Stockholm syndrome

Former Credit Bank building in Stockholm, Sweden. Site where the Norrmalmstorg Robot occurred in 1973 (Photograph 2005).

The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological reaction in which the victim of a kidnapping or retention against their will develops a complicity relationship and a strong emotional bond with their kidnapper or retainer. This is mainly because they misinterpret the absence of violence as an act of humanity on the part of the aggressor. According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), around 27% of the victims of 4,700 kidnappings and sieges collected in its database they experience this reaction. Victims who experience the syndrome regularly show two types of reaction to the situation: on the one hand, they have positive feelings towards their kidnappers; while, on the other hand, they show fear and anger against the police authorities or those who are against their captors. At the same time, the kidnappers themselves show positive feelings towards the hostages. The name is due to the fact that this happened in the city of Stockholm, Sweden.

It should be noted that Stockholm syndrome is not recognized by the two most important psychiatric manuals: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Diseases. So this syndrome would fall into the category of post-traumatic effect.

Causes

In the literature on the subject, several possible causes for such behavior are mentioned:

• Both the hostage or the victim and the perpetrator of the crime pursue the goal of leaving the incident unharmed, thus cooperating.
• The hostages try to protect themselves in a context of situations that are uncontrollable, so they try to fulfill the wishes of their captors.
• Offenders are presented as benefactors to the hostages to avoid an escalation of the facts. An emotional relationship of the victims can be born from here for thanks to the perpetrators of the crime.
• Based on personal development history, the approach of victims to offenders can be seen as a reaction developed during childhood. An infant who perceives the anger of his or her parent suffers for this and tries to “behave well”, to avoid the situation. This reflection can be re-activated in an extreme situation.
• The total loss of control suffered by the hostage during a kidnapping is difficult to assimilate. It becomes more bearable for the victim by convincing herself that it makes any sense, and can lead her to identify with the motives of the perpetrator of the crime.
• This behavior arises due to the psychological pressure that the hostage has when it becomes isolated, abandoned, threatened and perhaps forgotten by the police.

History

Patricia Hearst during the robbery by the Syrian Liberation Army (SLA) in the Hibernia Bank.

On August 23, 1973, Jan-Erik "Janne" Olsson attempted to hold up a Credit Bank in Stockholm, Sweden. After being cornered, he took four bank employees hostage, three women and one man. Among his demands was that they bring him Clark Olofsson, a criminal who was serving a sentence at the time. Despite threats on their lives, even when forced to stand with ropes around their necks, the hostages ended up protecting their captor to prevent them from being attacked by the Stockholm Police. During their captivity, one of the hostages stated: “I am not scared of Clark or his partner; I'm scared of the police." And after his release, Kristin Enmark, another of the hostages, declared: "I fully trust him, I would travel the world with him." Psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, adviser to the Swedish police during the assault, coined the term " Stockholm Syndrome" to refer to the hostages' reaction to their captivity.

A year later, in February 1974, Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of business magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Two months after her release, she joined her kidnappers, helping them carry out a bank robbery. This case gave popularity to the term "Stockholm syndrome", when trying to be used for her defense during the trial, but it was not accepted by the court and Hearst was convicted of the robbery.

Situations

According to psychiatrist and professor of social medicine Nils Bejerot, adviser to the Swedish Police during the kidnapping, Stockholm syndrome is more common in people who have been victims of some kind of abuse, such is the case of:

• Rehenes
• Victims of domestic violence
• Members of a sect
• Victims of repeated sexual abuse
• Prisoners of war
• Prisoners of concentration camps
• Victims of partner violence

Other uses

Outside of the criminal context, one way the syndrome can occur is in basic military training—which is a mildly traumatic experience—with the goal of creating bonds in military units, who will remain loyal to each other, even in life-threatening situations.

Similarly, the effects of the "hazing" system on introduction to groups (such as fraternities, secret or not, gangs and sororities) have been compared to this syndrome. In cultural anthropology a similar common symptom is bride capture.

Loyalty to a more powerful abuser—despite the danger this loyalty puts the abuse victim in—is common among victims of domestic abuse, the abused, and the child molester (dependent infants). In many cases victims choose to remain loyal to their abuser, and choose not to leave him, even when offered a safe place in adoptive or foster homes. This syndrome was described by psychoanalysts from the school of object relations theory (see Ronald Fairbairn) as the phenomenon of psychological identification with the powerful abuser.

Domestic Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm syndrome domestic (SIES-d), also called “battered woman or man syndrome”, occurs in people mistreated by their sentimental partners with whom they maintain an affective bond.

The SIES-d states that the person who is the victim of abuse by their partner comes to adapt to the aversive situation that occurs, increasing the ability to face adverse stimuli and the ability to minimize pain. These people usually present cognitive distortions such as dissociation, denial or minimization. This allows them to withstand situations and incidents of violence that is exerted on them.

Origin of the name

Its name is linked to Stockholm syndrome, which was defined from a specific incident in which, after a bank robbery in Stockholm, «a cashier falls in love with one of the robbers. Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933) called this defense mechanism identification with the aggressor, a bond that is created when a person finds himself powerless against his aggressor in a situation where his life is in danger." survival that is created in the woman victim of abuse to live with the repeated violence that her partner exerts on her. This process that occurs in the mind of the victim was called this way. For this reason, the mental process suffered by a woman victim of abuse by her sentimental partner has also been called domestic Stockholm syndrome.

It was formulated by Leonare Walker in the United States in 1979, who used it to describe the psychological sequelae that occurred in women victims of gender violence. The origin of the formulation of this syndrome would be based on the theory of learned helplessness.

This theory is based on experiments carried out by Martin Seligman, which even had repercussions for the analysis of depression in human beings. The author started from the study of dogs that were subjected to intermittent electric shocks. These shocks occurred discontinuously and randomly when the dogs approached to look for their food; This procedure produced a behavior in them, which made them corner themselves in a corner of their cage, which we will call the «safe corner». They stayed in that safe corner until they decided to go back to the search for food and sometimes they received shocks and sometimes they didn't. As a result of this process, feelings of uncertainty were created at the same time that the dogs became more dependent on the experimenter himself. Based on these results, a parallelism was established between the learned behavior developed by these dogs and the behavior of the battered woman. There have also been some critical positions that defended that the uncertainty associated with repeated and intermittent violence is a key process in the development of the bond, but that nevertheless it can by no means be the only one.

Other Conceptions "Educational Level"

This syndrome was deeply rooted during the First and Second World Wars, where nurses felt strongly related to their returned patients and after post-treatment, it was classic at the time for ex-combatants to marry their nurses and therapeutic companions. At the Educational level, we work for teachers who tend to over relate and identify with the problems and social circles in the student.

Location as Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

The syndrome in question has not been characterized as a diagnostic entity in the latest 1995 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), but it is recognized as a psychopathological phenomenon traumatic platform: "In which the victim is induced to a mental model, cognitive in nature and contextually anchored" (Montero Gómez, 1999). Montero has introduced this syndrome into the classification of "Unspecified Dissociative Disorders" of the DSM IV manual.

The author has described the SIES-d as «an interpersonal bond of protection, built between the woman and her aggressor, within the framework of a traumatic environment and stimulus restriction, through the induction in the woman of a model mental (intersituational network of mental schemata and beliefs). The woman subjected to abuse would develop the Stockholm Syndrome to protect her own psychological integrity and recover her physiological and behavioral homeostasis ». (Montero Gomez, 1999).

According to Dutton and Painter (1981), Stockholm syndromesyndrome understood in the home environment arises in a certain way. These authors have described a scenario in which two factors, the imbalance of power, on the one hand, and the suspension of good-bad treatment, on the other, generate in the battered woman the development of a traumatic bond that unites her with the aggressor through behaviors of docility, where the abuse creates and maintains a dynamic of dependency in the couple due to its asymmetric effect on the balance of punishments. This feeling of dependence leads to identification with the aggressor, to the justification of her actions and finally to "taking her side" of her.

Although the adjective «domestic» is sometimes understood as the space where the family lives, in Stockholm syndrome domestic, it refers to many more areas than the home itself where they can live together the couple. Abusive behavior is often carried out at home, but it is also outside of it. For this reason, it is important not to confuse the term "domestic" when we talk about this syndrome: (SIES-d).

It is noteworthy that victims prior to the traumatic event often have cognitive distortions such as dissociation, denial or minimization.

It can occur in both men and women.

Phases

The syndrome is determined by a series of changes and adaptations that occur through a process made up of four psychological phases in the victim of abuse by their partner.

These four phases are:

Trigger : the first abuse breaks the feeling of security and trust that the victim has in their partner. Disorientation, loss of referents and even depression then occur.

Reorientation: the victim looks for new references, but their isolation is increasing. Normally at this point she is practically alone with the exclusive support of the family. The victim has nothing to compare or with whom to be isolated.

Coping: the victim perceives reality in a distorted way, blames himself for the situation and enters a state of helplessness and passive resistance. The abuser makes her feel guilty. She enters a coping phase where she assumes her partner's mental model, trying to deal with the traumatic situation.

Adaptation: the victim projects the blame towards others, towards the outside (external locus of control) and the domestic Stockholm syndrome is consolidated through a process of identification with the aggressor.

On this issue, Vallejo Rubinstein points out that «the lack of knowledge about these processes and their sequelae often means that women who have been attacked are treated and portrayed as masochists, crazy or hysterical who like to be hit. As Rojas Marcos explains, when it comes to analyzing the representations made of victims and aggressors (especially in the media that rarely take these processes into account or narrate), the woman comes off much worse off than the aggressor, who usually appears as a normal gentleman, who has never been violent according to the neighbors and witnesses, not the monster one expects, versus a distraught and out of control woman who provokes him with her behaviors (1995, p.34). This pathological conception of the abused woman is just one of the many images or stereotypes that circulate in society regarding victims and aggressors."