Stockholm syndrome

The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological reaction in which the victim of a kidnapping or retention against their will, develops a relationship of complicity and a strong affective bond with their captor. It is mainly because they misunderstand the absence of violence against their person as an act of humanity on the part of the aggressor. According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), about 27% of the victims of 4700 kidnappings and sieges collected in their database 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.

CAUSES

*Both the hostage or the victim and the perpetrator of the crime pursue the goal of leaving the incident unharmed, for this reason they cooperate.

*The hostages try to protect themselves in a context of situations that are uncontrollable, so they try to fulfill the wishes of their captors.

*The delinquents appear as benefactors before the hostages to avoid an escalation of the facts. From here an emotional relationship of the victims can be born out of gratitude to the perpetrators of the crime.

*Based on the history of personal development, you can see the approach of victims with criminals, a reaction developed during childhood. An infant who perceives his parent's anger, suffers for it and tries to "behave well" to avoid the situation. This reflex can be reactivated in an extreme situation.

*The total loss of control that the hostage suffers during a kidnapping is difficult to assimilate. It becomes more bearable for the victim convincing herself that it has some meaning, and can lead her to identify with the motives of the perpetrator.

*This behavior arises due to the psychological pressure that the hostage has to be isolated, abandoned, threatened and perhaps forgotten by the police.

History

On August 23, 1973, Jan Erik Olsson attempted to raid the Stockholm Credit Bank in Sweden. After being cornered, he took four bank employees, three women and one man hostage. Among his demands was to bring Clark Olofsson, a criminal who was serving a sentence at that time. Despite the threats against their lives, even when they were forced to stand with ropes around their necks, the hostages ended up protecting the abductor to avoid being attacked by the Stockholm police. During his captivity, one of the hostages said: "Clark and his companion do not scare me; the police scare me ». And after her release, Kristin Enmark, another of the hostages, declared: "I fully trust him, I would travel all over the world with him." Psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, an 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 mogul William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Two months after her release, she joined her captors, helping them carry out the assault on a bank. This case gave popularity to the term of "Stockholm Syndrome", when trying to be used by his defense during the trial, but it was not accepted by the court and Hearst was convicted of the robbery.

In 1904 the Catalan writer Marian Vayreda (1853-1903) already masterfully described in his novel 'La punyalada' the psychological phenomenon that is currently known as the Stockholm Syndrome.