Rescue Dawn

Te: Dieter cares especially about functionality and specifically asks for his equipment to be customised in order to improve the efficiency. He’s resourceful when it comes to creating tools and originally worked as a toolmaker with the specific intent to learn something “useful.” He refuses the idea of sitting idle in the Laotian camp, and insists on finding an immediate way to take action to escape. He can be quite confrontational, and unusually so toward his Laotian captors. The other prisoners are merely submissive, but Dieter doest hesitate to yell at them or even tell them what to do. He asserts leadership among the prisoners quickly and doesn’t have qualms against using manipulative tactics to convince Jean to listen to him. When planning his escape, he not only plans, but sets deadlines.

Ni: He plans ahead for everything even though he prefers to act now (that’s his tertiary Se coming through). He rarely lacks confidence that his plans will work, and if someone points out a problem with them, he simply revises the plan. He figured out early on in life that he wanted to be a pilot, and was initially inspired by what would have been a traumatic experience for most children (having a plane fly at him, shooting). Dengler is good at story telling, though he does it in an Se, in-the-moment sort of way (despite the fact that the stories happened in the past). In the Laotian prison, he’s observant of patterns in guard behaviour, which  is what allows him to figure out when to escape.

Se: Dieter is an action oriented person, who at times, can be exceptionally impatient because he wants everything to to work out now. He’s brilliant at improvising when he has to, but when his elaborate plans are interrupted, he gets quite upset. He’s more sensual than he appears, longs for the physical company of women in general despite the fact that he’s engaged back home. His conversation is rather visually descriptive, and he pays attention to (and uses to his advantage) his physical environment. He’s a risk taker –okay? they’ve given us worms for dinner? I’ll be the first to try it.

Fi: Dengler doesn’t think much about his moral code, but he has powerful endurance. He knows what he will and won’t do and holds to his promises. He has a difficult time apologising for his mistakes. In general, isn’t bothered by going against the majority because he knows what he wants and to him, that’s more important than being on others’ good sides. Under threat, he’s incredibly calm. When first captured, his behaviour towards his captors is casually defiant, which only serves to make them angrier.

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Sorry, but there aren’t many decent  pictures of the real life Dieter Dengler, so I’m using images from the American film based on Dengler’s book, Rescue Dawn.