Content area
Full Text
On an August morning in 1973, an escaped convict took four bank employees hostage in Stockholm, Sweden. For 131 hours, the hostages shared a bank vault with another convicted criminal, the former cellmate of the hostage taker, who had demanded his release from a nearby penitentiary. Despite their ordeal, after the incident, the hostages reported that they had no ill feelings toward the hostage takers and, further, that they feared the police more than their captors. Psychologists called this newly discovered phenomenon the Stockholm Syndrome.1
A coping mechanism also known as the Survival Identification Syndrome, the Common Sense Syndrome, or, simply, transference, the Stockholm Syndrome usually consists of three components that may occur separately or in combination with one another: negative feelings on the part of the hostage toward authorities, positive feelings on the part of the hostage toward the hostage taker, and positive feelings reciprocated by the hostage taker toward the hostage.2 Although a recognized phenomenon, during the last 25 years, the Stockholm Syndrome has been overemphasized, overanalyzed, overpsychologized, and overpublicized. Those occasions where the Stockholm Syndrome actually occurs remain exceptions to the rule. In fact, most hostages do not identify or sympathize with the hostage taker, nor do they see the police as their adversaries. Rather, they realize that the hostage taker represents the problem, and the police, the solution. They also understand that, in general, the police should not acquiesce to the demands of hostage takers. Thus, with some notable exceptions, during a critical incident, hostages will behave in a manner that does not put their lives in jeopardy.
According to the FBI's Hostage/Barricade System (HOBAS), a national database that contains data from over 1,200 reported federal, state, and local hostage/barricade incidents, 92 percent of the victims of such incidents reportedly showed no aspect of the Stockholm Syndrome.3 When victims who only showed negative feelings toward law enforcement (usually due to frustration with the pace of negotiations) are included, the percentage rises to 95 percent. In short, this database provides empirical support that the Stockholm Syndrome remains a rare occurrence.
Despite such evidence, some crisis negotiators may have lost sight of the fact that full-blown Stockholm Syndrome occurs only in very few victims. As a result, they may continue to perpetuate some...