The Stockholm syndrome It occurs when a person has unconsciously identified with his aggressor / captor. It is a psychological state where the detained victim against their own will develops a relationship of complicity with the person who has kidnapped them..
Most of the victims who have been abducted speak with contempt, hatred or indifference of their captors. In fact, a study of more than 1,200 people in hostage-taking conducted by the FBI showed that 92% of victims did not develop Stockholm Syndrome. However, there is a part of them that shows a different reaction towards their captors..
When a person has been deprived of liberty and held against his will, remaining in conditions of isolation, stimulating and in the exclusive company of his captors, for survival he can develop an affective bond towards them.
It is about the set of psychological mechanisms, which allow the victims to form an affective bond of dependence on their captors, so that they assume the ideas, motivations, beliefs or reasons that the kidnappers use to deprive them of their freedom..
It has also received other names such as "Survival identification syndrome", occurring when the victim perceives that by not having shown aggressiveness or not having killed her, she should be grateful towards him..
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In August 1973, an intention to rob a bank took place in the city of Stockholm. Several criminals armed with machine guns entered the bank.
A robber named Jan-Erik Olsson broke into the bank to commit a robbery. However, the police surrounded the building preventing him from fleeing. It was then that he held several bank employees hostage for several days (around 130 hours).
The hostages were three women and a man, who remained tied with dynamite in a vault until they were rescued. During the kidnapping they had been threatened and came to fear for their lives.
When they were released, in the interviews they showed that they were on the side of the kidnappers, coming to fear the agents who released them. They thought that even the captors were protecting them.
Some of the victims developed emotional ties with the kidnapper during the days that their captivity lasted, some of them even falling in love with him. They also criticized the Government of Sweden for not understanding what had led the thieves to do this.
They sympathized with the captor's ideals and with the objectives that prompted him to do so, one of them later arriving to participate in another kidnapping that the captor organized.
It is probably not the first case, but it is the first historical case that was taken as a model to name this phenomenon.
Stockholm Syndrome was first named by Nils Bejerot (1921-1988), who was a professor of Medicine specializing in addictive research.
In addition, he served as a consultant for Police Psychiatry in Sweden in the bank robbery..
The victims behave in a characteristic and singular way. It is an individual and idiosyncratic reaction that cannot be generalized.
However, his action responds to a defense mechanism on the part of the victim, so that he ends up identifying with his abductor.
The traumatic and stressful situation experienced places the victim in a passive-aggressive position in front of the captor, so that he acts defensively based on the survival instinct.
It must be borne in mind that the fact of losing freedom because someone else imposes it ends up placing the victims in a situation of imbalance and instability.
They are placed in a situation of uncertainty that causes anguish, anxiety and fear in the victim. It subjects them to their dependence and conditions their life in every way.
Since the only possible situations are to rebel or accept it and rebellion can bring unpleasant consequences, the least bad option is the one that can lead the victim to Stockholm Syndrome.
The reactions that are part of this syndrome are considered one of the multiple emotional responses that an individual can present as a result of the vulnerability and defenselessness produced during captivity..
It is an unusual response but it must necessarily be known and understood, since many times it has been misrepresented by calling it and considering it as a disease.
Upon being released, the impossibility of identifying themselves as victims in the face of what happened and the feelings of understanding towards the captor show the dissociation of this phenomenon..
They tend to feel grateful to their captors, for what they experienced during captivity, for not having behaved aggressively with them and end up being nice and pleasant with them..
By not behaving 'cruelly' towards the victims and the isolation to which they have been subjected, it makes them see the world through the captor's eyes and may even share common interests after spending time together. The victim ends up developing an emotional dependence on him.
If during captivity someone has made a gesture of help towards them, they remember it especially because under such circumstances, kind gestures are received with relief and gratitude..
Therefore, it is an unconscious defensive mechanism that the victim has by not being able to respond to the situation of aggression in which he finds himself, thus defending himself from a situation that he cannot 'digest' and to avoid an emotional shock.
Begins to establish a bond with the aggressor and identifies with him, understands him, has sympathy for him and shows him affection and liking.
It should be clarified that it is something that the victim feels and perceives and believes that it is a legitimate and reasonable way of thinking.
It is the people outside her who see irrational the feelings or attitudes she shows to understand and excuse the acts of the captors.
Other authors (such as Meluk) also point out that in some accounts of freed victims, gratitude was shown towards the kidnappers, given that the situation that led them to live allowed them to grow as people..
It allowed them to modify their personality, their value system, although they do not justify or defend the motivations that led the kidnappers to carry out such actions..
It is important to note that the cover-up that the victim can carry out is not due to fear of reprisals, it is something more typical of the affective sphere, of gratitude.
In short, although experts do not agree on the characteristic features, most agree that there are some characteristics that are central:
1. The positive feelings of the victims towards their captors
2. The negative feelings of victims towards authorities or the police
3. The situation should last at least a few days
4. There must be contact between victims and captors
5. The captors show some kindness or do no harm to the victims
In addition, people with Stockholm Syndrome have other symptoms, similar to people diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: sleep problems such as insomnia, concentration difficulties, increased alertness, a feeling of unreality, anhedonia.
Different theorists and researchers have tried to shed light and explain what happens in these situations in which, paradoxically, there is a relationship between a victim and her captor. Affective and emotional clues that occur in a traumatic situation are appealed to.
In medical science, the syndrome is the set of symptoms and signs observed that have an unknown origin, here lies one of the great differences with the disease: the ignorance of what the etiology is..
In this sense, the victim's brain receives an alert and threat signal that begins to spread and travel through the limbic system and the amygdala, regulating defense functions..
The victim maintains the instinct of preservation in the face of deprivation of liberty and is subject to the wishes of an outsider. Therefore, the victim would develop the Stockholm syndrome behavior to survive.
In this way, the possibility of 'seducing' or manipulating your captor can give you the advantage of being dismissed as a potential object of torture, abuse or homicide.
Authors such as Dutton and Painter (1981) argue that the factors of power imbalance and good-bad intermittency is what generates in an abused woman the development of a bond that binds her to the aggressor.
In this sense, the uncertainty associated with repeated and intermittent violence may be a key element in developing the bond, but by no means the only cause.
It is well known that under certain emotional states triggers such as feelings or characteristic behaviors can occur.
Some authors consider that there are people who are more vulnerable to developing it, especially the most insecure and emotionally weaker people.
In this case, as a consequence of the situation experienced, the victim who has been kidnapped, based on the fear experienced, identifies with his captor.
There are different situations where kidnappers carry out actions where they deprive other individuals, the victims, of their freedom and subject them to a period of captivity, for example.
Among the few theories found from a psychopathological perspective, we can highlight the identification elements proposed by Graham's group from the University of Cincinnati (1995), based on an evaluation scale of 49 items.
Around this evaluation, cognitive distortions and coping strategies are suggested. From this, symptoms of this syndrome are detected, for example in young people whose romantic partners commit abuses against them..
All this is framed within a vision where the situation leads the victim to present a “dissociative state” where he denies the violent and negative behavior of the abductor developing an affective bond towards him..
We can argue that the victim develops a cognitive mental model and an anchorage to the context that allows him to overcome that situation, regain his balance and be able to protect himself from the situation he has experienced (his psychological integrity).
In this way, a cognitive modification is produced in the victim that helps him to adapt.
To lay the foundations of an explanatory etiological model, some conditions that are needed for the Stockholm Syndrome to appear are established:
1. The situation that triggers it requires a held hostage (exceptionally it could occur in small kidnapped collectives).
2. A stimulus isolation, where the victim is introduced in a minimal environment where the abductor is the emergency reference.
3. Ideological corpus, understood as values and cognitions covered with a concrete political, religious or social argument that bases the action carried out by the kidnappers.
The more elaborate the kidnapper is, the more likely it is to influence the hostage and lead to Stockholm Syndrome.
4. Let there be contact between kidnapper and victim, so that the latter perceives the motivation of the abductor and the process through which it identifies with him can be opened.
5. It depends on the resources available to the victim, since the syndrome will not develop if you have well-established internal control references or adequate coping or problem-solving strategies.
6. In general, if the violence by the abductor, the appearance of Stockholm Syndrome will be less likely.
7. The victim, on the other hand, must perceive initial expectations that there is risk for his life, which progressively decline as he progresses to a contact that he perceives as safer with the abductor.
Victims of Stockholm Syndrome require psychological and psychiatric assistance to be able to remember and rework the situation they experienced, the consequences that may have arisen from that experience, as well as to work with the different defense mechanisms that the person has put into practice..
You have to take into account how memory works, that it is selective and that its traces change over time..
Sometimes, after being the victim released after a period of time, you may find it difficult to separate from your captor. It may take a long time for the person to recover from the aftermath of the situation..
Many of the professionals who deal with these types of victims diagnose these patients with certain disorders such as Acute Stress Disorder or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when they are evaluated..
The treatment used is the same as that used for the treatment of PTSD: cognitive behavioral therapy, medication and social support.
Obviously, the treatment must be adapted to the characteristics of the victim. If she presents insecurity and low self-esteem, work will be done to improve her personal security, emotional dependence and work on the reaction she presents and the beliefs and ideas that underlie it..
If symptoms of post-traumatic stress or depression are observed in the patient, they should work with said symptoms.
The recovery is good and the duration depends on different factors such as the time that he was held against his will, his coping style, the learning history or the nature of the situation experienced..
Finally, it should be noted that this phenomenon is quite interesting from the psychological point of view, so that the behaviors that underlie this “syndrome” must be studied and investigated in more detail by those who study victimology, in order to be able to give a little more light in everything around it.
In addition, from the social point of view it is also important because of the collateral damage it can bring to society. The fact of simulating forgetfulness, not recognizing the aggressors (voice, clothing, physiognomy ...) can make investigations difficult.
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