25 September
Today's term from psychology is Stockholm Syndrome.
The Stockholm Syndrome, or Capture-Bonding is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy, and have positive feelings toward, their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with them. The FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly 8% of victims show evidence of Stockholm Syndrome. In recent years the Stockholm Syndrome has been extended to victims of domestic violence, cult members, prisoners of war, procured prostitutes, and abused children.
The name of the syndrome is derived from a botched bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in August of 1973 when four employees of a bank were held hostage in the vault for six days.
The most infamous example of Stockholm syndrome was the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974, when Hearst helped her kidnappers rob a California bank. But it was during the hostage crisis in Iran (1979–81) that the Stockholm syndrome became a common term in English
Psychologists who have studied the syndrome believe that the bond is initially created when a captor threatens a captive’s life, deliberates, and then chooses not to kill the captive. The captive’s relief at the removal of the death threat becomes feelings of gratitude toward the captor for giving him back his life. As the Stockholm bank robbery incident proves, it takes only a few days for this bond to cement, proving that, early on, the victim’s desire to survive outweighs the hatred of the person who created the situation.
Our instinct to survive is at the heart of the Stockholm syndrome. Victims live in enforced dependence, and interpret rare or small acts of kindness as good treatment. They often become sensitive to the needs and demands of their captors, making a psychological link between the captors’ happiness and their own. The syndrome is marked not only by a positive bond between captive and captor, but by a negative attitude of the captive toward authorities who threaten the captor-captive relationship. The negative attitude is especially powerful when the hostage is of no use to the captors except as leverage against a third party, as has often been the case with political hostages.