The unnaturally close relationship that occasionally develops between a hostage of a criminal or terrorist and his or her captor. It was first described in a woman held hostage in a bank in Sweden who remained faithful to the thief during his imprisonment.
The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage exhibits loyalty to the hostage-taker, in spite of the danger (or at least risk) in which the hostage has been placed. Stockholm syndrome is also sometimes discussed in reference to other situations with similar tensions, such as battered person syndrome, child abuse cases, and bride kidnapping.
Origin of the name
The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28, 1973. however, this may simply be due to the erroneous naming of the syndrome in popular media, for example by a news reader in the first Die Hard film. Her unsuccessful legal defense was that she suffered from Stockholm syndrome and was coerced into aiding the SLA. However, this may not be a case of Stockholm Syndrome because she kept a journal in French about how much she hated her abductors, and she claims to have only co-operated out of fear. Japanese embassy hostage crisis in December 1996 is currently touted as an example of a so-called Lima syndrome in which the opposite effects from the Stockholm syndrome came into light. Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian girl kidnapped by Wolfgang Priklopil at the age of 10, who escaped at the age of 18 in 2006, appears to have suffered from Stockholm syndrome, as evidenced by her grieving after her captor's suicide.
Other uses
Outside of the criminal context, a form of the syndrome may take place in military basic training, in which "training is a mildly traumatic experience intended to produce a bond," with the goal of forming military units which will remain loyal to each other even in life-threatening situations.
Loyalty to a more powerful abuser — in spite of the danger that this loyalty puts the victim in — is common among victims of domestic abuse, battered partners and child abuse (dependent children).
Evolutionary and psychoanalytic explanations
For an interpretation of the syndrome from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, see capture-bonding.
According to the psychoanalytic view of the syndrome, the tendency might well be the result of employing the strategy evolved by newborn babies to form an emotional attachment to the nearest powerful adult in order to maximize the probability that this adult will enable - at the very least - the survival of the child, if not also prove to be a good parental figure.
Fictional uses
In the 1999 James Bond film The World is Not Enough, James Bond diagnoses Elektra King as having Stockholm Syndrome.
In The Simpsons episode, Blame It on Lisa, Homer comes back from being kidnapped having Stockholm Syndrome.
Stockholm Syndrome is also a band of the same name, a song by the band Yo La Tengo, Muse on their album Absolution;
Christopher Biggins displays Stockholm Syndrome when he sympathises with his captors in the television series Bad Girls
In the film Saw, along with Saw 2 and Saw 3, Amanda falls in love with the Jigsaw Killer even though Jigsaw previously abducted her.
Harley Quinn has possible Stockholm Syndrome with The Joker in the Batman mythos and DCU.
In the movie Buffalo 66, Christina Ricci plays a girl name Layla who falls in love with her kidnapper.
Marvel Comics' Villian, Magneto, had been mentioned as having Stockholm Syndrome.
The fairly recent German film Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (The Edukators in English) shows a form of Stockholm syndrome.
While being held hostage in an episode of Futurama entitled "Insane in the Mainframe," Bender begs to his captor, "Don't kill me yet! I'm starting to come down with Stockholm syndrome...
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