In 1974, a scandalous film directed by Liliana Cavani, The Night Porter, was released, which told about a chance meeting in a Vienna hotel of a porter named Max (a former Nazi, with his hands covered in blood of concentration camp prisoners) and a certain Lucia, at one time experienced all the horrors of Nazism.
Between the executioner and the victim, now an elegant wealthy lady, a fatal passion flares up, which makes the heroine forget about her legitimate husband and family life …
In the cinema - as in life
And this is not the only example of the unnatural attraction that the victim begins to feel for his executioner. Similar situations have been repeatedly described in the literature, reflected in feature films.
It is worth remembering the famous film "Forty-first" directed by G. Chukhrai based on the story by B. Lavrenev, which takes place during the Civil War. By the will of fate, the white lieutenant-aristocrat Govorukha-Otrok and the best shooter of the Red Army detachment - a girl named Maryutka - find themselves together on a deserted island.
They take refuge in a fisherman's hut, hoping that one day they will be able to escape from here. During the agonizing wait, the young man and the girl fall in love with each other. True, when a ship with White Guards nevertheless approaches the island, Maryutka shoots in the back of an officer who rushed towards the ship.
The French sitcom Runaways shows the emergence of friendship between an idiot terrorist (played by Pierre Richard) and a former bandit who became his hostage (the hero of Gerard Depardieu).
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Girl in the basement
Natasha Maria Kampusch, now an Austrian TV presenter, was abducted by engineer Wolfgang Priklopil on March 2, 1998 and spent eight (!) Years in his basement at a depth of 2.5 m. Over the years, she has many times had the opportunity to escape from her tormentor, which the girl did not. However, later she made an attempt to escape, which was crowned with success.
Finding the loss of Natasha and not wanting to go to prison, Priklopil threw himself under the train. And his victim, who miraculously managed to escape death, repeatedly stressed in interviews that he sympathizes with his kidnapper, regrets his death and does not hold any grudge against him. Moreover, in her book, where she described her life in captivity with a criminal, Natasha declared: "Wolfgang was nice to me, and I will always pray for him."
On April 27, 2008, another Austrian was arrested - 73-year-old Josef Fritzl. For almost 24 years, he held and raped his daughter Elizabeth in the basement. She gave birth to seven children from her father, one of them died (Fritzl secretly burned his body). Moreover, Elizabeth's mother knew nothing about the fate of her daughter.
The court sentenced the maniac to life imprisonment, and Elizabeth and her children are under the protection of the state, which pays for their maintenance and treatment. They changed their names and surnames, settled on the other side of the country. However, according to psychiatrists, mother and children will never be able to adapt to normal life. Elizabeth herself is quite careful in assessing her father's attitude to himself. She does not condemn or curse him. The only request she made after her release. - whatever she is. neither the children ever met Josef Fritzl again.
The women were delighted
The psychological state in which the victim or hostages begin to sympathize with the invaders or even identify with them (identification with the aggressor) was first described by the British psychoanalyst Anna Freud in 1936. Later it became known as the Stockholm Syndrome. It was introduced by the forensic scientist Nils Bidgeret after analyzing the situation that arose almost 40 years ago, on August 23, 1973, in Stockholm (Sweden) during the seizure of a bank by terrorists.
On that day, the fugitive prisoner Jan Erik Ullson entered the premises of the Sveriges Kreditbanken. He wounded a police officer and managed to single-handedly take four bank employees hostage: three women and one man. The offender demanded to give him three million Swedish kronor (about two million dollars), weapons, body armor, a car, and also to release and deliver his cellmate Clark Olofsson to the bank. Otherwise, Ullson threatened to shoot the hostages.
The police hastened to fulfill only the last demand of the terrorist: Clark was taken to the bank in the evening. But with other requirements, difficulties arose, which caused the fury of the criminal and served as a pretext for a small firefight.
For a long time, the police worked out a plan to release the hostages and capture an escaped prisoner, but only five days later, the law enforcement officers had the opportunity to conduct a gas attack. All this time, Ullson was in the armored vault of the bank with the hostages.
Within half an hour, the criminals were neutralized, the hostages were not injured. Moreover, the women refused to leave the building first, saying that they fear for the lives of Ullson and Olofsson. During the time spent with the criminals, the ladies got so used to them that they perceived them as close people.
Surprisingly, the women hostages at the trial did not bring any charges against their captors. Moreover, they hired lawyers with their own money to defend them. One of the women even divorced her husband and became engaged to Ullson. As a result, Clark Olofsson was acquitted, and the initiator of the robbery Jan Erik Ullson received only ten years in prison, of which he served only eight.
Later, Olofsson repeatedly met with the hostages, was friends with them and their families. And the prisoner Ullson received letters from admiring women from all over Sweden for many months …
Why don't they beat?
Experts believe that Stockholm Syndrome is not a psychological paradox, but a normal reaction of the victim to an event that traumatizes the psyche. Moreover, this syndrome can manifest itself not only during hostage-taking by terrorists, but also during military punitive operations (taking prisoners of war), imprisonment (in prisons, concentration camps), the administration of court procedures, within political groups and religious sects (with the development of authoritarian interpersonal relations), during national ceremonies (for example, bride kidnapping), kidnapping (for the purpose of enslavement, blackmail, ransom) and quite often - during outbreaks of intra-family sexual and domestic violence.
Stockholm Syndrome most often occurs when hostages are in contact with terrorists for a long time. A long stay in captivity leads to the fact that the victim gets to know the criminal better and, in conditions of complete physical dependence on him, begins to interpret any of his actions in his favor.
Therefore, the victims fear the authorities' liberation operations much more than terrorist threats, and justify this with a desire to save their lives in an extreme situation. After all, as long as the terrorists are alive, so are the hostages. There are cases when the captured people warned terrorists about the start of the liberation operation and even … covered them with their bodies from bullets. Sometimes the criminals hid among the hostages, and they did not give them up.
How many people, so many reactions
In an extreme situation, a person is likened to a small child who has been unjustly offended by "bad uncles". He wants to be protected, and when this does not happen, he begins to adjust to his abuser. A traumatic bond develops between the victim and the abuser, which under certain circumstances can last for years. For example, a semblance of the Stockholm syndrome manifests itself in many wives who are really afraid of losing their husbands, who for years behave with their spouses like dictators and tyrants. Indeed, on an unconscious level, the experienced physical or emotional pain is often perceived as a symbol of love and protection …
And the source of this phenomenon is often to be found in childhood, when boys are persuaded to respond to aggression with aggression, and girls are taught to be submissive and gentle, especially towards men.
Moreover, a quarter of the total number of victims show favor and try to please the criminals almost deliberately, realizing that only obedience can somehow improve their situation, reduce the threat of terror towards themselves and their loved ones.
And here's another scary thing: Stockholm syndrome often occurs without reciprocity. That is, the invaders, to whom the victims (more often women) begin to feel warm feelings, do not respond in kind. On the contrary, they very skillfully use this love in their own interests, and not always for the benefit of the victim itself.
According to psychologists, the emergence of a special trusting relationship with a criminal is strictly individual: it is very difficult to predict how your subconscious will behave in a stressful situation. Therefore, in extreme cases, try to maintain internal resilience, even if outwardly you have to demonstrate submission. It should be a well-calculated "action of obedience", which, nevertheless, will allow you to keep your head "in the cold", retain the ability to think logically, restraint and ultimately help you find the right way out.
Svetlana VASILIEVA