Stockholm Syndrome. Identification with the Aggressor

Introduction. Stockholm Syndrom. The Identification with the aggressor

Identification with the aggressor, a defence mechanism proposed by Sandor Ferenczi and later developed by Anna Freud, using the Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory. It describes a process in which the victim moves from submission to the identification with the aggressor including adopting his behaviour. Such mechanism could be explained as defence where the victim tries to elicit empathy from the aggressor to avoid further abuse and danger to his life.

Identification with the aggressor is a form of introjection. The mechanism centres on assimilating the negative or apprehensive attributes of the aggressor, which is explicable, be the situation of being taken hostage.

The Stockholm Syndrome provides an extreme illustration of this phenomenon, as hostages developed an emotional connection with their captors and accepted their behaviours.

Stockholm Syndrom. Coining the term

The term “Stockholm Syndrome” was coined in 1973. Jan-Erik Olsson, a parolee, took four bank employees’ hostages during a failed bank robbery on Kreditbanken in Stockholm. He negotiated the release from prison for his friend Olofsson who joined him in the bank. They kept 4 hostages in the bank vault for six days. Surprisingly, upon their release, none of the hostages agreed to testify against their captors in court. Instead, they started raising funds for their defence.

A year later, American journalist Lang conducted interviews with all those involved in the ordeal for the New Yorker. These interviews provide the most comprehensive insight into the dynamics between captors and captives. Remarkably, the hostages expressed being well-treated by Olsson and felt indebted to him for their survival. In a peculiar instance, Elisabeth Oldgren, who suffered from claustrophobia, was permitted to leave the vault with a rope around her neck, which she perceived as a kind gesture.

Lang noted that the term Stockholm Syndrome is commonly used to describe the captive’s conflicting emotions, but it also applies to the changing sentiments of the captors. Olsson initially claimed that he could have effortlessly killed the hostages but his perspective shifted over the course of the siege. He even accused the victims, stating that they obeyed his every command, preventing him from taking their lives. Living together in the grim conditions of the vault forced them to interact and familiarize themselves with one another.

Stockholm Syndrom criteria

Stockholm syndrome is paradoxical as it involves captives developing sympathetic sentiments towards their captors, contrary to the fear and disdain observers might expect.

Four key components characterize this phenomenon:

1.   The development of positive feelings by the hostage towards the captor.

2.   The absence of a pre-existing relationship between the hostage and captor.

3.   Hostages refusing to cooperate with law enforcement and government authorities.

4.    The hostage viewing the captor as a non-threatening individual, believing in their humanity, especially when their values align.

This notion of captors developing positive feelings towards their captives exemplifies a key aspect of Stockholm Syndrome.

Psychodynamics

Stockholm syndrome is characterized by a psychological bond between hostages and captors, where hostages establish an emotional bond with their captors and mirror their behaviours. The syndrom arises under specific circumstances. These include power imbalances in situations such as hostage-taking, kidnapping, and abusive relationships.

When the Stockholm police sought help in understanding the victim’s responses, Nils Bejerot, a criminologist and psychiatrist, coined the term “Stockholm syndrome”.

According to Bejerot’s criteria, the following aspects are observed in hostage situations:

1.  Firstly, victims encounter a sudden and terrifying event, leaving them with a sense of impending death.

2.  Subsequently, they undergo a form of infantilization, resembling a child’s dependency on permission for basic needs.

3.  Acts of kindness, like receiving food, trigger a primal gratitude for the preservation of life.

4.  Strangely, hostages develop a strong positive sentiment towards their captor, denying their role in their predicament. They perceive the captor as their saviour, capable of ensuring their survival.

In the context of identification with the aggressor, individuals don’t internalize positive traits but rather negative or feared characteristics. This mechanism uses the introjection as a means to conquer fear by becoming more like the feared person.

Empiric studies

Conducting studies on Stockholm syndrome proves challenging due to the difficulty in finding a substantial number of individuals who have experienced it. This limitation hampers the validity and sample size necessary to determine developmental patterns and effects of the condition. Consequently, Stockholm syndrome remains a “contested illness” with doubts surrounding its legitimacy.

The story of Patty Hearst

In 1974, Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of legendary US newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was abducted. Patty Hearst was tortured, raped, and yet she joined her captors. From socialite to kidnapping victim to criminal, Patty Hearst’s life was a “serial tragedy” and perhaps most bizarre kidnapping case in US history.

Patty’s social background

Patty Hearst’s legendary grandfather, Randolph Hearst had amassed immense wealth with this first US newspaper empire – while his eccentricities and scandals inspired Orson Welles’ tragic film character “Citizen Kane.” To this day, the Hearst Corporation (“Elle,” “Cosmopolitan,” “San Francisco Chronicle”) is one of the largest in the USA.

The early seventies was the era of counterculture, flower children, the sexual revolution, and the resistance against the Vietnam War and racism.

Patty grew up in a lavish estate near San Francisco. However, behind Patty Hearst’s high-society facade, there was turmoil as well. Like so many others, Patty Hearst rebelled. She protested, smoked marijuana, and enrolled at the University of California in Berkeley, the heart of the student movement. At 18, she moved in with her former math teacher, Steven Weed, in an apartment near campus.

Abduction and captivity

While the US protest movement faded in the early seventies, revolutionary, left-wing, sometimes violent groups remained. On February 4, 1974, the millionaire heiress Patty Hearst, was abducted by left-wing radicals. Hearst and her partner Weed were watching TV when there was a knock. When Weed opened the door, two men and a woman attacked him, tied up 19-year-old Hearst, threw her into the trunk of a stolen convertible, and disappeared into the night.

The trio consisted of Donald DeFreeze, the leader of the terrorist guerrilla group called the “Symbionese Liberation Army” (SLA), and two accomplices. For weeks, the SLA kept Hearst blindfolded in a broom closet. DeFreeze beat her, abused her, intimidated her, and tried to indoctrinate her. “Your mom and dad are insects,” he yelled. “They should crawl on all fours to get you back.”

Initially, the SLA demanded that the family distribute $70 million worth of food to needy families in California. In the end, they agreed to a food donation of $6 million. Despite the fact that Hearst family fulfilled the claim, the SLA refused to release Patty on the pretext of the food quality wasn’t good.

From hostage to America’s most wanted bank robber

Now Patty Hearst turned against her parents: “I don’t think you’re doing anything at all,” she said on a tape recording. Two months after her abduction, she declared that she had joined the SLA: “I have decided to stay and fight.” From then on, she called herself Tania, after Tamara Bunke, an East German guerrilla fighter and comrade of Che Guevara.

Two weeks later, the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco was robbed. Five armed individuals stormed the branch and stole $10,000. The unmasked bank robbers were clearly visible on the security cameras. Among them were DeFreeze and a woman in a long, black coat, holding a semi-automatic M1 rifle: Patty Hearst.

Was she voluntarily participating or under coercion? The FBI wanted Hearst solely as a “key witness.” However, on later SLA tapes, she once again professed allegiance to the group.

After the bank robbery, the SLA escaped to Los Angeles. There, DeFreeze and five accomplices died in a shootout. The carnage was broadcast live on television, and Hearst witnessed it all from a motel room. “I died in the fire,” she stated, “but from the ashes, I was reborn.”

She spent a year on the run with two SLA members. Eventually, the FBI caught up with them in a kitchen in the Mission District.

Police detention

Suddenly two FBI agents stood in her kitchen, guns drawn: “Stay still, or we’ll shoot!” The women raised their hands. “Are you Patty Hearst?” shouted the men. Until finally, she was apprehended in the kitchen of San Francisco’s Mission District. “Occupation?” the police asked when Hearst arrived in custody. Her defiant response was later recounted in her autobiography: “Urban guerrilla.”

The court case

However, during her arrest in 1975, she attempted to plead Stockholm syndrome as a defence, although the term was not officially used at that time due to its recent emergence. Was she, as she claimed in court, a textbook case of Stockholm Syndrome, where a crime victim eventually sympathizes with the perpetrators? Or was she, as the justice system saw her, a cold-hearted gangster? These questions divided America at the time.

The trial became the trial of the year in 1976. Hearst’s parents sat in the courtroom every day, “two people who had withdrawn from their once cheerful social life into a state of isolation and fear,” wrote the New York Times.

Hearst’s prominent lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, argued the Stockholm Syndrome. Many experts testified in favour of Hearst, stating that she had been brainwashed.

The sentence

Disappointingly for her defence lawyer, the strategy did not hold up in court. On March 20, 1976, the justice system charged Hearst with armed robbery to the maximum penalty of 35 years. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter further commuted her sentence, and Hearst was set free. However, it wasn’t until 2001 that President Bill Clinton fully pardoned her.

Dissociating from the perpetrators

Hearst finally disassociated herself from the SLA, stating that the group had engaged in “jihad” and sought to “overthrow the government.” She shared these sentiments with CNN’s Larry King in 2002 before serving as a key witness against the remaining SLA members.

She relocated to the East Coast with her husband, Shaw and made rare public appearances. Hearst was last seen publicly in January of this year at her husband’s funeral in New York. Her estimated net worth today is $45 million.

Case Natascha Kampusch

Several years ago, the case of Natascha Kampbusch gained attention of the media. Natascha was abducted by a kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil at the age of 10 and confined in the basement of his house for eight years. In August 2006, a terrified Natascha miraculously reappeared, sprinting through Vienna’s suburbs. Seizing the opportunity of her captor’s distraction, she managed to escape. Short after her escape the kidnapper committed suicide.

The kidnapping

When Natascha was 10, she noticed a man by a delivery van as she walked to school. While passing him, he abruptly grabbed her and threw her in.

He drove her to his prosperous suburban home, where he carried her into a meticulously prepared, tiny cellar room. The room measured a mere five by five meters, devoid of any furnishing, soundproofed, and windowless. A constant, irritating rattle of a plastic ventilator fan filled the air.

The custody

Initially, their relationship seemed relatively uncomplicated, given the circumstances. Yet, it was far from ordinary. One half of the duo imprisoned in a dungeon, while the other kept the complex setup hidden from the outside world. He would bring her lavish croissants and expensive toys like train sets. In response, she regressed psychologically, reverting to the dependence of a toddler.

He claimed to be an Egyptian god, and she found it easier to play along. “During bathing,” she recounts, “I imagined being at a spa. When he served me food, I envisioned him as a gentleman, performing these actions out of chivalry. Serving me.”

The strive for dominance

During her early teenage years, she initiated small rebellions, refusing to address him as “Maestro.” Thus, it became Priklopil’s turn to adapt to this newfound situation. His captive was no longer compliant, transformed into an independent spirit. Consequently, Priklopil faced the need to adjust to this altered dynamic. His once compliant captive had transformed into a resilient force. He decided to regain his full control over his captive. He began beating her up, denying her food, keeping her in darkness for long stretches, and on and on. She was allowed to speak only upon his permission. When they ate together, he allowed himself much bigger portions, showing her that she doesn’t have any rights. 

He employed her as a labour force bringing her upstairs to clean his house. She had to do this half naked. In her book Kampbusch wrote, that she doesn’t want discus the sexual abuse, but according to her the abuse remained minor, and even when he started chaining her to his bed, his intentions were merely to seek comfort through cuddling.

Over the next six years, the beatings persisted. Occasionally, he would apologize, shower her with gifts, and share his dreams of a shared future.

He took her skiing, embarking on 13-day trips altogether – visits to pharmacies, hardware stores, and mostly vacant rental flats he was renovating for his acquaintance. She became his labour force, compelled by fear to remain silent in the presence of strangers – the chemist, the policeman at roadblocks.

The liberation

Then, on her 18th birthday, she met his gaze and uttered, “You have led us into a situation where only one of us can survive. I am grateful you spared my life and cared for me, but you cannot coerce me to stay. I am an individual with my own needs. This situation must come to an end.”

Closing her eyes, she braced for a beating; however, it never arrived. Instead, she opened them, only to find him wearing a sorrowful, defeated expression. Reflecting on the incident, she shares, “I believe he realized I had reached my breaking point.” Exhausted, drained, I felt empowered in an unexpected way—devoid of any energy, but he had no countermeasure to offer.

The final stage

After Nataschas escape Priklopil confessed to his friend that he is a kidnapper and a rapist. Subsequently, he put his head on the railway tracks, awaiting the train that would end his life.

Kampbusch was said to have shed tears upon learning about her captor’s demise. She even lit a candle for him while he lay in the mortuary.

Talking about her hostage she said: “When you spend considerable time with your kidnapper, it is only natural to develop an identification,” she reflects. “Empathy and communication come into play – a desperate search for normality within the confines of a heinous crime – a survival strategy.”

Sorces

Ferenczi S [1932] (1972) Sprachverwirrung zwischen den Erwachsenen und dem Kind: In: Ferenczi S, Schriften zur Psychoanalyse, Bd. 2. Frankfurt/M., Fischer, S 303–316

Bejerot N (1974). “The six day war in Stockholm”. New Scientist. 61 (886): 486–487

Alexander DA, Klein S (January 2009). “Kidnapping and hostage-taking: a review of effects, coping and resilience”. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine

King, David (2020). Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome. W.W. Norton

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Goldin, Greg (January 18, 2002). “The Last Revolutionary: Sara Jane Olson Speaks”. LA Weekly. Archived from the original on March 24, 2012. Retrieved December 26, 2014.

“Patty’s Twisted Journey”. Time. September 29, 1975. Archived from the original on September 13, 2012.

West, Louis Jolyon (December 29, 1978). “Psychiatrist pleads for Patty Hearst’s release”. Eugene Register-Guard. Archived from the original on March 23, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2013.

Lithwick, Dahlia (January 28, 2002). “The Brainwashed Defense”. Slate. Archived from the original on December 24, 2014. Retrieved December 24, 2014.

Toobin, Jeffrey (2016). American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385536714. Archived from the original on August 22, 2016. Retrieved August 11, 2016.

“Entführer täuschte Lösegeld-Erpressung vor” (in German). Der Spiegel Online. 30 August 2006. Archived from the original on 2 September 2006. Retrieved 8 September 2006

“Natascha Kampusch: Inside the head of my torturer”. the Guardian. 10 September 2010. Retrieved 5 December 2020

Natascha Kampusch, 3,096 Days, (Penguin, 2010) ISBN 978-0-670-91999-4