I Call It Faux-Stockholm Syndrome
By - Allie Jackson
Creating a Sadistic Captor
I remember the first time I became aware of god. I was 4 or 5 years old, in
church attending a “Sunday school” class and I was coloring a picture of a
man in a cute little boat loaded with animals. He looked so happy and sweet,
the animals all had smiles and I colored a bright rainbow in the sky. That’s
when we started to learn who this man was; it was Noah and his ark. My
teacher told us how god told Noah that he was the only good person left on
earth and that he needed to get two of every animal onto a boat that he had
to build. After the world was flooded, Noah and the animals all lived happily
ever after. Innocently, I asked, “What happened to all of the other people?”
The teacher smiled and she said, “they were bad and god punished them.”
Wow, I better be good.…
It’s Only a Ghost
Clearly that story of Noah is the shortened “child” version. There’s way more
to the story than that, however; it was terrifying. We’ve seen the news
stories about Patty Hearst, Elizabeth Smart and groups of people held
hostage who suffered from Stockholm syndrome. This syndrome is based
around Freud’s idea that people identify with their aggressor. As humans, we
try to avoid stress and anxiety. It is instinct for a person to choose life over
death. Because of this, we will do whatever is necessary to live. If put in a
high stress situation in which a person feels their life or the life of others
could be lost, they can quickly adapt to their new captivity and start to see
the lack of aggression as a sign of love from their captor. In turn, they
excuse their captor’s behavior and actually defend them; they will help them
with what they want and even end up loving them.
P a g e | 156