When the bank robber and  his accomplice, who was released from prison and allowed to join him, began their six-day hostage taking, the four adult prisoners faced the same environment as do abused children; that is, their lives were absolutely dependent upon the good will of their captors, who had unlimited power over their lives. Their captors were far more important to them than were the police, who were a threat to all of them, captives and criminals alike. Fairbairn’s model assumes that the captives used the splitting defense to abolish the most terrorizing aspects of their captivity, in order to keep from breaking down into an absolute state of anxiety. This initial dissociation of the most terrifying events they experienced with their captors prevented the four victims from facing the disintegration of their ego structures. Once freed, the most frightening and toxic actual events they experienced are assumed to be still held out of awareness, as revisiting those events are likely to bring up overwhelming emotions.  Fairbairn noted that one of the primary reasons for keeping horrifying memories in the unconscious was because of the emotional disruption caused when they are re-experienced.There is little doubt in my mind, in conjunction with another factor to be mentioned later, that the deepest source of resistance is fear of the release of bad objects from the unconscious: for when such bad objects are released, the world around the patient becomes peopled with devils which are too terrifying to face (Fairbairn, 1952, p.69-70).This quote graphically describes the results of suddenly remembering those memories of interpersonal events between the captives and captors that were saturated with fear, dread and hopelessness. There is no reason now, given the fact that the captivity is long over, for the four victims to remember the horrifying details.