Stockholm syndrome: this is how the name came about

This text first appeared on SPIEGEL.de in August 2016 and has been slightly updated.

On the third day, Jan-Erik Olsson has an idea. In the bank on Stockholmer Platz Norrmalmstorg, four hostages are in his power, young people between the ages of 21 and 31. Among them is his partner Clark Olofsson, whom he had recently released from prison.

Olsson forces the hostages to stand up and puts snares around their necks, which he attaches to a cabinet in the vault. Then he picks up the phone and calmly explains to the head of operations of the police: "If you let gas in here and the four of them fall unconscious, their necks will break. Then they're dead."

Four days later, Kristin Enmark, 23, is questioned by psychologists at the hospital. The day before, the hostage-taking had ended after 131 hours. The first to Enmark is, "Are you in love with Clark Olofsson?"

It is one of the most famous criminal cases in Swedish history. And at the same time the namesake of a psychological phenomenon: Since then, the "Stockholm Syndrome" has stood for the fact that victims of hostage-taking develop understanding or even sympathy for the perpetrators, cooperate with them, and sometimes identify with them even after the crime.

First live reports of a hostage-taking

The crime begins on the morning of August 23, 1973. At ten o'clock, a man with a submachine gun enters the branch of Svenska Kreditbanken, fires a volley into the ceiling and roars: "The party has begun!" Two policemen storm into the bank, the man shoots and injures one of the two. After that, he released 56 people and kept three women and one man - all employees of the bank - in his power. "Norrmalmstorgsdramat", the drama of Norrmalmstorg, has begun.

There had also been hostage-taking in Sweden before, but never under these conditions: the news spreads in no time at all, the first media representatives arrive almost simultaneously with the police. For the first time, a Swedish criminal case is reported virtually live.

The man with the gun is Jan-Erik Olsson, 32, an inmate in Stockholm prison a few weeks earlier. His demand: three million crowns and the release of Clark Olofsson, his former cellmate. Olsson entrenches himself with the four victims, calls the office of Prime Minister Olof Palme and yells: "If we can't get out of the bank, the hostages will die!"

What must happen to people who are threatened with death as hostages? They can hardly trust their own perception and cannot assess what is happening around them and what is happening outside. They are isolated, desperate, wanting to survive and avoid a dangerous escalation. In their own powerlessness, they experience the hostage-takers as omnipotent masters of life and death. For days or even weeks and months, they search for a way out. And sometimes they develop more trust in the perpetrators than in the police.

Arnold Wieczorek, operational psychologist of the LKA Baden-Württemberg, wrote in an article for the magazine "Kriminalistik" from 2003: "The victim is in a situation in which he has suddenly lost all control over himself and thus his own existence."

Sympathy for the devil

The next day, Clark Olofsson is taken to the bank. Olsson reports back to the police, demanding a speedy getaway car. In the afternoon, Olof Palme's phone rings again. This time one of the hostages - Kristin Enmark - speaks: "Palme, you disappoint me very much! I've been a Social Democrat all my life, and now you're haggling with our lives. Let's just run. I'm not afraid of these men. They protect us."

Newspapers and television stations broadcast the content of the conversation and describe the entire course of the drama in detail. And all of Sweden wonders what's wrong with this woman who defends her tormentors.

"In order to appease the perpetrator, in whose power it is to end the victim's life, each victim will first of all do everything the perpetrator asks for reasons of pure self-preservation," says Arnold Wieczorek. Building a kind of personal connection with the perpetrator in order to earn his favor is just as normal as allying oneself with the perpetrators against the alleged aggressor.

In this case, the apparent opponent of the hostages is: the Stockholm police. In 1973, they made a series of tactical mistakes, which only put more pressure on everyone in the bank. The psychological burden is enormous.

"They made it impossible for me to kill her"

On the third day, things get more and more dramatic. Olsson and Olofsson have retreated to the vault with their hostages, the police close the door from the outside. Water and food supplies are quickly depleted, it is dark, soon it stinks of feces and urine. In the evening, the local radio broadcasts the police plan to drill a hole in the vault and stun the occupants with gas. Jan-Erik Olsson has learned this in the news and puts the nooses on his hostages; Clark Olofsson tries to calm her down.

Kristin Enmark published a book about her martyrdom in 2015 ("I had Stockholm syndrome") and gave an interview to the Swedish newspaper "Norran". "At this point at the latest, the police became a threat," she said. "The hostage-takers were suddenly the good guys in this game. We lost control." It is the moment when "a rationally arbitrary behavioral adaptation turns into a psychological syndrome that is no longer arbitrarily controlled," as psychologist Wieczorek describes it.

In the following two days, despite the threats, the police continue to drill holes in the vault. Water penetrates, victims and perpetrators can only sleep in a sitting position. After all, the holes are large enough to pass food and drink through. And a camera that shoots the famous photo that can also be seen above this article.

On 28 August, day six, Jan-Erik Olsson loses his nerve. He fires into the holes on the ceiling, injuring one of the officers in the hand. The hostages remain unharmed. Their instinct for self-preservation has so far protected them from being attacked. In court, Olsson will later say, "They made it impossible for me to kill her." Around 21 p.m., gas suddenly flows into the interior and causes panic. "To hell with the gas," Olsson roars, "we surrender!"

Relationship with the hostage gangster

When the police storm the room to overpower Olsson and Olofsson, Kristin Enmark yells, "Don't hurt them, they didn't do anything!" Outside, in front of all the cameras and microphones, she calls after Olofsson: "See you again!" All hostages are unharmed. The hostage-taking is over.

Just not for the hostages. Their behaviour, especially that of Enmark, is subsequently the subject of the Swedish public. The Stockholm police psychologist Nils Bejerot coined the term "Stockholm syndrome", the unusual and disturbing affection of the hostages for the hostage-takers has a name, as in the spectacular case of the kidnapped millionaire heiress Patty Hearst.

In the days following the end of the drama, Enmark and her fellow sufferers are questioned several times by psychologists and therapists. "But everyone wanted to know something about the 'Stockholm syndrome,'" Enmark recalls in her book, "no one cared about our needs, no one helped us."

After that, a new life began for the hostages, especially for Kristin Enmark. She quit her job at the bank, studied sociology, worked in drug help and is now a psychotherapist. She actually developed a special relationship with Clark Olofsson during the hostage-taking. In her book, Enmark recounts that in the weeks and months after the crime, she maintained contact with Olofsson, visited him several times in prison and even developed a brief relationship. To this day, there is correspondence.

Half a life in prison

Olofsson already had a remarkable criminal career with burglaries, robberies, drug offenses. He was acquitted of any guilt in the hostage-taking, but had to serve the remainder of his sentence. In March 1975 he managed an adventurous escape, which ended only a year later - after two bank robberies, a hostage-taking, a three-month sailing trip through the Mediterranean and an acquaintance with the Belgian Marijke Demuynck. He married her in prison on August 12, 1976.

Later, other outbreaks and raids followed. In 1991 Olofsson took the name Daniel Demuynck in Belgium, currently he is back behind Swedish curtains. Jan-Erik Olsson was sentenced to ten years in prison, served eight years, moved with his family to Thailand and now lives in Sweden. He never ended up in prison again.

The "Stockholm syndrome" became a synonym for all situations in which a victim develops sympathy for his tormentor (even as a metaphor in sports) and lost its real meaning with each new use. Often, the term is used more in kitchen psychology - as a more easily understood label for a reaction that seems difficult to understand.

In any case, he never did justice to the highly complex psychopathological exceptional situation in which victims of a hostage-taking find themselves. But the drama of Norrmalmstorg was the beginning of a psychological reconsideration of victims of violent crime.

Kristin Enmark is still working on this topic today. She can't help it: "For 43 years I have been processing what happened back then. But I'm far from overcoming it," she said in a newspaper interview. "Not because I was held hostage, but because they preferred to put a stamp on me with the Stockholm syndrome instead of really understanding what was actually happening at the time."