The 18 year old has reportedly told police that her captor made her call him "master" for the first year, though he was "kind" to her.
After 8 years in captivity, Natascha Kampusch was found wandering in a suburb of the Austrian capital on Wednesday.
She was identified by her family who had not seen her since she vanished on her way to school on March 2, 1998.
DNA tests on Friday confirmed Ms Kampusch’s claim that she was the schoolgirl who disappeared 8 years ago.
Kidnapper commits suicide
Her kidnapper, 44 year old Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide after her escape by jumping under a train in Vienna.
The communications technician is believed to have kept her in a concealed, sound proof chamber under his garage.
Kampusch said the day she was kidnapped, he "dragged me into his car and said 'Keep still, lie down or something is going to happen to you'."
She told police she considered Priklopil to be a "criminal" but also said: "Wolfgang was always kind to me".
Mother never gave up hope
Ms Kampusch's sister has told Austrian TV her mother almost had a breakdown when police told her of the discovery of her daughter.
She says her mother always held on to the hope Natascha would come back one day.
Her parents, Brigitta Sirny and Ludwig Koch, recognised their daughter partly because of a distinctive scar.
Her mother has spoken of her joy at being reunited with her.
“We fell into each other’s arms… I recognized her from her way of being, her face… I always thought she was alive,” her mother said.
Her mother and a female police officer who first questioned her after her escape said she was in a good condition mentally.
Sabine Freudenberger, the police officer, told Austrian television she was astonished by her "intelligence, her vocabulary".
Priklopil had "educated her" and given her many books.
She had listened to the radio and watched television.
Her father has told Austrian media that she had asked him: "Daddy do you still have my toy car". Koch said in the newspaper interview that he had this toy as well as "all her dolls".
Stockholm syndrome
Psychologists cited by a local radio station said Kampusch probably suffered from "Stockholm syndrome."
It is a condition in which captives develop a sympathetic relationship with their captors over time, as a coping mechanism.
Psychiatrists cited described Priklopil as a sadistic perfectionist, who tried to present a blemish-free facade to the outside world.
Criminal psychologist Thomas Mueller said Priklopil was "a highly sadistic perpetrator who did all he could to have a slave".
"In principle, she was locked up day and night," police officer Gerhard Lang said, adding however that she was "let out for different chores in the house".
The police inquiry is looking into whether Kampusch was subjected to sexual abuse during her captivity.
Held in a “dungeon”
Ms Kampusch has told police that she was not allowed by her captor to leave the compound in the village of Strasshof where she was held captive.
She was vacuuming the car on Wednesday when Priklopil moved "off to the side for a few minutes in order to talk undisturbed because of the noise from the vacuum cleaner".
"Natascha used this headstart of a few metres to leave the house and run away a few hundred metres so that the suspect couldn't follow her," police said.
They said the girl was held captive in a small chamber likened to a dungeon about 2.5 metres square under the garage of Priklopil's cottage-like house.
"Stairs go down and there's a vault that you can enter ... and that way you can enter by crawling into the dungeon, which is set up in a rather normal way" with "washing facilities, a toilet, a bed, cupboards, etc", police said.
The house, with a garden, is slightly hidden by a hedge and is guarded by video and other high-tech surveillance equipment .
2nd kidnapper
Austrian media quoting a witness to the abduction, as saying a second person could have been involved.
But police have refused to comment.