Rambles, Musings, and Other Attempts of Writing

Beauty and the Beast and Stockholm Syndrome

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Stockholm Syndrome is defined as "the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor". As some misinformed people like to insist, the beloved 1991 Disney movie Beauty and the Beast appears to be a perfect example of the mental and emotional complex; the iconic story of the woman who falls in love with the beast who she had to bargain with for her father's freedom and health is clearly a twisted fairy tale version of Stockholm Syndrome, these naïve beings tend to enjoy declaring. However, if one would bother to research and discover the actual conditions and indications of this infamous subconscious disorder, the truth of this controversial theory becomes blaringly obvious.

The term "Stockholm Syndrome" originated from the infamous hostage situation that began during a bank robbery at the Sveriges Kreditbanken in Sweden's capital city, Stockholm, in August of 1973. The escaped convict, Jan-Erik Olsson, who had once staged a failed attempt to break a fellow criminal out of jail, took four of the bank's employees hostage and made demands that he would be brought "more than $700,000 in Swedish and foreign currency, a getaway car and the release of Clark Olofsson" ("The Birth of "Stockholm Syndrome," 40 Years Ago", Christopher Klein), the man who Olsson had previously endeavored to free who was currently in jail for another armed robbery and the murder of a police officer. The police complied, handing over Olofsson to the captor along with the money and even a getaway car. However, when Olsson made another demand to the police that he would be permitted to take his hostages along with him and his friend to ensure their safety, the government refused, wanting the three women and one man to be released to guarantee that they wouldn't come to harm.

For over six days, the employees were locked inside the bank with the two men, quickly gaining strange characteristics that would later baffle the public. They were calling their captors by their first names casually. When one of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, was put on the phone with Sweden's Prime Minister, she "described Olsson as kind but seemed very worried that the police would kill them all in an attack" ("Stockholm Syndrome: Definition, Cases & Treatment", Dawn Young). One day, when the chief of police was allowed inside to inspect the captives to make sure they weren't being harmed, "he noticed that the captives appeared hostile to him but relaxed and jovial with the gunmen" (Klein). Later on, the four detainees would commeet on how well they thought they were treated by Olsson and Olofsson. Enmark claimed that Olsson had comforted her after a nightmare and had given her a bullet as a keepsake. When the hostages were permitted to call their families and Birgitta Lundblad couldn't get in touch with hers, the original imprisoner was said to have encouraged to not lose hope and keep on trying to reach out to them. The one male employee held captive, Sven Safstrom, would go on to say to the police, "... he treated us well... we could think of him as an emergency God" (Klein). At one point during the six days, Olsson threatened to shoot Safstrom in the leg in order to convince the police to meet his final demand, but the would-be victim just thought that it was extremely kind and generous of him to only threaten his leg and not another, more important body part. Enmark even tried to get Safstrom to take the bullet to help their captors. On the final night, when the police released tear gas into the bank and asked for the criminals to come out before their hostages, the four insisted that they come on out, yelling that they knew the officers would shoot down the two men if they walked out first. In the aftermath of the tenseful week, the world was perplexed over the former captives' behaviors and attitudes towards Olsson and Olofsson, including the captives themselves. Elisabeth Oldgren, the fourth hostage, desperately asked a psychiatrist, "Is there something wrong with me? Why don't I hate them?" (Klein). All four bank employees would be the first in history to officially be said to have Stockholm Syndrome, the term being coined after the very city they were held in.