Stockholm syndrome

In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is an apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness. The FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly 27% of victims show evidence of Stockholm Syndrome. The Syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm, in which bank employees were held hostage from August 23 to August 28, 1973. In this case, victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed from their six-day ordeal. The term "Stockholm Syndrome" was coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery, and referred to the Syndrome in a news broadcast. It was originally defined by psychiatrist Frank Ochberg to aid the management of hostage situations.

Evolutionary explanations

The Syndrome has also been explained in evolutionary terms by a phenomenon sometimes referred to as "Capture-bonding".

In the view of evolutionary psychology "the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors."

One of the "adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors," particularly our female ancestors, was being abducted by another band. Life in the human "environment of evolutionary adaptiveness" (EEA) is thought by researchers such as Azar Gat to be similar to that of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies. "Deadly violence is also regularly activated in competition over women. . . . Abduction of women, rape, . . . are widespread direct causes of reproductive conflict . . ."  I.e., being captured  and having their dependent children killed might have been fairly common. Women who resisted capture in such situations risked being killed.

Azar Gat argues that war and abductions (capture) were typical of human pre-history.When selection is intense and persistent, adaptive traits (such as capture-bonding) become universal to the population or species. (See Selection.)

Partial activation of the capture-bonding psychological trait may lie behind battered-wife syndrome, military basic training, fraternity hazing, and sex practices such as sadism/masochism or bondage/discipline.

 Notable examples

• Mary McElroy was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1933 and released by her captors unharmed. When three of her four captors were apprehended and given maximum sentences (including one death sentence), McElroy defended them. According to reports, she suffered from feelings of guilt concerning the case which compromised her mental and physical health. She took her own life in 1940.

• Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. After two months in captivity, she actively took part in a robbery they were orchestrating. Her unsuccessful legal defense claimed that she suffered from Stockholm Syndrome and was coerced into aiding the SLA. She was convicted and imprisoned for her actions in the robbery, though her sentence was commuted in February 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, and she received a Presidential pardon from President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001 (among his last official acts before leaving office).

• Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted at age 11 by Phillip and Nancy Garrido at a school bus stop in 1991 and was imprisoned at their residence for 18 years. In August 2009, Phillip brought Nancy and Jaycee (who was living under the alias "Allissa") along with two girls that Garrido fathered with Jaycee during her captivity, to be questioned by Garrido's parole officer after he noticed some suspicious behavior. She did not reveal her identity when she was questioned alone. Instead, she told investigators she was a battered wife from Minnesota who was hiding from her abusive husband, and described Garrido as a "great person" who was "good with her kids". Dugard has since admitted to forming an emotional bond with Garrido with great guilt and regret.