23rd of August 1973, Stockholm: Janne Olsson entered Kreditbanken, fired his gun and took a number of people as hostages. He asked for money and a car to help him escape. Chaos reigned in the bank, Olsson released most of the hostages but kept three women who he tied up and used as a cover to escape police gunfire, who he shot when they tried to enter the bank. Stockholm syndrome (hostage captor effect) is created between hostages and their captor and requires a positive bond to be created.

The article will cover the following points:

• Stockholm Syndrome: What is it?
• The Original Event
• Explaining the Effect
• 5 Phases of a Hostage Incident
• Common Factors
• Gendering Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome: What is it?

Stockholm syndrome is the term referring to a positive bond and emotional identification which hostages may potentially form with their captors. Interestingly, they do not only form these kinds of positive associations with the captors, but also feelings of distrust and anger towards the authorities. The syndrome concerns mainly women and has been coined both as a mental, psychological syndrome afflicting female captives, but also as a constructed concept indicating a crisis of the state’s status as a legitimate protector. This is really interesting to think about, as Stockholm syndrome explains the creation of a positive bond – some refer to this bond as friendship as well – between people in a crisis situation and the perpetrators of the crime act. This suggests how people can be easily turned against the state, and how this alteration in their cognition could affect their lives in the long run. Moreover, gender is an important factor: females are the ones usually portrayed as the hostages and men as the captors, creating this notion of ‘’masculinity as a protective state’’ that harms feminist beliefs. However, let’s not make quick conclusions yet….

The Original Event

It’s the 23rd of August 1973, in Stockholm, where Janne Olsson entered Kreditbanken (a bank), fired his gun and took a number of people as hostages. He asked for money and a car to help him escape and demanded that a criminal he knew, Clark Olofsson, be released from prison and brought to the bank immediately. Chaos reigned in the bank, Olsson released most of the hostages but kept three women who he tied up and used as a cover to escape police gunfire, who he shot when they tried to enter the bank. When Olsson threatened to kill one of the hostages, Oloffson was brought to him. For the next five days, police and the media surrounded the bank, and even a psychiatrist joined to help with the hostage situation. There was a working telephone line in the bank where police communicated with them and when a hostage was interviewed on how she felt, she explained that she trusted the criminals and wanted to leave the bank with them rather than the police! This statement became central to the concept of Stockholm syndrome. The following events concern the unsuccessful attempt of Olsson and Olofsson to rob the vault of the bank, as police locked them in it with the three hostages and after some time drilled a hole to the ceiling and injected gas. Before any of the hostages was seriously hurt, the two criminals surrendered and the prime minister congratulated the police and honoured the rule of law in a democratic and open society.

Explaining the Effect

Stockholm syndrome, also referred to as hostage captor effect (HCE), usually leads the hostages to willingly cooperate with their captors. Some hostages will even refuse to give up on evidence against the captors and in more extreme cases they even join them. This reminds us of the famous series of Netflix, Casa de Papel [5] where Monica (Esther Acebo), the secretary of the bank’s administrator, joined the robbery after falling in love with Denver (Jaime Lorente). The producers even gave her the code name ‘’Stockholm’’ in Season 2 of the series!

There are some proposed etiologies for this syndrome. For example, the syndrome can be seen as a defence mechanism that the victim employs for survival. Another explanation is that the brain undergoes chemical changes because of extreme stress levels, affecting the decisions victims will make. The ‘’defence mechanism’’ path was quite accepted by the FBI and law enforcement. Strentz (1979), a key figure in the Behavioural Science Unit, proposed the following:  an “automatic, probably unconscious response to the trauma of becoming a victim”. Since the hostage is becoming a victim, the psychological threat is so present that the ego may defend itself in many ways, one of them being to identify with the perpetrator.

5 Phases of a Hostage Incident

Here it is interesting to mention a theoretical framework found in an article by McKenzie (2004) explaining the phases of a hostage incident.

The phases include:

• Compliance - refers to the fact that hostages under threat will do exactly as they are told by their captor;
• Collaboration - here, hostages may voluntarily provide assistance to their captors, contributing to the creation of a positive bond between them;
• Communication - represents the realisation of the hostage to stand up for themselves in order to be treated as a human being and not as an object of trading between the captor and the authorities. The hostages could ask the captors to reveal information about their lives to the authorities. Hostages try to understand their captors and the content of the conversation plays an important role as to how the relation between them will evolve;
• Consensus - describes the moment when the hostage realises that there is some common ground between her/ him and the captor. In the end, they both want the demands of the captor to be met and of course the hostage’s life depends upon it as well!
• Conversion - this final phase means that the hostage takes upon common views and attitudes of the captor (depending on how affected they are by them).

After all these phases come to be fully completed, the HCE or Stockholm syndrome can be said to have occurred.

Stockholm syndrome most commonly involves a hostage-taking situation, even though some cases of domestic violence, or cases in which there is a pre-existing relationship between the aggressor and the victim, can also trigger the syndrome. Essentially, the victim identifies with the aggressor [2]. However, some scholars believe that the syndrom cannot be explained “if the subject and the victim are or were previously known to each other’’. Law enforcement personnel, that work in the area of crisis negotiation, restrict the definition of experiencing Stockholm syndrome to make sure that no relationship between the hostage and the captor exists prior to the event taking place.

Common Factors

There is research concerning the common factors that are associated with the development of Stockholm syndrome. However, it was proven really difficult to conclude common factors because elements like how much a hostage was verbally or physically abused as a measurement instrument cannot be fully valid as the explanations and perceptions of the hostages may differ from the established standards by mental health professionals and the police [2]. Therefore, questions like these are not a good indicator, as there is no one truth. In their study, Fabrique, Hasselt, Vecchi and Romano (2007) found one assumption that was present in all the cases of what appeared to be Stockholm syndrome. Hostages and hostage-takers must maintain a reasonable level of interpersonal contact. In all cases, the hostages were free to communicate and were physically close with the captors. They explain this in a way that implies that a common perception of ‘’us against them’’ is created and sustained by physical proximity.

It is important to mention that not all hostages develop this syndrome. Do not forget that being held as hostage can give rise to many emotional and psychological reactions and that merely being a hostage is not enough to develop the syndrome. A positive bond or an emotional attachment  to the perpetrator must occur.

Gendering Stockholm Syndrome

Finally, I want to report a discussion that Cecilia Ase has started about the gendering of Stockholm Syndrome [1]. She included a dialogue/ description from Olssen in her paper of him explaining what had happened at the bank. Olssen, holding the two female hostages, demanded to know the identities of two individuals coming down the stairs in the bank. When they revealed they were the police, he pointed his gun and fired. In his statement he says: ‘’What if they would shoot and hurt one of the girls?’’ […] What would have happened if one of the girls would have been shot or killed?’’. Cecilia Ase interprets his questions interestingly, reflecting on power dynamics: here, there were men of power (the policemen and the captor, claiming control and access to the women hostages’ bodies, who instead had no power. Stockholm syndrome, she explains, was created to explain how women hostages reject the protection offered by the state and how they turn to their captors for security.  Moreover, the existence of Stockholm syndrome reproduces the idea that during crime incidents, women are passive and do not present agency during the act, therefore when they are actively supporting the captor they are seen as suffering from a medical psychiatric condition (i.e., Stockholm syndrome).

Additional Resources:

• Watch Casa de Papel (Netflix TV series)

• Listen to the song by Muse called ‘’Stockholm Syndrome’’, in their album ‘’Absolution’’, you will love it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXN9acC9edU&ab_channel=Muse

• Emotional and Gendered Support in Rotterdam 🡪 https://www.instagram.com/tendercenterrotterdam/?hl=en

References

[1] Åse, C. (2015). Crisis Narratives and Masculinist Protection. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(4), 595–610. doi:10.1080/14616742.2015.1042296

[2] De Fabrique, N., Van Hasselt, V. B., Vecchi, G. M., & Romano, S. J. (2007). Common Variables Associated with the Development of Stockholm Syndrome: Some Case Examples. Victims & Offenders, 2(1), 91–98. doi:10.1080/15564880601087266

[3] McKenzie, I. K. (2004). The Stockholm Syndrome Revisited. Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 4(1), 5–21. doi:10.1300/j173v04n01_02

[4] Namnyak, M., Tufton, N., Szekely, R., Toal, M., Worboys, S., & Sampson, E. L. (2007). “Stockholm syndrome”: psychiatric diagnosis or urban myth? Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 0(0), 071120024945001–??? doi:10.1111/j.1600-0447.2007.01112.x

[5] Casa de Papel (premiered in 2007). Created by Alex Pina