It is especially at highly fraught, impactful moments which challenge our core values that human autonomy is threatened with reduction to simply that of an intervening variable, frail, sensitive and short-lived, which often makes the mental states manifested during such times intense and long lived. "Intervening Variables" is a series that uses these "mental environments" as a vehicle to examine individuals' role as intervening variables and their transitory, temporary or permanent reactions to this environment.