseling. You think there should have been some inkling of a problem that she had with the wedding or the anxiety or stress she was feeling leading up to it and that perhaps it may have been overlooked?
KURIANSKY: Well, there's no question a lot of her behavior was overlooked. Because I would say, seriously, Fredricka, that this kind of reaction...
WHITFIELD: Couldn't she just be really good at masking her feeling, perhaps?
KURIANSKY: Yes, excellent, you're a good psychologist there, because there would have been some clues though, because when you behave in this way it shows that there's a pattern for not being able to face extreme stress. Basically, you run away from stress and you can't cope with it. So in her childhood or along the way -- she's now, you know, she's a woman, not a little girl -- there were some clues to how she would handle stress. So this was a big one. And what she showed is she couldn't handle stress. So everybody did -- wasn't noticing that, which may be, in fact, the way the rest of the people around her cope with it. But, you know, that premarital counseling, there is a system where some couples are required to go to some premarital counseling, from -- in a religious mode and it's very superficial, it's certainly a wonderful thing to do, but unless you're going to be real open, you don't get to the deep issues. You talk about things that are simple; you don't get to the deep fears that would lead to this, because this husband and wife were seen together. It's more a happy kind of "let's make everything work out well" as opposed to "let's dig deep into what these worse than butterflies would be."
WHITFIELD: And clearly, in this case perhaps, or in the case of Jennifer, that perhaps she wasn't thinking about the consequences of when you finally do have to fess up and tell the truth, how much more embarrassing and humiliating this is all turning out to be.
KURIANSKY: Well absolutely, and we've seen in the bridegroom-to- be's behavior. It would be -- he comes from a well-to-do family, from what we know, they have visibility and some prominence. It would be extremely embarrassing and humiliating for him and everybody in the family. I think the lesson here, for everyone, certainly might not be as dramatic as this particular young woman would be, is to really think before the wedding what every single nervous anxiety would be and to share that, to pick someone, a very good friend or a therapist even on your own, not with the husband-to-be, because that becomes something that you can't really be totally honest about. You would frighten him and he might pull out. So those two things would be really essential to be really deep, digging into your fears and feelings about it and to share them with somebody, if it's not your family member, because that's too anxiety-provoking, then someone else.
WHITFIELD: It's both a sad and a happy ending. Glad that she is safe and sound. So sad, I think everyone agrees, that it came to this. Dr. Judy Kuriansky of the Colombia University Teacher's College, thanks so much for joining us on the phone, there.
