One of my instructors at Hostage Negotiation training was the late Dr. Harvey Schlossberg (co author with Lucy Freeman of Psychologist With A Gun, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan (1974)).
He was a former NYPD detective and a pioneer in modern hostage/crisis negotiation. He coined the phrase "Stockholm Syndrome".
One of the many fascinating things he taught me was this: in a crisis situation, when seconds count, jarring a person's mind for a moment may buy you enough time to react and prevent him/her from following through with a jump or a trigger pull.
As an example he told the 1976 story of him and his partner on the roof of a very high apartment building. It was during New York's 4th of July celebration of the Bicentennial of the United States, and there was a suicidal man standing on the ledge of the building holding an infant.
It was so hot the detectives' shoes were sticking in the tar of the roof. They had been talking to him for hours, trying to get him to at least hand them the baby. The baby cried, the man spoke very little. It did not look good.
People below watched, some praying, some jeering. The police had cleared the area below so no one on the ground would get hurt in case the unthinkable happened.
At that moment detectives noticed the man become very relaxed. This was a very bad sign. It meant he had come to his decision to jump, and he was at peace with his choice.
Just as the man began to shift his weight to step off the ledge, Harvey's partner asked the man, "Do you think it will snow today?"
The man paused, and turned toward the detectives with an expression of disbelief on his face. At that instant, one detective grabbed the baby out of the man's hands, and the other grabbed the man, yanking him backward onto the roof. Both lives were saved in what Harvey said was one of the most frightening moments of his life.
Read other answers by Rick Bruno on Quora:
- What is the most dangerous situation you have been in?
- Do you think extreme sports can help you dealing with uncertainty?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2is5YXB
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