The Worst Cases Of Stockholm Syndrome

Being held against your will is undoubtedly a traumatic experience. So it's not surprising that there is a psychological cost to that experience. The idea that you'll suffer some post-traumatic stress seems pretty reasonable, but there's a different psychological reaction that's more difficult to comprehend: so-called Stockholm syndrome, when captives come to identify with and have a strong positive bond with their captors.

Psychologists speculate that the root cause of this bizarre reaction stems from the threat to the captive's life: When the kidnapper or hostage-taker chooses not to kill or harm their captive, the sense of relief mutates into a feeling of affection and gratitude driven by the survival instinct. While there are many instances throughout history of prisoners developing friendships or other strong bonds with their captors, the concept of Stockholm syndrome as a definable psychological mechanism is a relatively recent development that dates back only to the 1970s. In fact, there remains considerable disagreement surrounding the idea: It isn't an officially recognized psychological disorder, and many argue it's a misogynistic and distorted view of people's reactions to the trauma of captivity.

That being said, there have been many modern examples of captives cooperating with their captors, or emerging from their ordeal with a surprisingly positive opinion of them. Here are some of the worst cases of Stockholm syndrome ever recorded.

As noted by the encyclopedia Britannica, the term "Stockholm syndrome" dates to 1973, inspired by the botched robbery of the Sveriges Kreditbanken in Stockholm's Norrmalmstorg town square. As reported by History, safe-cracker Jan-Erik Olsson entered the bank with a submachine gun and took four employees hostage: Birgitta Lundblad, Elisabeth Oldgren, Kristin Ehnmark, and Sven Safstrom. He demanded that his friend and criminal partner Clark Olofsson be released from prison and delivered to the bank, and Swedish police complied. The hostages were held for more than five days before the police used tear gas to rush into the bank and arrest Olofsson and Olsson. 

None of the captives were harmed, but they exhibited unexpected sympathy for their captors. By the second day of the ordeal, the hostages were calling the kidnappers by their first names, and began to regard the police as the real danger. As noted by Esquire, on the fourth day, Ehnmark actually phoned the prime minister and asked to be allowed to accompany the kidnappers as they left the bank to ensure they were not harmed.

According to BBC News, psychologists worked to explain the attitude of the hostages — they had described their captors as "very kind," and Safstrom had even considered going along with the kidnappers' plan to shoot him in the leg in order to convince police to acquiesce to their demands. Psychiatrist Nils Bejerot first used the phrase "Stockholm syndrome," but psychiatrist Frank Ochberg codified it for law enforcement in the ensuing years.

The facts are grim and almost unbelievable. As reported by KXTV, on June 10, 1991, an 11-year-old girl named Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted off the street as she walked to the bus stop. Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy held Jaycee captive for the next 18 years in their backyard. Phillip repeatedly sexually assaulted Dugard, fathering two children with her.

As CBS News reports, the horrific crime was only revealed when Jaycee and her children accompanied Phillip Garrido to a meeting with his parole officer. When officers became suspicious, Garrido confessed and Jaycee was finally free. But this led to the question of why Jaycee had never made any attempt to escape — as noted by The Guardian, the Garridos regularly took Dugard out in public. It's easy to see Dugard as a victim of Stockholm syndrome: According to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow in John Glatt's book "Lost and Found," children have fewer coping mechanisms than adults, and Dugard may have had "little alternative but to bond with her captors" in order to survive.

When Dugard was reunited with her mother after nearly two decades in captivity, she said that she felt guilty for not having escaped — and for having bonded with Garrido.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

According to The Guardian, when Natascha Kampusch was 10 years old, she daydreamed about suicide. Her home life was unhappy, and she imagined the remorse her mother would feel if she were to jump in front of a car. Then a man named Wolfgang Priklopil grabbed her off the street and pulled her into his van. He drove to his home and forced her into an elaborate prison cell, where he kept her for more than eight years. After a few years of treating her relatively gently, Priklopil reacted to her increasing rebellion with violence — beatings, psychological torture, and forced labor. At the same time, he took her out frequently — and once even took her on a skiing holiday.

She made no attempt to escape until she was 18. One day, when he was distracted by a phone call, she simply walked out of the garden and ran. Priklopil killed himself, and initially Kampusch was greeted with sympathy. But as ABC News reports, when asked about her tormentor, her initial response was, "I mourn for him in a certain way." Combined with her inability to escape when given the opportunity, it seemed likely that Kampusch suffered from a classic case of Stockholm syndrome and had bonded with Priklopil in a desperate, subconscious attempt at survival.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

In 1972, 7-year-old Steven Stayner was walking home from school. SFGATE reports that Kenneth Parnell approached the boy and told him his mother had asked Parnell to pick him up. Steven willingly got into Parnell's car and was lost for seven years. Parnell told Steven that his parents no longer wanted him, and renamed him Dennis.

According to ABC News, Parnell moved around with Steven frequently, never staying anywhere for very long. Steven lived a superficially normal life, attending school intermittently, but at night Parnell would assault him and remind him that his parents had given him away. The New York Post reports that this "brainwashing" worked, and Steven admits that "after a while, I was happy." Steven was terrified of Parnell, but also resigned to his new reality.

When Parnell kidnapped 5-year-old Timothy White and began abusing him as well, however, Steven was jolted out of this warped alternate universe. One night after Parnell went to work, Steven took Timmy and ran. They caught a ride to Timmy's hometown, and Steven finally went to the police. Steven had been "Dennis" for so long, he had trouble remembering his real name. Tragically, a decade later Steven was hit by a car while riding his motorcycle and died, aged just 24. His brother, Cary, later assaulted and killed four women near Yosemite National Park, and is currently serving a life sentence.

Typically, when we think of Stockholm syndrome we think of hostages and kidnap victims, people forcibly taken from their familiar lives. But in the case of actress Mackenzie Phillips, she experienced the phenomenon with someone who should have been her safe harbor: her own father.

As reported by ABC News, Phillips recounted in her autobiography that she passed out after a drug binge at the age of 18 and woke up to find her father sexually assaulting her. She proceeded to have a consensual, drug-fueled relationship with him for the next decade. According to CNN, Phillips herself has used the term "Stockholm syndrome" to describe her psychological reaction to this abuse. Her acceptance of the relationship ended when John Phillips, a musician and part of the famous rock group the Mamas and the Papas, began talking about moving to Fiji with his other children and living with Mackenzie as his wife. "The moment he tried to make it romantic," she said, "I thought, we're going to hell for this."

The relationship continued, however, until Phillips became pregnant. Today notes that her father arranged to have the pregnancy terminated, and Phillips ended the relationship for good.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

During what History describes as "the Lebanon hostage crisis" in the 1980s, nearly a hundred foreigners were abducted and held in Beirut as terrorists, among them Thomas Sutherland, Terry Anderson, and Terry Waite. The three men would be held for incredibly long periods of time — Sutherland for 2,353 days, Anderson for 2,455 days, and Waite for 1,763 days. As captives, the men were often blindfolded and beaten, and were even made to believe they were about to be executed on several occasions. According to CNN, Sutherland was once beaten with a rubber truncheon that left black and blue bruises all over his body. Perhaps worst of all, their captors often teased the men that they were about to be released solely to inflict psychological pain on them.

And yet the encyclopedia Britannica notes that all three men claimed to have been treated "well" by their captors, and in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Terrorism, the three men are described as having suffered from Stockholm syndrome. In fact, The Coloradoan reports that Sutherland explicitly believes that Stockholm syndrome was "exactly" what he experienced, describing it as identifying with his captors and believing they're "doing the right thing."