What is Stockholm syndrome and does it really exist? Psychologist’s breakdown

practicing psychologist, member of the Association of Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy, expert of “Psychedemia”

“The term “Stockholm syndrome” describes the sympathy that arises in the victim for the aggressor. It can also be mutual. More often we are talking about hostage situations. However, the same term is also used in the topic of domestic violence. But does this syndrome really exist?”

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History of the origin of the term

In the 1970s, prisoners in Sweden could briefly leave prison if the crime was non-violent. In August 1973, Jan Erik Ulsson took advantage of this opportunity, but he had no intention of going back.

On August 23, Ulsson broke into a bank in Stockholm and shot through the ceiling, shouting: “The party’s just starting!”.

Ulsson released almost all of the visitors, leaving only four employees as hostages. Elisabeth Oldgren, Kristin Enmark and Birgitte Lundblad were the first three. The fourth was Sven Safström, who tried to hide but was discovered.

The perpetrator made demands that included material goods and freedom for his cellmate Clark Olofsson. The police satisfied only the latter – Clark was taken to the bank building.

The perpetrators and the hostages stayed in the bank for six days. The former provided their victims with food and allowed them to call their families and play cards with them. One could say that they generally took care of them. There were negotiations between the captors and the police, but they did not lead to a constructive solution.

The media broadcast all the actions of the police literally live. Those inside the bank also had the opportunity to follow the news. The police were preparing to storm the building. Most of their scenarios did not imply that the hostages would be rescued. It was more important to neutralize the criminals. This was also reported on the news, so the hostages knew everything. Of course, this information did not make them happy at all.

Twelve hours after the bank was seized, Christine Enmark asked Superintendent Thorander for permission to leave the bank with the “boys”. He refused. Christine also contacted the Prime Minister of the country, who also refused to let them leave with the invaders.

On the sixth day, the police began pumping gas into the vault where the hostages and criminals were. In this way they managed to force the people to leave the bank premises. They spent half an hour in the gas-filled vault. That was long enough to die. But due to an error in the design of the gas supply system, the criminals and hostages received a smaller dose of the poisonous substance, which saved their lives.

After everyone was treated, the criminals went to jail. Ulsson was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released early in 1980. Olofsson was originally also convicted of complicity in the hostage-taking, but later got the conviction overturned.

At the trial, the hostages did not testify against them. On the contrary, they helped raise money for lawyers and visited the perpetrators in prison.

The behavior of the hostages caused bewilderment to all who followed the case. Explanations came from the forensic psychiatrist Nils Beyerut, who advised the police. He suggested the term “Norrmalmstorg syndrome.” Based on the name of the square where the bank stood. The term didn’t catch on, but its modification – “Stockholm syndrome” – became widely known.

Although Beyerut never worked with Christine Enmark, he called her the first victim of the syndrome. He identified the victim’s positive attitude toward the perpetrator, sympathy for the perpetrator’s beliefs and behavior, and negative attitudes toward police and other authority figures as its main features.

The term quickly took root in the popular consciousness, but from the point of view of psychiatry and evidence-based psychology, the existence of the syndrome has not yet been confirmed. It is not included in any classification of diseases. Popular articles are written about it, movies are made about the love of criminals and their victims, easily explaining it with this syndrome.

The causes of this phenomenon

Once again I will say that the term “Stockholm syndrome” is not scientific. It is not used in psychiatry or evidence-based psychology. But panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder are real diagnoses given to people who have had similar experiences.

Christine Enmark later recounted that she was afraid of police action. She did not want to die in the storming, so she tried to at least somehow manage the situation and coordinate the chaotic actions of the authorities by communicating with them. She explained that she was forced to cooperate with one of the invaders.

Christine said that she had no love for the criminals, but merely observed the actions of the police, who were not concerned about the lives of the hostages. She also saw that the hostage-takers were perplexed by such decisions, as they felt that the hostages should be leverage against the police precisely because of the value of their lives.

Psychotherapist Allan Wade later contacted Enmark and provided a different perspective on the concept of “Stockholm syndrome.” In his view, Christine fought back and protected the other hostages by joining forces with them, trying to coordinate the authorities and manage the situation to the best of her ability. It was a matter of wanting to survive, not sympathy for the perpetrators.

Other examples of Stockholm syndrome

In other cases, when hostages were attributed to Stockholm syndrome (and most often it was done by the media, not by professional psychiatrists), no one analyzed the motives of their behavior, and sometimes they were ignored altogether.

A prime example is the story of Patty Hearst. She was kidnapped for ransom by terrorists, held in horrible conditions and abused for two months. After the ransom, Hearst declared that she did not need to be rescued and joined the group. When the criminals were caught, the former hostage was already considered an accomplice. She repeatedly said that she joined the gang out of fear. The girl claimed that she was sure that the criminals would not leave her alive after receiving the ransom. She feared punishment for any show of disloyalty.

The court decided that Hearst was cheating and sentenced her to a seven-year term. It was only through public pressure and the intervention of the President of the United States that it was reduced. Nevertheless, Patti spent almost two years behind bars.

It is noteworthy that a psychiatric examination confirmed the girl’s post-traumatic disorder caused by the experience of intense fear, helplessness and terror. However, no Stockholm syndrome was diagnosed. The story of Patty Hearst can be seen in the 1988 movie of the same name.

In addition to movies based on real events, the movie industry offers a huge number of fictional stories. These can be kidnapping stories (e.g. “The Carrier” with Jason Statham) or captivity stories (“Beauty and the Beast”).

In these stories, the victims seem to voluntarily stay close to the perpetrator and with understanding, good behavior they manage to correct the aggressor. In reality, however, there is hardly a single person who succeeded in doing so. And by romanticizing the actions of the criminal, finding excuses for him, showing how he changes supposedly because of his attachment to the victim, the media promote unhealthy stereotypes of behavior.

Among real stories in Russia is the case of Alexander Komin, who together with an accomplice kept two men and four women in a bunker for two years. Periodically they killed one of the captives.

One of the victims said that the rapist sometimes organized festivities and forced his victims to participate in them. And one day, while dancing with her torturer, who was very stubby, she literally lifted him off the floor… She had the strength and opportunity to harm him and escape, but she did not do so. She just lowered him back down to the floor.

This fact seems to suggest sympathy for the maniac and a refusal to try to escape from the traumatic situation. If we dig deeper, we learn that the prisoners had tried to escape once before, but failed. For that, the maniac branded their faces “Slave.” He also threatened one of the prisoners to kill her young daughter if she escaped. Can there be any sympathy in this case?

I would like to add that at the first real opportunity to get to the law enforcers, one of the prisoners did so. The maniac was arrested.

Stockholm syndrome in domestic violence

Stockholm syndrome is also often talked about in domestic violence cases. Sometimes it is referred to the research of Anna Freud, who did describe the mechanism of identification with the aggressor as one of defense. But it is important to realize one point here. Anna studied children’s defense mechanisms, that is, cases when the aggressor plays a major role in the formation of the child’s personality. Moreover, his life depends on him. Children have to side with the aggressor to save her.

Remember the character Nebula in “Guardians of the Galaxy”? This is the daughter of the most terrible villain Thanos, who in the first movie was his loyal ally. We later learn that when Nebula was a toddler, he killed her birth family. He abused his adopted daughter by taking her apart and “enhancing” her (swapping living human parts for cybernetic ones) if she lost in battle to her sister.

Could the child have kept her psyche intact and survived if she hadn’t accepted for herself that her father was doing the right thing? I doubt it. Did she decide to kill such a “loving” father when she realized what was happening to her? Of course she did.

Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy.

But it’s hard to imagine a grown woman who feels sympathy for her tormentor genuinely enjoying physical or mental abuse. Why, then, does leaving an abuser prove so difficult? Why do victims refuse help when it is offered?

Part of the answer to these questions has already been given by Patty Hearst. It’s all about fear. Not just physical pain or death. It could be fear of loneliness, financial insecurity. A woman can be afraid of leaving her children fatherless.

But fear isn’t the only mechanism that can keep a victim close to an aggressor. Hope for the aggressor partner to change, shame, guilt, a sense of duty, apathy, indifference to oneself, and even perfectionism, in which the victim feels that she has not tried hard enough to fix the relationship in the family. This is by no means a complete list of what influences the decision to leave the abuser.

When victims of domestic violence are attributed to Stockholm Syndrome, however, it often ends up blaming themselves for being abused. Victimblaming (this is when a victim of abuse is blamed for what happened to them – ed.) is built on a belief that Melvin Lerner called the just world hypothesis. It is a cognitive distortion in which a person believes that the world is organized justly and people always get what they deserve. Remember the expressions “What you sow is what you reap” and “What goes around comes around”? These are just vivid examples of belief in justice.

By the same logic, if the victim doesn’t leave, it means she enjoys the relationship. It’s what she deserves. And if I think this behavior is horrible, then it won’t happen to me. Belief in a just world seems to protect against helplessness and fear, but this is only an illusion. Everyone can face violence, no matter what their way of thinking and behavioral style.

Now the idea of Stockholm syndrome is criticized for its weak theoretical basis and lack of quality research, its attempt to blame the victims of violence, and its use to discredit hostages in situations where they criticize the actions of the authorities or feel solidarity with the demands of the captors, trying to act as they see fit.

Perhaps, if more research and qualitative assessment of the situations are conducted, Stockholm syndrome will have a right to exist in psychiatry and psychology. In my opinion, no new theories are needed to describe what happens to victims. They are all already described as defenses and adaptive mechanisms of the psyche.