There is a huge amount of well-argued detail in your post, RedHaus, almost all of which I agree with. The only bit I would quibble with is the bit I have left un-snipped above. Given the amount of publicity the case has had in both Spain and France, I think it would be very difficult for Esther to have gone unnoticed for this length of time in the way and in the areas that you talk about.
On the other hand, Esther could quite easily have remained incognito all this time if she had had help from a willing third party.
BBM
Hi
@Normal Norm,
The idea from Redhouse that ED could be suffering from Dissociative Fugue explains so many details we've puzzled over. Now you,
@Normal Norm, have added an explanation as to why she may have managed to remain hidden from the public.
Great team work, you two.
@RedHaus provides links to the disappearance of Hannah Upp, who suffers from episodes of Dissociative Disorder. She is currently missing, for the third time.
I agree with
@RedHaus her case is well worth studying as a way to understand a similarly plausible explanation for ED's disappearance.
During Hannah Upp's widely publicized disappearance in New York city, it was verified she was seen multiple times.
In an Apple store, where she checked her email, she was asked if she was the missing teacher. She answered no.
Below, reports of HU being seen whilst missing. Snipped from a lengthy article about her in The New Yorker:
How a Young Woman Lost Her Identity
"Two days after Hannah was seen at the Apple Store, she was spotted at a Starbucks in SoHo. By the time the police arrived, she had walked out the back door. The police recorded sightings of her at five New York Sports Clubs, all of them near midtown, where the detective on the case presumed she had gone to shower. In an article about her disappearance,
the Times wrote, “It was as if the city had simply opened wide and swallowed her whole.”
Initially, I wondered how she could login to her email if she didn't know who she was. I read (in a more credible publication than Daily Mail cited below) some habitual functions can be performed by those in a fugue state; eg. entering email address and password, but I now forget where that was stated. But below, snipped from a Daily Mail article about Hannah App, Dr. David Spiegal explains:
"Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University has devoted his career to understanding dissociative fugue. He explains to DailyMail.com that humans have two primary types of memory: episodic and procedural. 'Episodic memory is you remembering who you had dinner with last night while procedural memory is remembering how to type on your keyboard.' These memories are stored in different parts of the human brain which explains how Upp was capable of logging into her Gmail account at the Apple Store. 'It's not that surprising that she would some procedural memories without the specific recall of who she was and when she last went to that place."
Hannah Upp missing teacher suffers dissociative fugue amnesia in St Thomas during a hurricane | Daily Mail Online
Another interesting description of HU's use of her phone is also in the above article:
"Another parallel can be drawn between Upp's three disappearances. Prior to the 2008 fugue, Upp communicated with nobody on her phone. Her bank statement revealed that she has gone to see a movie during this time but had no recollection of it. Similarly in 2013, Upp stopped using her phone 24 hours before the time she vanished. Later Upp would examine some of the text messages she sent in the few days leading up to that time and Bellus told The New Yorker:
'She could remember sending some of the texts, but then there came a point where she said, 'I don't remember writing any of this.'
BBM Perhaps ED sent her last texts to DC whilst in a fugue state. It could explain why she is vague about her plans. She may even not have really known who she was texting, and was performing an habitual function, from her procedural memory, when, for example, she added her loving phrases.
From the Merck Manual
@RedHaus quoted upthread, we read that those suffering from Dissociative Fugue may create a new identity and travel far from home, all the while appearing and acting normal.
From this theory, ED may now be far from the Pyrenees. Although she'd be identified when crossing a nation's border, since we'd expect all borders to have received alerts, she could be in a EU country where there is scant or even no public knowledge she is a missing person.
If the authorities involved in her disappearances as yet have no verifiable cause for ED's disappearance, I hope they have considered this theory.
If DC is reading this thread, I trust he receives some measure of solace and of hope, if he feels this hypothesis is potentially a valid one.
I have no idea what happened to ED. I'm not a mental-health professional and even if I were, I'd make no attempt to diagnose a patient without being in their presence. But from studying the HU case, IMO, it's possible ED suddenly entered a fugue state some time either after or before her disappearance.
She may have created a new identity, announced it to a new friend, and they are together, in isolation from Covid, anywhere at all in the EU.
