Stockholm Syndrome is a misogynistic lie that a police psychiatrist told to discredit a woman who was outspoken about her fear and distrust of the police who had repeatedly risked her life. Here’s what really happened:

Nils Bejerot was a police psychiatrist working on a bank robber hostage case. One of the hostages was named Kristin Enmark, a bank employee. Enmark was outspoken about the police botching the case, and specifically named Bejerot in this criticism – he was the hostage negotiator but had refused to speak with her when she requested.

Enmark actively fought for her survival as the police botched the case terribly. Since the negotiator refused to talk with her, she gave a live radio interview from the bank, saying that the police were playing with their lives. When that didn’t work she contacted the Prime Minister and asked him to intervene, advocating for the robbers to be allowed to leave with herself and another willing hostage who they would set free once they’d gotten away. She thought this was the safest option available.

The prime minister told her to be content with the idea that she would die at her post. Enmark replied: “I don’t want to be a dead hero”.

Six days after she had been taken hostage, the police teargassed the vault and got the robbers – parading them up and down the street for the crowd. Enmark was furious, and this time when she interviewed on the radio, she not only criticised the police but specifically named Bejerot.

In response, Bejerot dismissed her comments as the product of a syndrome he invented on the spot: Norrmalmstorg syndrome. (The bank was located in Norrmalmstorg Square in Stockholm, Sweden.)

Bejerot claimed that Enmark’s fear of the police was driven by her emotional or sexual attachment to her captors. Bejerot still had not spoken to Enmark, not even once. The media supported this “diagnosis” largely because Enmark didn’t fit their misogynistic standards for how women victims should act. She didn’t act traumatised enough for their tastes, but was instead “suspiciously” clear and alert and a vocal self-advocate.

Norrmalmstorg syndrome was later renamed to Stockhom syndrome.

In the fifty years since it’s invention, most of the diagnoses have been made by the media, and it’s been largely used to discredit women victims of violence.

There are only two key behavioral components to this “diagnosis”:

*distrust of police or government authorities / failure to cooperate to whatever extent the authorities demand

*a hostage’s belief in the humanity of their captor / their perception that their captor is not a threat (or is a lesser threat compared to the police)

That is it.

Enmark accurately assessed the threat to her life as coming from the police and fought back against it, and for that she got labelled crazy.

(the screenshots of book pages below are from “See What You Made Me Do: The Dangers of Domestic Abuse That We Ignore, Explain Away, or Refuse to See” by Jess Hill)

Source: Tali David

So if you read all that you can see how Stockholm Syndrome is based on a misogynistic lie. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!