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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. We're back from a brief break. We had some classic episodes as we were all off on separating collective adventures. We hope you had a great series of holiday adventures as well. This one reminded me a little bit, you guys, of our earlier conversation on how
to navigate the holidays. Remember we did a whole episode about that.
That has some seriously good intel. I think for the folks out there, it can be tough, and it's only getting tougher with these trying times.
Yeah, but hey, spending time with family can be one of the best things ever. And guys, I don't know about y'all, it was wonderful this year.
Oh it wasn't too bad for me either. My chosen family in general. Did you guys see there's an article that was floating around about the idea of like disconnecting from family is becoming more and more common because of like just irreconcilable differences, like to do with politics and certain things like these kind of awkward dinner table conversations, but just taken to the extreme. I think it's a generational thing that I saw a piece about it that apparently it's becoming super common.
Yeah, the holidays are always very difficult for me personally, because you know, everybody's got a spectrum of experience, right, and chosen family can be just as important as biological family sometimes. Honestly, this is sadly familiar to a lot of us in the crowd this evening. You can feel like you're in a hostage situation when you're at the holidays. You know, like, come on, uncle Ronnie, I asked you to pass the you know, the mashed potatoes, not to give me a hard sell on crypto or the gold
standard or whatever political bent is. In commemoration of everyone who survived perhaps strange non consensual proselytization attempts at a family gathering. We're going back to a conversation we had earlier in twenty twenty four. What is Stockholm? This is based on something from a listener mail segment. Why are some people convinced Stockholm syndrome is fake?
It's a good question that we're going to get to right after just a really quick word from a sponsor.
Here are the facts. All right, we've all heard of Stockholm syndrome, right, it's not a medical condition where you slowly turn into the city of Stockholm in Sweden. Oh, that look like terrifying. It would look it would look pretty weird, right.
I have become a very progressive city with really good medical benefits and funding for the arts. Yes, actually sounds kind of great.
I think more Stockholms in the world would be a good thing. I agree with you. This particular Stockholm syndrome, the one you hear about in film and probably tons of true crime podcast It's an alleged psychological response wherein someone held against their will, taken captives, somehow they begin to identify positively with their captors.
Yeah. It's described and defined in a couple of different ways, and we're going to get into the complexity of that as we go here. But this concept of at least in some way empathizing or finding a common there's like a connection between captor and captive that is there.
Right, And you don't have to be a kidnapping victim to understand this phenomenon as it's described anyway. I think we've all maybe had jobs in the past or we felt a little bit like we were experiencing Stockholm syndrome, whether it be because we're so stressed about losing a job that we just start to kind of empathize, I guess, with really really awful employers because we feel like the alternative is too terrifying to imagine.
And you could also see it applied to a microcosmic level, a non crime level, just toxic relationships can lead to something very much like something very similar to what we call Stockholm syndrome. And that's because there's so many examples, because the name, the nomenclature, the terminology is new. But proponents of Stockholm syndrome will argue the phenomena itself is ancient. For example, back in less secular days, rival religious forces might take over a community and later the people who
have been taken over convert to that religion. So arguably it's not us saying this. Arguably, Stockholm syndrome could be an example of that.
There's so much psychology involved, Like I mean, you see it in folks who are put through really really horrific interrogations. For example, there's like mind games that are played by one's captors to make like almost the good cop bad cop kind of thing where you start to feel like someone's in your corner and they're the only ones that can rescue you from the situation that they themselves put you in.
Start using the royal we, the inclusive pronouns, how they get you. This identification is to your point, Matt, it's a personal ideological exercise of empathy. Right, We're not so different to you and Ie. The person who experiences Stockholm syndrome has a rapport with their captor on what appears to be a personal level, kind of like how you would vibe with a close friend or a romantic partner.
And then the extra layer on the cake here is that the person experiencing Stockholm syndrome also starts to identify with the agenda and demands of the captor. So Stockholm syndrome argues that if you are kidnapped in certain circumstances, even if your captors have the opposite ideology that you
subscribe to. Over time, you start to lean toward the power structure in which you exist, which is another comp for this would be prisoners of war, right, maybe American military members held by communist forces back in the day who eventually said, there's something to this, Carl Marx guy.
I mean, it's an odd kind of self preservation mechanism in a way, right.
Yeah, that's one of the big questions, right, Is it a psychological condition, a strategy that can be employed, or a coping mechanism or other or some combination, you know.
Yeah, right? And this obviously, folks, this does not happen in every kidnapping, every hostage situation, every toxic relationship. As a matter of fact, as we'll come to find the smartest people in the field right now, still don't know how often this happens overall and exactly what mix of factors lead to this alleged phenomena occurring. But we do
know the human face of this. We know the stories that led to both the existing of Stockholm syndrome in public in the public sphere, as well as the problems with whether or not, Stockholm syndrome exists. One of the most famous examples. I can't believe this is over half a century ago now is a newspaper eiress Patricia Hurst Patty to her friends, we all remember when she got kidnapped.
Oh yeah, that's when the nineteen year old daughter of this huge, well known person, mister Hurst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. This is nineteen seventy four. Well, it's a long story, and I guess let's tell you. Because she got kidnapped and then things started getting weird, at least the information that was coming out to people via newspapers like mister Hurst's.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a good connection there. It's surreal. The reason she was kidnapped the SLA Symbionese Liberation Army. They're like a far leftist terrorist group. Basically, they wanted a high value target for leverage because they wanted the authorities in California to free two of their members from incarceration. And they said, we need we need a VIP hostage and we can ransom off this hostage and exchange for our compatriots Patty Hurst to get This is yes, an heiress,
but more importantly, for the SLA, she is convenient. This sounds so dumb, but they picked her because her apartment was near the SLA hideout. They were like, what am I going to drive across town through California traffic just for a hostage? What are the chances?
That's so funny.
Well, it makes it feel like it was an a crime of opportunity, right, oh, Patty Hurst lives over there. Shoot.
It's like, you know, you may have a favorite grocery store, but the grocery store you go to most often is the one closest to you, you know, And that's kind of what they did. They went to the closest grocery store. California did not free the SLA members. The organization pivoted to this other request. It's a story all its own, maybe fit for ridiculous history. But to your earlier point there, things got weird so quickly. Hostage situation is never pleasant.
It is incredibly dangerous. Multiple people are being held hostage for a multitude of reasons across the world today. Hurst was kept in a closet and blindfolded for weeks. Over time, her captors would say that she earned things like a flashlight for reading literature from this terrorist group, so she could get the blindfold removed in the closet and have a flashlight and read the stuff they allowed her to read.
I mean, isn't it a kind of conditioning in a way if you think about it, sort of like the way you train an animal. You know, you train an animal by oftentimes being kind of mean and then giving a treat of some kind, you know, giving some sort of reward, but usually there is some sort of well not necessarily violence, some sort of unpleasant kind of forcing, you know, behavior on a creature when you're trying to train it. Carrots and sticks, Yeah, yeah, exactly. It certainly
seems like there's a combination of carrots and sticks. I'm just trying to like wrap my head around how our minds kind of Yeah, what's the word acclimate to this kind of thing? Because to me, at the end of the day, it is about acclamation to a really nasty situation, and to keep us from kind of going insane, we sort of go a different kind of insane.
Yeah, the mind is malleable, which is a tremendous advantage and a tremendous danger to the question about sticks.
And all.
Yeah, she was repeatedly threatened with death, like every day they said, you know, we're going to kill you. On a lighter pop culture note, if you are not familiar with the Hurst case, maybe you're familiar with The Princess Bride, where a spoiler the dread Pirate Roberts does about the same thing to the protagonist of The Prince's Bride, I'm going tomorrow, I'm going to kill you. Tomorrow, I'm going
to kill you and then lo and behold. Ultimately our protagonist becomes the next dread Pirate Roberts.
Yeah, spoiler alerted, just a spoilers.
Just say it to the animal training thing, often, you don't train an animal by pointing a gun at it and saying sit.
You know. That's what I'm trying to reconcile because even with training, it's not all pleasant, but you're also not necessarily whipping the animal or like you know there. I guess it's different depending on the animal. Like horses, you certainly are applying a bit, you know, putting like a bit in their mouth and sometimes whipping them and getting them to be sort of under your thumb. But then that's where the whole carrot and stick thing comes from, isn't it's horse training.
That's exactly where it comes from. Yeah, and it's also positive reinforcement, right is, in the non scientific sense, is huge and does a better job of incurring loyalty, which is really what you're going for with indoctrination. Check out our episodes on cults.
So yeah, and if that's the only thing you have access to, right, the literature that she's being supplied, then your mind is kind of racing inside that blindfold with the threat of death. But then when you have a moment, the thoughts that are coming into your head are the ones that they've curated for.
You, right, Yeah, another cult in doctrination technique right limit access to information, or diplomatically put curate it. Hurst eventually is allowed to leave the closet for brief periods to eat meals. She's still blindfolded so that she doesn't clock where she's at, and she's allowed to participate in political discussions. That's a reward for doing the whole work and reading. Eventually, as their plans on the SLA's part keep going sideways,
they offer Patricia Hurst a choice. They say, we're not going to kill you. As a matter of fact, we can release you or you can join our organization's interest into it.
Yeah, gosh, I mean it really does mean. I'm sorry I keep getting hung up on this, but it starts to make me think about the behavior of cult leaders as well, you know, and just the conditioning that goes on in cults where certainly people join of their own volition or free will at first, but then their behavior becomes less and less about what they would normally do and is more molded in the image or in the interest of the cult leader, and oftentimes not in their
best interest at all. But yet somehow, like for example, like Heaven's Gate, these people took their own lives, you know, at the a behest of this cult leader, and they believed that that was the right thing to do. But that is the very definition of a behavior that is not in one's best interest.
Yeah. Again, please do check out our episodes of videos on how to start a cult and big thanks to our bells, Chuck Bryant, Jonathan Strictly, who else. There were several people in those videos. But we give you a step by step process of indoctrination. Again, and that's because it's a rubric it's a set of tactics that is
ideologically agnostic. It'll work for a far right terrorist organization, a far left terrorist organization, any kind of religious sect you can imagine, and it worked for Patty Hurst at least. That's the argument that we'll see in court because after weeks of being indoctrinated, arguably brainwashed, when she was given the choice, it was a false decision. They knew what she was going to choose, because they had already primed
her and groomed her to do so. She chose to stay and fight with the SLA and she put out announcements to the media to this effect.
On the flip side of that, though, Ben, is there not a part of this that does somewhat remove the agency from an individual. Is there no chance that she really just did, in some small way identify with their cause.
Yeah, it's excellent foreshadowing there because and that's why we're also introducing the idea of the legal argument, right, because the Hearst family was able to afford the best lawyers, and they did need the lawyers, because this was not just a statement of moral support on Herst side. In fact, after these statements were released, she went on to assist the group in bank robberies and other crimes. She eventually, spoiler alert, gets arrested on September eighteenth, nineteen seventy five.
I really feel like we should do an entire episode of something just on this. Okay. So she's in the system, back in the system again for a couple of weeks, and she renounces her allegiance to this group. At the trial, she and her legal team claim she was coerced, she was threatened, she was under duress. This whole thing was a survival strategy.
Yeah, and you can see that, right. Your logical brain says, oh, okay, that kind of makes sense. But if we take ourselves back and you think, okay, the granddaughter of William randolph Hurst, literally a titan of American industry, has taken a photograph with herself holding a gun in front of this flag, right, And that's after all of the newspaper stories about granddaughter of William Randolph Hurst missing, just coming at you and coming at you. I imagining just a member of the
public experiencing this. And then you see that photograph and then you hear her denounce her entire family and the fortune that she would eventually come into and just how shocking that would be. You can see how a legal team then in the time we're talking about, would need a very strong argument to kind of explain the behaviors that everybody witnessed publicly.
Yeah, well said, because straight up insanity defenses almost never work. That's like buying a lottery ticket, winning five dollars and then spending that on another series of lottery tickets and winning all of those. The odds are against you in court to try to plead insanity. This is happening in the public square, right, she gets sentenced. There's life in prison on the table. She gets pardoned, surprised, she gets released. And when the the defense team is putting together their argument,
like you said, something needs to be really solid and compelling. Here, they look to a case over in Sweden less than around about a year before Hurst was kidnapped, there was a bank robbery in Stockholm and this led to the first description of what we call Stockholm syndrome. Today, we'll take a break for a word from our sponsors, and then we're gonna get a little cinematic and we've returned tri force. Can you hit us with some cool heist music? Yeah?
There it is, man, we're dropping down from the ceiling.
What's the origin story of Stockholm syndrome. Let's really get into.
The moment there in seventy three, we definitely talked about this on that Listener Mail episode. Let's go into a little more depth here. On the morning of August twenty third, nineteen seventy three, and escaped convict by the name of yan Eric Olsen entered the Sveragas Credits Bunkin, which is a busy bank and an upscale neighborhood in Stockholm, which on paper looks like it should be pronounced normal Stork square. That is not how it's pronounced. Maddie, we help us
out with this. I can't even remember you just told me off, Mike, and it's already left my brain place.
I might be completely wrong, but I heard it sounds like Normum's story.
Okay, h all right, I got a y sound from a g language. How about that?
So yan Eric gets into this bank, he's he's strapped, not everybody in sweetness strapped. He's got a submachine gun. He fakes an American accent and he yells.
The party's just good cow bunga dudes, doesn't he have like a wig on too.
Yeah, he's got a wig. He's in a he's in a disguise, both audibly and physically.
It's very point break kind of vibes. I don't know why I'm thinking that, but he did use said so machine gun to wound, thankfully, just wound a policeman who responded to one of those silent alarms. It's like the bane of bank robbery. Now, don't you do it. Don't you do it, lady, I see what you're thinking. Don't do it. But she did it. They did it. Whomever did it, and this policeman did respond to that call for help.
And after things were surprised, things often go sideways in a heist. After the wounding of this police officer, this robber yon Eric takes four bank employees hostage. Yon Eric get this is conducting this bank robbery while he's on vacation because Sweden is one of those countries that lets convicts take vacation from prison. He had already been convicted. He was serving a three year sentence for grand larceny.
And I guess the folks in charge of the prison system were way more chill than they are in the United States.
Man, man, it seems like the prisoners in Europe get treated better than the average citizens here in the United States. Not to be too hyperbolic about it, but yeah, sorry, we just after all this Luigi Mangioni talked that he've been doing lately, and the state of healthcare and just you know, wealth disparities in general. Talking about this kind of stuff really does sort of bum you out.
Check out the pictures of Scandinavian prisons. You know what I mean.
It's like an Ikea nice college apartments, I know exactly, It's like those little sample rooms and an Ikea show floor.
So he has God on furlough because he's being so cool in prison, and as soon as he gets out, he goes on this bank robbery and he says to the authorities, you need to give me the equivalent of seven hundred thousand dollars in Swedish and foreign currency. Also, I want to get away car, and it better be a sweet getaway car. Also, you gotta let out my
buddy Clark Olafson, not Olsen olla Son. He is currently locked up for armed robbery and aiding in the murder of a police officer in nineteen sixty six, So that guy's under the jail.
Yeah, that's a tall order, wouldn't you say, releasing a prisoner of that caliber. We're in a country where there isn't nearly the level of violent crime that we have here. Yeah, you're right on that level of violent crime. Point too, This is so rare that this kind of armed hostage crisis hasn't really happened in Sweden. Everybody's tuned into the news. No one, including the police, are sure what to do.
And the police say, okay, well, let's get this Clark guy. Maybe he can help us in the hostage negotiations. So they talk with Clark before they release him into the bank, and they say, look, you're going to be working for us. You're going to help de escalate this. That's why we're sending you in. We're not sending you in to ride shotgun in a getaway car, buddy, We're sending you in
to help us. He complies. Within hours, the police deliver Clark, they deliver the ransom money, and they deliver a getaway car, which is a pretty sweet looking blue Ford Mustang with a full tank. A guess nice a little flashy for a getaway car.
Probably just stick out like a sore thumb there in Stockholm, don't you think?
Yeah? Oh yeah, why do I get a VW or exactly, he's in very good heightst etiquette.
Just a quick little detail to add in here. One of the things that Yan brought into the bank robbery initially was a transistor radio, so he could literally put on the radio with these four hostages and listen to the stories that were being reported about him robbing the bank as he's doing it, Which is an interesting tactic, right You've we've seen in Hollywood films and stuff like somebody bringing in a police radio or something like that to scan to scan all the channels and see what
the chatter is. In this case, he's just listening to the radio and you can imagine I don't know, I can imagine him being in there and then the hostages hearing the police response right as it's occurring, and I can only imagine that added to the terror feeling like something horrible is about to happen.
Oh, oh, Kristin, turn it up.
They mentioned you, yeah, Kristin Enmark, right.
Yeah, yeah. The four hostages are Kristin Enmark, Bergeta Lundebland, Elizabeth Oldgren and ven Softstrom. So three women, one dude. And this this gets to a point where the Swedish authorities are saying, you know, look, we're trying to be cool, we're trying to save lives, but we are not going to let you leave with those hostages in this ford mustang. Where's that's a step too far for us. That's a rubicon we do not cross.
And that mustang is pretty tiny.
And that mustang is it's going to be cramped, you.
Know, Is that that's like a two door though probably right, so you'd have to like literally pop the seats forward to get people into the back.
It's yeah, it's it's going to be unpleasant to have six people in there. And as a result, the authorities and these criminals they're to stand off. The robbers hold the hostages in one of the bank's vaults for six days, and they're hank it. They're there for a week together. Olsen says, look, if you attempt to breach this structure with say, tear gas, then I will kill all four of these people, and the police eventually do mount an attack with tear gas. This causes the robbers to surrender
all hostages survive. Olsen, the original guy is sentenced to ten years, but his pal Clark is ultimately acquitted.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, well, let's talk about what happened a couple of days before they tear asked the place when the police, the police didn't know who actually was in there at first, right, they sent somebody in who they believed was the brother of the person they thought was committing this crime. And that person walked up basically to the bank trying to say, hey, bro,
it's me, it's your brother. But then I think it was Jan who fired several shots through the bank window or through the bank doors and the windows at this person, or at least to scare this person away. And that is one of the primary things that occurred where the folks being held hostage in the bank started to think, oh crap, these police might actually get us killed. And you know, you can feel that already occurring before the gas attack.
Yeah, as Enmark recalls in specific, police started messing up fairly early on Jan Eric Olcid had successfully disguised his appearance and his voice, remember that American accent, so police did misidentify him. Initially. They confused him with another infamous bank robber who had previously escaped from prison, not on furlough, not on vacation, he was supposed to still be in prison. They sent the guy's brother in along with a police officer,
thinking they could talk him down. John Eric understandably freaked out. He doesn't know this guy from a canna paint. He fires at the strangers, and then there's this absurdist Vonnegut esque side note. The bank robber that the Swedish authorities thought was inside was actually on the run and made it to Hawaii, and he was pissed off. He was so mad that he was accused of being behind the heist. He called Swedish police and said, hey, come on, guys,
be cool, I'm not the hostage taker here. And when he called that's what led to him getting extradited, apprehended, extradited and arrested and put back in prison.
So we were talking about how rare this kind of stuff is, and there just happens to be another guy who was also on the lamb that was a candidate for this.
That's really weird.
It's a perfect storm of circumstances.
Yeah, they were working with information asymmetry, right, They didn't know what they didn't know. And also we see, you know, a little bit of foreshadowing of the great controversy of Stockholm syndrome. And we'll get back to that moment later. Right, we know that there were multiple instances wherein according to the first hand experience of the hostages, the police seemed like their actions might be as dangerous as those of
the robbers. All Right, something curious happens though, Right, the hostages are released and none of them will testify against either robber, against either criminal. In fact, they begin raising money for the criminal's defense fund, which is pretty fascinating when you think about it. You know, it seems counterintuitive, right. One of the first questions the police have is have these victims somehow been on the inside of the heist? You know, are they co conspirators? It didn't seem to
be the case. Unlike the Patty Hurst situation. They did not recant their support. If you continue to visit the robbers after everything shook out in the aftermath, and it looks like they genuinely became friends, like lifelong friends.
Well, they spent one pretty weird week together, that's for sure.
Exactly.
I will always have the trauma bonding right, Like you can trauma bond with somebody even if they themselves are the ones responsible for creating the trauma. Like I don't think our brains always differentiate those kinds of things. It's like it's a defense mechanism, like I was saying earlier.
Yeah, agreed.
So Swedish authorities call it in a criminologist and psychologist named Neil's help you with us on Matt Bejiru Beirut not native Swedish speakers, if they they're Matt. He is the guy who invents or coinvents the term Stockholm syndrome. Because again, pretty much the entire nation of Sweden is
watching this. They're glued to the screen. Even to give us a sense of the magnitude, a higher percentage of the Swedish population is watching this than the percentage of people who watch the OJ Simpson trial or the car or the infamous car chase. Like everybody is watching this and they want answers. And this guy, this psychologist, he analyzes the victims' reactions and what he understands to be their accounts of being held hostage, and he says, look,
these folks have been brainwashed. He originally called this Norman Story syndrobit after the square, how do we do that? Was it not bad? All right? So the Norman story syndrome. Outside of Sweden, they started calling it Stockholm syndrome because honestly, it's easier for non Swedish speakers to pronounce. And you hear it name checked in fiction, true crime, news, kidnappings, abusive, romantic or familial relationships. It seems like a huge deal
and a deep rabbit hole of psychology. However, to this day, some critics and some experts will tell you this syndrome is pretty much made up. We'll be back after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. Most of the public long ago accepted Stockholm syndrome as a real, if rare thing, but it's academic and scientific reputation is
far less secure. It's often referred to as a contested illness, which is a very polite way of acknowledging that a ton of experts seem to think beat me here, Andrew seem to think it's bold.
Yeah, and it is interesting when you've got a term like this, it does feel like it's a quick and easy definition when somebody uses it, like in a sentence or to describe something. In my head, at least for a long time, it meant, oh, identifying with a bad guy when I hear Stockholm syndrome, like that's all. That's
all I hear. But then if you actually look into it and you try and figure out what is the definition of Stockholm syndrome, you can look at places like the Cleveland Clinic, and you know, the Mayo Clinic and Psychology Today and all these places, and it's described a little bit differently everywhere, and then you realize that the DSM doesn't even have it right all right.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM textbook familiar to any psychology college student. It is the bible of psychiatric illnesses and disorders here in the United States. It is a work in progress. It's highly imperfect. But Stockholm syndrome is not in there. And if you go to folks like Paul Appelbaum, for a long time was the chair of the DSM Steering Committee, he will tell you they can't put Stockholm syndrome in there because there's
no consistent body of academic research on this. Stockholm syndrome as a concept never met the requirements to even get to the review stage for the DSM. Further, everybody seemed to know that because no one ever submitted it for inclusion in the first place. Nobody ever even pitched the idea of making this an official meant condition. There are no identified diagnostic criteria at all for the alleged condition.
And to your point, it does seem that the origin story of Stockholm syndrome is widely misunderstood and perhaps in some cases purposely misunderstood. This is where we got to go back to one of the one of the hostages
we mentioned earlier, Kristin Nmark. She had a great conversation with a therapist named Alan Wade that you can read in depth in the Independent, and she's been on record multiple times with her problems concerning how the concept of Stockholm syndrome was applied to her story and the story of those other hostages.
Yeah, it's pretty incredible. Yeah, the one the thing I read ben was in the ABC, but it's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I think where there's there's it's probably part of the same interview. But it is just fascinating the amount of things that people just didn't have the full context for when her story is being described and talked about back in seventy three, seventy four, when all this stuff is going down, there's just so much nuance to
it that she talks to this person about. So this is a twenty three year old young professional working at the bank. Curiously, she's described as a stenographer at the bank. But we're not sure what that means or what that would be as a role in a bank.
I guess we know that more in terms of like a court, you know, documentary and who's like taking things down that maybe in Europe it's a term for someone who does banking, who knows.
Yeah, maybe everything has to be on record at the bank.
You know, that would be important.
So I's just there typing when you walk in. I think that's kind of cool. She is already immediately thrust into a surreal, dare we say, dream like situation. This is not a normal day, she would later tell The New Yorker in nineteen seventy four, I believed a maniac had come into my life. I believed this was I was seeing something that could only happen in America. Oh As the American accent and the US already has kind of a reputation.
Well, it's an American movie playing out in the bank that you're about. Like, her plans were to quit the bank in a couple of weeks when this happened, So she was like, already, I'm gonna be out the door. I don't have to deal with this anymore. And then this happens.
Nah, you're right, I mean, I said, point break because this scenario is the most cliche kind of like dramatic type bank robbery scenario you could possibly envision.
And we mentioned earlier that n Mark's narrative, the narratives of all the hostages don't jibe with the case the police are trying to present. We mentioned how m Mark says police started messing up fairly often. That's something the other three hostages said. We mentioned the misidentification on the part of the police. These are the high points in
the narrative difference. But there's a lot more going on there, and some of these things are things we will never really know, right, We won't know the full details of what went on in those vaults.
Emotionally, so we know that at least we know Kristen was tied her hands and her feet were bound at least initially, so she's put into that place psychologically as all of this stuff is playing out.
Yeah and yeah, let's focus there on the hostages, because the actions of the police of law enforcement are really putting the hostages in intense disease because they are hearing these crazy bits of speculation in the media, They're hearing these statements from law enforcement on that transistor radio, and they are increasingly certain with every passing day, perhaps every passing hour, that this is not going to end peacefully. This crisis is the first televised crime in the country.
In real time. Something like three quarters of the population are tuning in just to get the latest updates, which means that even if you don't own a radio or read a newspaper or watch TV, you can't escape it.
Everybody is talking about this. So Olsen, our original bank robber, yan Eric and Kristin Enmark, at separate times, both speak to the Prime Minister of Sweden, and the Prime Minister spends nearly an hour on the phone with Kristin and Mark, and she tells him directly, I feel like the police are gonna I feel like we're gonna die due to police action. They're going to try to rescue us, They're gonna botch it, and then we will be killed, and she later claimed this didn't come out for the public
for a while. She later claimed the Prime Minister of Sweden said, look, if you get killed when police try to de escalate this, you should be happy to have died at your post.
Ooh, yikes, I mean, talk about a psychological switcherero there when the hostages are beginning to identify more with their captors than they are with their supposed rescuers, because they're starting to see them as more of a threat than the bank robbers.
Well, yeah, let's talk about the way Kristen describes the situation after Clark, the other criminal, shows up on the scene. She talks about how this other person came in and, as we described, the police basically said Clark, you're going in for our side to kind of take care of this situation, to handle it a little bit. And according to Kristen, she was very happy when this other guy showed up because he actually showed kindness to the hostages,
specifically saying that he comforted me. He held my hand and he said I'm going to see that Yan doesn't hurt you. So you can imagine if you've got two people simultaneously holding you hostage, but one of them is good cop essentially, right, you can imagine a bond maybe being formed with one and not with the other, or in a different way at least.
Sure. Yeah, there's the identification again, the building of some sort of rapport, and the construction of that rapport can be exacerbated by contrast. Right, one of these is the good cop, and that's the one that I will comply with. Right, and again, jan Eric said, if you try a gas attack,
I'm going to kill the hostages. But even though the hostages knew this, even though the police knew that he said this, the police did so anyway, So if you put yourself in the mind of the hostages, it starts to look like the police may not super care what happens to you.
Yeah, they were above the hostages drilling a hole in the ceiling so they could drop the gas down into and according to reports, hostages were down there going, please, don't do this, Do not do this. Can't you hear what this crazy guy is saying. He's gonna kill us. Don't do this please?
Yeah, and so in the aftermath, the hostages seem pretty friendly with jan Eric and with Clark, and then critical of and downright hostile toward the police. So people are asking what happened. You know, you can imagine a police officer at the crowd going well, you know, we did save your life, and then getting the cold shoulder. This guy kneels, the psychiatrist we mentioned earlier. He realizes people
want an explanation. Sweden wants to know what happened, why it happened, and why these people are acting this way right, why they don't seem thankful for law enforcement. And now they've got an expert who will give them a simple, black and white answer. So surely, says the public, whatever he says is correct. We want that explanation. Tell us explain it. Let's move on. But what a lot of the public doesn't know is this psychologist, the psychiatrist Nils
has never met nor treated miss in Mark. His speculation is more like what Iffery and educated guesses, and before people could apply even a little bit of critical thinking or nuance or scrutiny to his statements, boom Patty Hurst. And when that case happens, an excellent defense team figures out, Hey, this is already in the public zeitgeist. Right, this cements Stockholm syndrome as a real thing, the not just the bank robbery in Sweden, but the almost immediate kidnapping scandal
with Hurst. It's a one to two combo for sure.
For sure, and just like in the Hirst case, with these weird moments that the public ends up getting to see in publications, right and in the news. There's a moment just I think we should describe here when the kidnapping is over in Stockholm, the initial one in seventy three, the person Kristen is heard, is seen and heard saying Clark, I'll see you again, as as he's being taken away,
as she's going into an ambulance. So it's almost as though they are friends or maybe even romantically involved in the way that that stated and experienced at the time. Right. So when you combine I think all these things and as you're saying with Patty Hurst, seeing that image that's stuck in the mind of everybody with the gun and the flag, the one two punch is perfect, Ben.
It's the I mean, I think you're right. The implications get pretty disturbing because Stockholm syndrome appears to paint the hostages as somehow weak willed or perhaps not fully mentally stable, and if you look at their situation, their actions are absolutely rational that therapists we mentioned earlier as a long interview with in Mark which Grieve Before the Independent, Alan Wade says, this hostage is watching police bungle the early stages of this and notices she's becoming less safe rather
than more safe. The police action from the hostage perspective is making things worse. The police may trigger these these fatalities, and so Stockholm syndrome becomes a concept that can conveniently invalidate the real concerns of those hostages and shift blame away from the authorities, sort of matrix dodge the fact that they didn't have rubric and they were messing up
a lot. This goes back to some stuff we were mentioning earlier Noel like the idea of what you will do to survive, sometimes called resistance theory.
Yeah, and Wade describes this as one of a long list of resistance theories, such as identification with an aggressor, being infantilized, trauma bonding, like we mentioned, a learned sense of helplessness and internalization or false consciousness, and these all seem to assume that people have not resisted violence, and also seem to ignore what Wade calls careful analysis of circumstances on the ground.
The Cleveland Clinic adds one other things into there as a similar set of circumstances or a linked psychological condition. Battered person syndrome is how it's stated. You can see how that kind of like all the things you just described their le and then combining it with that concept of a singular person in someone's life that is the aggressor and the abuser, but is also the comforter and like the shared roles that that person may have in someone's life. It feels very similar to this.
And of course, as we said, DSM is a work in progress. Just because something is not in the DSM right now does not automatically mean it is malarchy. But there's no escaping the convenience of the story. It's cinematic, you know. We also didn't mention this. Yeah, and Eric kind of a smoke show. Pretty attractive dude, hot guy, at least to the minds of the Swedish public. So you got a good looking criminal, You got tense misstep
on both sides, life or death stakes. This is everything you need for a summer blockbuster, and it ignores a key fact that has baffled humans since people started peopling. The human mind is complicated. It is not simple. It takes in a lot of information, It does a lot of stuff. The human mind does not know how the human mind works. And that's why hostages don't get center stage,
even though they're the ones who almost died. Anytime their first hand account differs from the narrative the law and the media wants to push, they get kind of pushed themselves off to the side. It's a way of invalidating and diminishing and dismissing these lived experiences. And it's part of a larger conspiracy. Honestly, in the n Mark case, it's a conspiracy against women historically misdiagnosed from afar by male psychiatrist with all kinds of bogus disorders like you know, hysteria.
That was a big one. Shout out to you or not shout out, but the Yellow Wallpaper read it if you haven't.
Oh, Also tip of the hat to stuff mom never told you who in their vast back catalog of episodes have talked about a lot of these kind of gas lighting concepts.
Oh yeah, well, okay, let's let's go with Christen's words one more time. Imagine you're in these shoes, You're about to leave your job. You're at your job, you just ended a relationship that wasn't going very great. You're single, you're twenty three years old, you are in you are thrust into the most stressful, terrifying situation of your life. Then another person enters that situation and is very comforting
and kind to you. Don't you think there would be some kind of bond that gets created there, just in some tiny one, even just imagine the smallest one, you would feel so thing maybe for that other person, you know.
And just to parken back to what I mentioned earlier in the episode about good cop, bad cop, you know, in interrogation scenarios, the whole purpose of having the kinder, gentler, you know, counterpart to the rough and tumble bullying kind of presence is very psychologically effective because that person can kind of manipulate and get the other person to let their guard down, or when the mean cop leaves the room, oh I'm sorry, he's just such as he's having a
bad day or whatever. Can I get you a coffee? Do you need anything? But in many ways that good cop is just as, if not more insidious than the bad cop.
And you know, again, we can't we can't discount the human moment right in this bank robbery example. Well, I do believe the good cop bad cop dichotomy holds. There's also the true possibility that this Clark guy just didn't want to be a jerk, you know, and had again earlier agreed with police say I will be there to
help to try to de escalate. But Stockholm syndrome as a conspiracy, the folks who believe it is weaponized are saying, this is just one more instance of entrenched, institutionalized assumptions and inequalities that have been around for centuries. You know. The idea here leads us to a pretty convincing argument. What if the story of the bank robbery the public initially heard was itself a heist? What if that story
was stolen by the powers that be? See what we did there, manipulated to make the victims and survivors look like they're crazy. To your earlier point about gaslighting, if certain facts are counter to the narrative, they can be ignored. The police can say, look, were we perfect? Of course not. But let's be honest. The hostages here were not in their right minds. They had stock syndrome, So can we really believe what they were saying?
Dude, dude, let's play that out to the Luigi thing. Is Luigi the twenty twenty four version of Yan or is Yon the seventy three version of Luigi? Like that? Are we all experiencing Stockholm syndrome because of the intense public support of someone who's an alleged murderer?
I mean really, yeah, Again, the name Stockholm syndrome is recent, but as we're seeing, this is just a verbal hook to hang these experiences on, to give them a name, to simplify them. Man dangerously run the risk of dismissing them. I mean, it's obvious that abuse and crime are real, and we're never going to try to diminish nor dismiss that horrific reality. But was Stockholm syndrome weaponized? I think the answer is yes.
I think so too.
Perhaps it feels that way, Yeah, it does. It does feel that way well, and.
It makes sense too, because you know. I think it's so clear from how much of a stand in the term has become, Like I use it in therapy all the time. I say, gosh, I feel like I had Stockholm syndrome from X Y scenario that I was maybe not you know, standing up for myself in you know what I mean, like because I was letting somebody bully me or and I was almost feeling as though I were empathizing or trying so hard to identify with someone
who was being unkind to me. So I just think it's such a it's become such a catch all term that I think is much more complex than the way people use it kind of conversationally, and I think it's something that most people can wrap their head around, so it's easy to weaponize it in just kind of a discourse around something where maybe it doesn't apply. Hmmm. I don't know, what do you guys think.
I think you're I think you're absolutely right, and this is what I would I don't well, would you guys mind if I read something that's at the bottom of the Cleveland Clinics explanation of what Stockholm syndrome is, and it just says a note from Cleveland clinic. It's a little long, but I'm gonna read it. Quote. Stockholm syndrome is a coping mechanism. Instead of feelings of fear, terror, and hostility towards your abuser, you may begin to feel
a sense of humanity and compassion for them. If you or a loved one has experienced Stockholm syndrome, know that your positive feelings towards your abuser are not a fault. What you're feeling is an understandable way of coping with and surviving what happened to you. Your healthcare provider will work with you to help you or your loved one.
Recover well, said Cleveland. And also we have to note not every medical authority agrees with this, because there is no to this point, there is no silver bullet universally agreed upon definition. So there's still a lot of nuance because you know, people again love explanations. The simpler, the quicker, the more black and white, the better I got stuff to do, says the human mind. So explain this, solve
this puzzle for me, and on to the next one. Unfortunately, the curious case of Stockholm syndrome as a possible conspiracy shows us something deeper. At play and whenever you hear stories about this and you see those narratives competing, you have to ask yourself, is there something that people in power don't want you to know? Spoiler? We think the answer is yes. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on email, you can find us on telephone.
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You can also find this I myself exist at the handle how Now Noel Brown exclusively on Instagram. Ben, how about you?
Yes, if you have questions, if you have book recommendations, if you have terrible jokes or memes, you can send them to me directly at Ben Bullen on Instagram, at Benbullin HSW on Twitter, or the website Benbullin dot com. Matt, what's a are you sipping those social meds?
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