STOCKHOLM — It’s a standard time period nowadays, deployed to explain the bond that victims of kidnappings or hostage conditions generally develop with their captors: “Stockholm syndrome.” And it received its title 50 years in the past this week, throughout a failed financial institution theft in Sweden’s capital.
The Stockholm syndrome – initially dubbed “Norrmalmstorg syndrome,” after the sq. the place the financial institution heist befell – has since been utilized in reference to hostage-takings all over the world, together with the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst within the Seventies.
Here’s a have a look at Stockholm syndrome and the way it received its title.
It refers back to the bond that may develop between hostages and their captors in hostage-taking and kidnapping conditions. In some circumstances, hostages could develop sympathies for his or her captors and their trigger – and even flip in opposition to the police. Rather than a prognosis of a dysfunction, consultants describe it as a psychological coping mechanism utilized by some hostages to endure being held captive and abused.
The time period may be traced again to Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who suggested police in a standoff throughout a financial institution theft in the Swedish capital in August 1973. During the standoff, a few of the hostages appeared to aspect with the hostage-takers and in opposition to the police, a phenomenon Bejerot referred to as “Norrmalmstorg syndrome.” Internationally, it grew to become often called Stockholm syndrome.
Bejerot’s daughter, Susanne says her father, who died in 1988, by no means thought the time period would acquire such traction worldwide. “He didn’t understand that it would become such a big thing,” she stated Wednesday.
On Aug. 23, 1973, convicted thief Jan-Erik Olsson, 32, tried to rob a financial institution in downtown Stockholm whereas on furlough from jail. Police responded rapidly, and a standoff ensued.
Olsson, armed with a submachine gun, took 4 financial institution workers hostage and demanded 3 million kronor, a bulletproof vest and a getaway automotive. He additionally demanded that his former jail mate, Clark Olofsson, be launched from jail and dropped at the financial institution. Authorities agreed.
The drama performed out on reside tv in Sweden as police tried to influence Olsson and Olofsson to give up. Even Prime Minister Olof Palme received concerned within the negotiations.
At one level, a hostage, Kristin Enmark, advised Palme over the phone that she was afraid of the police, not of the 2 criminals. She appealed to authorities to satisfy their calls for. Enmark later stated she had developed a bond with Olofsson, whom she noticed because the guarantor of her security.
Two law enforcement officials have been injured with gunshot wounds in the course of the standoff, which ended on Aug. 28 when police, utilizing tear gasoline, stormed the financial institution, arrested Olsson and Olofsson and freed the hostages.
One of essentially the most well-known circumstances occurred the next yr, 1974, when Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of a rich newspaper magnate was kidnapped within the United States by the Symbionese Liberation Army, an unknown armed revolutionary group.
Two months later, questions regarding Hearst’s ties to her captors – and the notion of Stockholm syndrome – arose after Hearst declared her allegiance to the SLA, denounced her household and posed for {a photograph} carrying a weapon in entrance of the SLA flag. She was arrested in 1975 and was sentenced to seven years in jail. President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence in 1979. She was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Stockholm syndrome has additionally been utilized within the context of victims of home violence or childhood sexual abuse who develop connections with their abusers.
Stockholm syndrome isn’t listed as a prognosis by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. Some consultants query whether or not it’s a psychological situation in any respect or only a survival technique – rational decisions made by some individuals as they face excessive hazard.
In the U.S. some legislation enforcement consultants have stated the phenomenon is uncommon and overpublicized by the media. But it nonetheless options often in common tradition, together with books, movies and music, and has entered the English lexicon as an off-the-cuff time period for individuals who forge sudden bonds with others who deal with them badly.
Stockholm syndrome impressed motion pictures just like the 2013 thriller “ Labor Day ” with Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin and Gattlin Griffith and the 2018 movie “ Stockholm ” with Ethan Hawke and Noomi Rapace. The latter recounted the failed 1973 financial institution heist. It’s additionally the title of songs by bands together with One Direction, Muse and Blink-182.
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