From: "Graham Gartshore", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.word.com/habit/billyjoel/thirteen.html
In 1973, four Swedes held in a bank vault for six days during a robbery
became attached to their captors, a phenomenon dubbed the Stockholm
Syndrome. According to psychologists, the abused bond to their abusers as a
means to endure violence. The most notorious instance came when heiress
Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and after some
months, re-christened herself "Tanya" and joined their ranks. "Get down or
I'll blow your motherfucking heads off," she shouted while robbing a San
Francisco bank with fellow S.L.A. members in April, 1974. The number one
song in the U.S. that day was "Bennie and the Jets," by Elton John.
http://www.syntac.net/hoax/stock.html
One way of describing this site would be "strange beliefs people have and
how they got them." A curious footnote that doesn't seem to fit in nicely on
any of the other pages is a phenomenon known as the Stockholm Syndrome.
In 1973, four hostages were taken in a botched bank robbery in Stockholm,
Sweeden. At the end of their captivity, six days later, they actively
resisted rescue. They refused to testify against their captors, raised money
for their legal defense, and one of the hostages eventually became engaged
to one of her jailed captors.
This struck some folks as weird, and as a way of coping with this
uneasiness, as they started seeing more examples they named this class of
strange behavior the "Stockholm Syndrome."
Notorious in the United States is the case of Patty Hearst, who after being
kidnapped and tortured by the Symbionese Liberation Army, took up arms and
joined their cause, taking on the nom de guerre of "Tania" and helping the
SLA rob banks.
The Stockholm Syndrome comes into play when a captive cannot escape, is
isolated and threatened with death, but is shown token acts of kindness by
the captor. It typically takes about three or four days for the
psychological shift to take hold.
A strategy of trying to keep your captor happy in order to stay alive
becomes an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes of the
captor which has the result of warping your own psyche in such a way that
you come to sympathize with your tormenter!
The syndrome explains what happens in hostage-taking situations, but can
also be used to understand the behavior of battered spouses, members of
religious cults, Holocaust victims, household pets, and perhaps even users
of Internet Explorer. I think it may also help explain the popularity of
government and of the mass institutionalization of young people.
Graham
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