Stockholm Syndrome…and Patty Hearst
1973 – Stockholm Syndrome. 1974 – Patty Hearst’s abduction. 1981, 1993, 1997 -Defining Trauma Bonding.
These names have often been batted around almost interchangeably. And while they are related, there are differences that became clearer over the decades.
The term Stockholm Syndrome was coined in 1973 to describe the seeming bond that developed between hostages and their captor following a botched bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The story is much more complicated and beyond the scope of what I want to write here.
But simply, it appeared at the time like the hostages were siding with their captor. In reality, they were traumatized by both their dangerous situation, not knowing if or when their captor might kill them, and the government’s clumsy negotiations that they felt almost got them killed.
Traumatized, enraged by the government putting them at risk, and responding to the kindness their captors started to show them, the hostages had to react in whatever way made sense to them to survive and live, even if it seemed strange to outsiders.
The bond even started to work in reverse. Their captor spoke later that while he initially would have killed them if he needed to, the more they got to know each other during the 6-day hostage situation, the harder it was for him to do that.
It should be noted that Stockholm Syndrome was not, and is not, a recognized psychological condition. From Wikipedia, here is the origin of the term:
“Nils Bejerot, a Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist, invented the term after the Stockholm police asked him for assistance with analyzing the victims’ reactions to the robbery and their status as hostages. Bejerot never met, spoke to, or corresponded with the hostages during or after the incident, yet diagnosed them with a condition he invented. Bejerot, speaking on a news cast after the captives’ release, described the hostages’ reactions as a result of being brainwashed by their captors.3(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#cite_note-Adorjan_2012-3) He called it Norrmalmstorgssyndromet (after Norrmalmstorg Square, where the attempted robbery took place), meaning “The Norrmalm Square syndrome”; it later became known outside Sweden as Stockholm syndrome.5(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#cite_note-5)“
The following year, that same term was applied to the 19-year-old heiress, Patty Hearst, who was abducted by a political extremist group and later seemed to side with them. That story, too, has many different complexities that I will not get into here.
Suffice it to say that both situations, which involved captives who seemed to switch allegiances and side with their captors, fueled even more research into the areas of captives, brainwashing, and domestic abuse, which had started in the 1950s with the Korean War POWs.
It was during the 1980s and 1990s that researchers, including Donald Dutton, PhD, Susan Painter, PhD, and Patrick Carnes, PhD, in their study of violence and victims, situations of power imbalances, intermittent reinforcement, and domestic violence, brought more clarity to these situations, along with a new term: Trauma Bonding.
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