[HN Gopher] The bizarre siege behind Stockholm Syndrome
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The bizarre siege behind Stockholm Syndrome
Author : pseudolus
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-08-19 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| sebnun wrote:
| Netflix made tv series about Clark Olofsson called "Clark"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDuKaZkWClA
| WilTimSon wrote:
| Great example of how not to name a show. I'd have at least a
| few other associations before clicking on it to see what it was
| actually about. Clark Kent? Clark and Gable?
|
| Wouldn't something that describes who Olofsson is be a better
| title? Or am I just being picky for no reason?
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| I believe it's a cultural difference. It was a Swedish
| production and he's a lot more famous there. I can't say
| whether he'd be the first thing to come to mind when a
| Swedish person heard the name, but he'd be a lot higher on
| the list than in the US.
| saghm wrote:
| I was gonna go with "Lewis and Clark" for my immediate
| association
| bjourne wrote:
| The guy is still alive and could perhaps sue for libel if
| they used his full name. An earlier Swedish movie about Olof
| Palme was probably libelous, but got away with it since his
| name was never used.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Sweden must have an exceptionally strange libel standard
| then, given that the series is explicitly about him: "This
| is the unbelievable story of Clark Olofsson, the
| controversial criminal who inspired the term "Stockholm
| syndrome." Based on his truths and lies.".
| ItCouldBeWorse wrote:
| Sweden, is .. a strange country. Yes, its liberal. But at
| the same time. Its part of the old world, as in the
| ancient world, that was before the WorldWars. It had
| eugenics until the 2000s.
| memsom wrote:
| I honestly wouldn't have assumed any of those. "Clarks" is a
| very famous shoe brand in the UK, and here, Clark is a
| surname. Ironically, Clark Gable's real name was "William
| Clark Gable" apparently. So, Clark was actually more likely a
| surname.
|
| I guess Clark Olofsson was also named after Clark Gable, as
| Clark is not a particularly Swedish name either.
| praptak wrote:
| The BBC article avoids taking sides where it shouldn't. Stockholm
| Syndrome is bullshit, not merely "controversial".
|
| https://www.stadafa.com/2020/12/stockholm-syndrome-discredit...
|
| "The psychiatrist who invented it, Nils Bejerot, never spoke to
| the woman he based it on, never bothered to ask her why she
| trusted her captors more than the authorities. More to the point,
| during the Swedish bank heist that inspired the syndrome, Bejerot
| was the psychiatrist leading the police response. He was the
| authority that Kristin Enmark - the first woman diagnosed with
| Stockholm syndrome - distrusted."
|
| "On the radio, Enmark criticized the police, and singled out
| Bejerot. In response, and without once speaking to her, Bejerot
| dismissed her comments as the product of a syndrome he made up:
| 'Norrmalmstorg syndrome' (later renamed Stockholm syndrome). The
| fear Enmark felt towards the police was irrational, Bejerot
| explained, caused by the emotional or sexual attachment she had
| with her captors. Bejerot's snap diagnosis suited the Swedish
| media; they were suspicious of Enmark, who 'did not appear as
| traumatized as she ought to be.' "
| interludead wrote:
| The origins of Stockholm Syndrome and its initial framing may
| be debated, its continued use in psychology suggests that it
| provides a useful framework for understanding certain
| psychological responses
| grecy wrote:
| The one where people distrust the authorities because they
| are handling a situation extremely poorly ?
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| That's a very optimistic and charitable interpretation.
|
| It also might be that "its continued use in psychology
| suggests" that false information taught to university
| students can result in years of incorrect orthodoxy before
| the error is corrected.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > The origins of Stockholm Syndrome and its initial framing
| may be debated
|
| It's not really a matter of debate. We _know_ the origins. We
| _know_ it is junk science. We know this about multiple
| sciences and scientific theories, that 's how science works:
| someone gets an idea, they theorize about it, test their
| theories, and our shared understanding grows.
|
| This is not that. This is an ass-pulled theory that's been
| debunked at it's point of origin. This doesn't deserve
| rebuttal, it deserves mockery and derision.
| olalonde wrote:
| Doesn't the idea that one can debunk a theory at its point
| of origin contradict your earlier statements about how
| science works? You could perhaps argue that it has neither
| be proven nor disproven, due to lack of data and
| experimentation.
|
| Also, the FBI seems to believe it exists, based on 1200
| hostage incident reports[0]:
|
| > 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. 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.
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20040627010420/http://www.a
| u.af....
| kstenerud wrote:
| A theory (as in a proper, scientific theory) must be
| testable, and then it must actually be tested to verify
| it.
|
| Neither of these are true of Stockholm Syndrome. It's no
| better than the many "theories" of hair tonic merchants.
|
| You're also grossly abusing the concept of "statistics"
| in your statement "this database provides empirical
| support that the Stockholm Syndrome remains a rare
| occurrence."
| snapcaster wrote:
| The FBI is the last place i would look for evidence of
| techniques working. They still use polygraphs, drug dogs,
| etc. the whole justice system is awash in pseudoscience
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Fingerprinting, fire foresenics, hair analysis, every
| kind of sniffing dog (except corpse/person). If you want
| to have a good time sometime, look up all the various
| branches of criminal "science" and find out how many have
| any substantial backing in real science, then go watch an
| episode of CSI or Forensic Files and count how much of
| what's discussed with such grandiosity is utter bullshit.
| some_random wrote:
| Is there any standard too low for Psychology? Would you balk
| at someone telling you that they know something is untrue but
| still teach it because it's politically convenient? How about
| if it just makes them money? Why does Psychology get to call
| itself a science when the field seems to refuse to stop
| teaching known falsehoods, to say nothing of actually using
| the Scientific Method?
| ItCouldBeWorse wrote:
| The quacks rode the boomer wave all the way to shore..
| kstenerud wrote:
| That's known as the "bandwagon fallacy": People in authority
| believe it, so it must be true.
|
| Homosexuality used to be a psychological disorder, at times
| treated by castration.
|
| Hysteria used to be a diagnosable illness in women for which
| they'd spend years in an institution.
|
| The psychological establishment has a very dark and nasty
| history, replete with "theories" that they all believed were
| justified - a practice that continues to this day.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Agreed on your larger point, but I think one of the reasons the
| "syndrome" has had such staying power in our culture is that
| it's describing a very real thing people see in the world
| (abusive relationships, bad working conditions, etc.)
| spwa4 wrote:
| ... but one wonders how often abusive relationships are
| simply better than available alternatives.
| megous wrote:
| eg.?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Being homeless is the immediate alternative to many
| abusive situations.
| jajko wrote:
| Thats the more severe possibility, and I don't claim its
| not realistic. But from what I've seen so far, its more
| the fear of unknown and uncertainty.
|
| Fear of unknown can be very powerful, horror movies build
| mainly on this. Also cumulative hurt of staying, while
| being higher overall, is much less than single huge
| immediate dose of hurt received by running away, at least
| they project it this way.
|
| Put kids into the mix, and we have what we have.
| rendx wrote:
| If you were treated like shit when raised, you will
| believe being treated like shit later in life is
| something you need to accept.
|
| Or, the other way round: If you were raised to develop
| healthy boundaries, you will not end up in an abuse
| relationship later on in life.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Sure, but there are also plenty of abusive situations
| where a friend or family member would be more than
| willing to take the abused person in (and the abused
| person knows this) and they still don't leave.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Which seems to be the basis for the Stockholm syndrome to
| happen.
|
| The abusive relationship has to _appear_ better than the
| available alternatives. There may be a few instances where
| it is true, but in many cases, it isn 't.
| snapcaster wrote:
| They often appear better to the victim (due to sunk costs,
| stockholm or whatever you want to call it, etc.). I don't
| think it's very common that they are better
| kstenerud wrote:
| Except it's not. Abusive relationships begin based on trust,
| and then go bad as the abuser sets into their patterns.
| They're hard to break because they started off so (seemingly)
| well, and the victim starts second-guessing that maybe it was
| they who triggered this bad behavior (thus, they stay to try
| to fix it). It's also harder to break off something that
| you've invested so much into already.
|
| That's not at all the same thing as someone who starts off
| with a violent or threatening act.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| Above all, people often stay in abusive relationships
| because of what they think is a rational analysis of the
| trade-offs. There are concerns about financial stability,
| uprooting your children's lives, losing friends, etc.
|
| In reality, the calculation tends to underestimate the risk
| of staying and overestimate the risk of leaving. But this
| is not unique to the victims of domestic abuse. It's the
| same reason people stick to bad jobs, depressing but non-
| abusive relationships, etc.
| nsteel wrote:
| From the end of the article:
|
| > Speaking on the BBC's Sideways podcast in 2021, Kristen had a
| blunt assessment of Stockholm Syndrome. "It's bullshit, if you
| can say that on the BBC. It's a way of blaming the victim. I
| did what I could to survive."
|
| And that podcast episode is very good.
| interludead wrote:
| "Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties,
| nations, and ages, it is the rule." - Friedrich Nietzsche
| bloak wrote:
| Nice! In case anyone else is curious, the original German seems
| to be: Der Irrsinn ist bei Einzelnen etwas Seltenes,- aber bei
| Gruppen, Parteien, Volkern, Zeiten die Regel.
| mistermann wrote:
| The governance of affairs on this planet seems to me like a
| legitimate instance of this phenomenon... kind of like a wife who
| defends her husband even though he abuses her. It is indeed true
| that in almost all such cases there is an even more abusive
| husband out there, but that does not make the other abusive
| husbands good in an absolute sense.
|
| It is funny and interesting how differently people interpret
| abstract matters like this depending on what the object level
| topic is.
| dkarl wrote:
| A key detail that sometimes gets lost in the complexity of the
| story is that Clark Olofsson, one of the two criminals that the
| hostages supposedly formed an irrational bond with, was in jail
| at the start of the siege and was sent into the situation by
| police with a promise of a reduction in his sentence if he helped
| the hostages survive. If the hostages were perceptive about his
| motives, and detected a genuine fear of harm coming to them, that
| could have influenced their feelings towards him.
|
| I think there's likely a lot of truth in the idea of Stockholm
| Syndrome, but this story seems too complicated to be convincing
| evidence for it.
| complaintdept wrote:
| Funny bit of trivia, Patty Hearst went on to be in several of
| John Waters' movies.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Initial speaker 100% sounds like Coach Steve from the Netflix
| show Big Mouth.
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