27 votes

Fifty years on, Swedish psychiatrists are now calling the infamous Stockholm Syndrome a 'constructed concept' used to explain away the failures of the State

Posted by mycketforvirrad
Tags: sweden, history, 1970s, psychiatry, psychology, psychosis, stockholm syndrome, behavior.human, women, trauma, crime, nils bejerot, author.roselyne min, source.euronews
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/23/stockholm-syndrome-50-years-on-is-the-condition-real-or-was-it-invented-to-discredit-women

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Title
Stockholm Syndrome 50 years on: Is the condition a myth?
Published
Aug 23 2023
Word count
575 words

3 comments

  1. Sodliddesu
    Link
    So, the whole thing goes "Damn, why'd she hook up with someone who was holding her hostage. Must be crazy." "No, I did it because I knew he would protect me. I was thinking clearly." "Wow, sounds...

    So, the whole thing goes "Damn, why'd she hook up with someone who was holding her hostage. Must be crazy."

    "No, I did it because I knew he would protect me. I was thinking clearly."

    "Wow, sounds like the media and psychiatrists hated women who act rationally back in the day."

    Like, I can see the case for depreciating the term if it's proven that she was clear headed when making her decision and since it's basically impossible to prove or disprove her mental state at the time but saying it was "created to discredit women" seems like a stretch to me.

    Ah well.

    15 votes
  2. [2]
    chocobean
    Link
    Companion article from the Independent has more details link colossal police bungles ensues The Prime Minister told a 23 year old hostage: Wow I never actually heard the story.....and how the...

    Companion article from the Independent has more details link

    Is Stockholm Syndrome even real? The bizarre story behind a problematic diagnosis

    Few realize that ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ is a term that was foisted on a woman by a male psychiatrist who had never met her after a Swedish bank heist worthy of a movie. Fifty years after the hostage situation that gave the syndrome its name, Sheila Flynn reports on how minds have changed — and how police may have avoided criticism by pathologizing a victim

    colossal police bungles ensues

    None of this inspired confidence in the hostages that the situation was going to end peacefully. And as they watched police flounder with increasing concern, so did the rest of Sweden

    The Prime Minister told a 23 year old hostage:

    should she be killed during a police attempt to squelch the standoff, she should be content to have died at her post.

    Wow I never actually heard the story.....and how the victims were basically maligned as hysterical women as coverup for incompetent police

    9 votes
    1. RoyalHenOil
      Link Parent
      The police weren't incompetent (or at least not just incompetent): they simply did not prioritize the survival of the hostages over the capture of Olsson. There were several instances where Olsson...
      • Exemplary

      The police weren't incompetent (or at least not just incompetent): they simply did not prioritize the survival of the hostages over the capture of Olsson. There were several instances where Olsson warned the police that if they did X, he would kill the hostages — and then the police proceeded to do X.

      This is why the hostages believed that Olsson was more trustworthy than the police. The police gambled with the hostages' lives several times, whereas Olsson was bluffing when he threatened the hostages (but the police, of course, didn't know this).

      In the end, Olsson was captured and all hostages survived, but that was because Olsson was not willing to see the hostages die; the police demonstrably were. The hostages' assessment of the situation was 100% rational and correct, as far as I can see — and seeing as how they survived the ordeal and were willing to speak about it, the police needed to come up with some way to discredit them. They got Nils Bejerot (the police's consultant criminologist, most famous for the work he did to convince countries all over the world to adopt zero-tolerance policies toward cannabis and other drugs) to invent "Stockholm syndrome" so that the general public would automatically dismiss anything the hostages said.

      13 votes