A RETIRED electrician who allegedly imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her in a windowless cell likely suffered from a "power complex" and other psychiatric disorders, experts say.

Josef Fritzl, 73, appears to have been driven by pronounced narcissism and a need to exercise power over others _ and that may help explain how he got away with the abuse for so long _ said Austrian psychiatrist Reinhard Haller.

"This man must have been insane and must have felt he was far superior to others," Haller said.

Court psychiatrist Sigrun Rossmanith said Fritzl essentially had two personalities: "the underground one, and the one that existed above."

"He was obviously a ruler. If the cellar was taboo for his wife and (other) children, and they heard that over and over, then they didn't dare to check on anything," she said. "If someone has power and forces it on someone else, then his word is like the word of God."

Police said Fritzl confessed yesterday to holding captive his daughter _ now 42 _ sexually abusing her, fathering her children and tossing into a furnace the body of one child who died in infancy. He was to appear in court today.

Investigators say they believe his wife, with whom he had seven other children, was unaware that the daughter she believed ran away to join a religious cult in 1984 was living below her in the basement cell that Fritzl built beneath their apartment in Amstetten, 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of Vienna.

Authorities said the daughter, the children and Fritzl's wife were all getting counseling at an undisclosed location.

"He is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken," Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said today.

Mayer said Fritzl also was under psychiatric care. Asked whether he showed any remorse, Mayer said only: "I cannot say at this point."