Stockholm Syndrome Quotes

And it's hard to hate someone once you understand them.

I've been doing this a long time- manipulating people to get my way. That's why you think you love me. Because I've broken you down and built you back up to believe it. It wasn't an accident. Once you leave this behind..... you'll see that. -Caleb

Stop it. Do not feel safe with him. The Stockholm Syndrome is not your friend.

Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.

In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.

Maybe it was a Patty Hearst thing. Stockholm syndrome or whatever it's called when you're being held against your will but then you become sucked in and fall in love. Or if not exactly love, you fall into something you can't see out of. 'I can't shoot a machine gun' becomes 'Hey, this hardly has any kick-back!

Distraction serves evil more than any other mental state.

Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.

Did vampirism encourage Stockholm syndrome?

It’s called Stockholm syndrome. What’s your excuse? Mobster Decency Disorder?

He's beautiful because he's not and he doesn't care.

You don’t stare the devil in the eyes and come out without some of his sin. You can’t beat the devil without becoming like him.

You warped me. I was a perfectly normal- -drug addicted bisexual hooker-fucking criminal. -perfectly normal sensible man with normal sensible urges before you.

Ha ha ha. But what if, right, when you come home, what if I ain't wearing nothing but Nutella?" "Your double negatives make me want to kill you.

You were always saying you were gonna shoot him," he mutters, but it's kind of half-hearted. "Stupid fucking little tit, he needs a bullet in his head. What do you keep him round for, anyway?" Because he makes me laugh. Because, fuck knows why, he adores me. Because he needs somebody to look after him and nobody else knows how. Because everything about us is wrong and I never ever want to be right. Because I wake up in the morning and see him sleeping next to me with his stupid dyed hair and his stupid painted nails and his stupid toy monkey and I remember I love him so much I don't know what to do, I love him I love him I LOVE HIM.

I've always been intrigued by Stockholm Syndrome. Reminds me of my childhood.

Nationalism is pimped-out bigotry, designed to provoke a Stockholm Syndrome in the livestock.

Like Beauty locked up in the Beast’s castle, I developed my own brand of Stockholm syndrome, identifying with my captor.

Her loving hands, soft lips, and perfumed scents were an addiction for which he had no cure.

The man reeks of mental illness. I can taste his pathology... Goes well with my palette.

I think most people in long marriages have a touch of Stockholm Syndrome

Poor innocent me, just going about my business, then you raped me down the ear with your gun." Lindsay nicks the bottle, smirking just slightly, and say's " You loved it, you tart.

You are not deep and complex. You're the most 2-D person I've ever met in my life. Miyazaki drew you and threw you straight on the scrap pile because you look too anime

Valentine clears his throat. "So. Why can't you just say it?" "Say what?" "You know what." "It's hardly the time or place." "It is if you're dying." "I can't." "You're a dick. Just fucking say it!" "I can't! I'm... English." "What am I, a Martian? I say it all the time. I know you love me, why can't you say it?" "If you know, then why do I have to?" "You're missing the point a bit." "I took your bullet, you little twat, don't you dare question whether I love you." "Yeah, but you could say it." The throb of the gunshots is pounding all down his arm and body. The pain's so bad he wants to cry, like he's five and he's skinned his knee coming off his bike. "Je t'aime," he says, through gritted teeth, to shut the kid up. "Je ne sais pas pourquoi. Tu es... complètement bête, tu t'habilles comme une pute travestie, je hais ta musique, tu es fou, tu me rends fou, mais je suis fou de toi et je pense à toi tout le temps et je t'aime, oui. Tu comprends? Je t'aime. Seulement... pas en anglais. Je ne peux pas." Valentine's shifting about like he's uncomfortable. "I ain't got no idea what you just said but I think I need to change my pants." "Maintenant, ta gueule.

Sometimes I hate him. When he does the dishes, he shakes off each one before setting it in the drying rack. Water flies everywhere. A couple of drops always hit me in the face. I have to leave the room to avoid smashing a plate against his head.

Property taxes' rank right up there with 'income taxes' in terms of immorality and destructiveness. Where 'income taxes' are simply slavery using different words, 'property taxes' are just a Mafia turf racket using different words. For the former, if you earn a living on the gang's turf, they extort you. For the latter, if you own property in their territory, they extort you. The fact that most people still imagine both to be legitimate and acceptable shows just how powerful authoritarian indoctrination is. Meanwhile, even a brief objective examination of the concepts should make anyone see the lunacy of it. 'Wait, so every time I produce anything or trade with anyone, I have to give a cut to the local crime lord??' 'Wait, so I have to keep paying every year, for the privilege of keeping the property I already finished paying for??' And not only do most people not make such obvious observations, but if they hear someone else pointing out such things, the well-trained Stockholm Syndrome slaves usually make arguments condoning their own victimization. Thus is the power of the mind control that comes from repeated exposure to BS political mythology and propaganda.

What makes the difference between a gang and a state is the belief that there is a difference between a gang and a state.

Real-time creeps back in, and Lindsay realises the kid's on his knees beside him, saying his name over and over and over. "What?" "Oh, thank fuck... Jesus, you're bleeding like hell." "Thanks, Sherlock." "Can you see a bright white light?" "Yeah." "Oh fuck. Fuck! Okay, listen to me, don't go near it, okay?" "What?" "Stay away from the light." "What are you talking about?" "That's death, innit? Don't go near it, promise me." "I mean I can see the electric lights on the ceiling, you berk." "You berk! You knob, I thought you were dying." "You didn't specify what kind of bright light, you just said bright light, you might've been testing my eyesight." "I ain't fighting with you when you've been shot.

Are we going to go through this every time, really?" Peter tilts his head on an angle. His smile inches up a few degrees. "I want you, Stiles. And from where I’m sitting, it looks like I’ve got you.

It's just, with someone like Ellie, it'll be really hard for her not to fall back into old habits. Javier was her biggest habbit of all." The hole was opening, my heart threatening to sink in. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands and wished they were sharper. "Camden," he said pointedly. "It would be Stockholm syndrome on steroids.

I want to kiss him in gratitude, but I'm not about to get Stockholm Syndrome just because they feed me.

Statism is a mental disorder, much akin to Stockholm Syndrome.

Addiction, at its worst, is akin to having Stockholm Syndrome. You're like a hostage who has developed an irrational affection for your captor. They can abuse you, torture you, even threaten to kill you, and you'll remain inexplicably and disturbingly loyal.

I, on the other hand, talk like the world will only continue to spin if it can revolve around me. I like listening to you talk. He laighs. It's kinda like Stockholm syndrome. At first it was a little terrifying, but now it's sorta comforting. Like, the world could be ending, but I would come to work and you'd be talking like it's your duty.

Women misjudged his pathology because of his prolific brain-games. He used gaslighting techniques to convince her she had a break with reality. Some survivors called it 'The Ultimate Mind Screw'--sending prominent female executives, attorneys, and doctors into mental institutions to recover from him. Coercion, psychological warfare techniques and Stockholm Syndrome symptoms have left survivors sawed off at the emotional knees by a smooth-talking and ear-to-ear grinning psychological terrorist.

If I just open this window a bit, that man might put his finger up your bum. Wouldn't that be nice for you?

When there is inconsistency in belief and action (such as being violated by someone who is supposed to love you) our mind has to make an adjustment so that thought and action are aligned. So sometimes the adjustment that the mind makes is for the victim to bring her or his behavior in line with the violator, since the violator cannot be controlled by the victim. Our greatest source of survival is to adapt to our environment. So increasing emotional intimacy with a person who is forcing physical intimacy makes sense in our minds. It resolves cognitive dissonance.

I like walking round London at night, I do it all the time. Not for no reason, just cos... it's home, innit? It's brilliant, you can't ever get bored of London cos even if you live here for like a hundred and fifty years you still won't ever know everything about it. There's always something new. Like, you're walking round somewhere you've known since you was born and you look up and there's an old clock on the side of a building you never seen before, or there's a little gargoyley face over a window or something. Don't you think it's cool?

You can buy me a drink if you want," the kid says, suddenly appearing at Pip's shoulder. He turns round a bit to look at him, trying not to smile. "That's generous of you." "Ain't it?" "What makes you think I'd wanna buy another man a drink?" "Cos your t-shirt's got a unicorn on it.

Popular morality blames victims for going into debt – not only individuals, but also national governments. The trick in this ideological war is to convince debtors to imagine that general prosperity depends on paying bankers and making bondholders rich – a veritable Stockholm Syndrome in which debtors identify with their financial captors.

And the victim must have been broken and must remain so, so that the externalization of evil is possible. The victim who refuses to assume this role contradicts society's simplistic view. Nobody wants to see it. People would have to take a look at themselves.

Still, Lindsay stops getting dressed, even though he's only half-done, because he gets this urge to ambush the kid with a hug. Just that, nothing else. He wraps his arms around Valentine's skinny body and pulls him close and rests his cheek on the still-damp hair and inhales the cherry-almond scent of his shampoo, and Valentine says, "Oh!" in a really odd way, like he's just read a particularly interesting fact on the back of a Penguin biscuit wrapper. Lindsay's got his eyes shut but he can feel the kid's hands creeping up his bare arms, over his shoulders. One stays there and the other comes to rest on the back of his neck, fingers playing idly with the ends of his hair, and several minutes pass without sound or movement, just the gentle thud of heartbeats. "What's that for?" Valentine asks, when Lindsay finally lets him go. "Don't know. Nothing. Just seemed the kind of thing you'd like. BAM, surprise ninja cuddles.

Sometimes a night of over-eating leaves you hungry for something you can't name. An emptiness haunted me. An emptiness I didn't have a name for until I met Jeb. Now, I' m starving.

America's state religion, is patriotism, a phenomenon which has convinced many of the citizenry that 'treason' is morally worse than murder or rape.

Naughty little boys who don't eat their vegetables get their bottoms smacked and go to bed without pudding,

The way everything she said made me smile had to be the Stockholm Syndrome.

You've got Stockholm syndrome, girl. The man literally tortures you and you make him eggs?" "Maybe she's poisoning it.

He tries again, swallowing hard to ease away the painful lump in his throat. "It's just important. I love you. I'm yours. I need people to know." "Alright," Lindsay says suddenly. He leans down to grab at Pip's bag, throwing stuff out onto the carpet, his iPod and phone and wallet and gloves and Attitude magazine until he finds what he's looking for, a green marker pen, and holds it between his teeth while he starts tugging at the hem of Pip's t-shirt. Pip's too surprised to do anything but submit, he lets Lindsay peel off his t-shirt and throw that on top of all the things from his bag then just watches as Lindsay pulls the pen out of the cap in his mouth and signs his name in big green letters on the side of Pip's stomach. He holds his breath, trying not to suck in the belly fat everybody else keeps telling him is imaginary. "There, you're mine, are you fucking happy now?" Lindsay snaps, and throws the recapped pen across the room to get lost in the bookcase somewhere.

... Other students lived on campus and got drunk at parties. Other students dated and graduated and got married and led normal lives. She wanted to marry an ex-con and pretend being kidnapped had been a normal thing she could forget about. ...

It didn't matter, because he was an employee of a criminal enterprise and I was an FBI consultant and, oh yeah, technically kidnapped and probably in the throes of some kind of Stockholm syndrome.

liked that touch way too much, given his current status as my captor. Then again, Belle had always been the Princess who resonated most with me… nothing wrong with a little Stockholm syndrome, was there?

He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to steady his breathing, then he decides that's stupid. He's come this far, he's handcuffed to the bed, he's about to let a tattooed part-time drag queen in thigh-high leather boots fuck him. What's the point of trying for self-control?

Sometimes 'Stockholm' can actually be a compliment: a dream of somewhere bigger, where we can become someone else. Something that we long for but don't quite dare to do.

Women must hold men accountable for their behavior. Women do men no favors in terms of their growth as responsible, caring human beings if women allow men to abuse us. It is not genuine love that causes women to put up with men's destructive behavior; it is the fear-induced love produced by Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome hurts men's development as well as women's.

Too fucking late for sorry, innit? I hope he catches bubonic plague and dies in slow fucking agony the day before they legalise euthanasia and then I'm gonna go and learn Riverdance and I don't care how fucking long it takes cos I wanna do it on his grave.

Pip winds his arms up around Lindsay's neck and kisses him back, and this time he's the one to close his eyes and escape into darkness so there's nothing in the world except the soft curls under his fingers and the touch of Lindsay's breath on his mouth and the slow, sliding friction. "Lindsay, do you still hate me?" "I do when I remember to," Lindsay says quietly, but he doesn't stop moving and he doesn't stop kissing him for a long time, on his trembling mouth and his sweaty forehead and his wet, closed eyes.

It ain't embarrassing just thinking something's hot. You can be as sensible and respectable as you like through all the day and night but all that goes out the window when it's about sex. Just go with it. If it makes you hard and it ain't hurting no one who don't wanna get hurt, then it's a good thing. No drama. You need to just let go sometimes.

What Mark didn’t understand, and hoped he would never understand, was why you’d let a bunch of dickheads torment you for months in the hope that they’d let you stay in their little club. It had to fall somewhere between kindergarten and Stockholm Syndrome on the What-the-Fuck-Are-You-Thinking scale.

In 1973, Jan Erik Olsson walked into a small bank in Stockholm, Sweden, brandishing a gun, wounding a police officer, and taking three women and one man hostage. During negotiations, Olsson demanded money, a getaway vehicle, and that his friend Clark Olofsson, a man with a long criminal history, be brought to the bank. The police allowed Olofsson to join his friend and together they held the four hostages captive in a bank vault for six days. During their captivity, the hostages at times were attached to snare traps around their necks, likely to kill them in the event that the police attempted to storm the bank. The hostages grew increasingly afraid and hostile toward the authorities trying to win their release and even actively resisted various rescue attempts. Afterward they refused to testify against their captors, and several continued to stay in contact with the hostage takers, who were sent to prison. Their resistance to outside help and their loyalty toward their captors was puzzling, and psychologists began to study the phenomenon in this and other hostage situations. The expression of positive feelings toward the captor and negative feelings toward those on the outside trying to win their release became known as Stockholm syndrome.

Everyone always knows what they're doing," he says abruptly, still not looking up from his hands, the little plastic pot and the old tattoo and the new white dressing on his left wrist. "You know what you're doing, you got your work and your friends and everything and miserable headfucky little teenage girly boys think you're amazing and, I don't know, you might've saved my life, who knows? I might be dead if it weren't for you and Olly but people can't keep looking after me all the time cos that ain't healthy neither, that's just as bad as people not giving a fuck at all. And, like... I'm trying to sort my head out and be a proper grown-up and get my degree and go to work and look after them kids and make sure my dad ain't kicking my sister round the house like a football but it's just so hard all the time, and I know I ain't got no right to complain cos that's just life, ain't it? Everyone's the same, least I ain't got money worries or nothing. I just don't know what I'm doing, everything's too hard. I can try and try forever but I can't be good enough for no one so what the fuck's the point?

He's got one leg hooked up over Lindsay's shoulder, one braced against the dashboard. He's still got his socks on, red with a little Christmas tree on each ankle. Well sexy.

...but if they go on strike you'll have to walk back. You'll have to swim back, you'll have to see Dad in his Speedos and you'll die.

Can't expect to shut up a sunbeam in a box and not have it dim a little. Hm?

Biographers are notorious for falling in love with their subjects. It is the literary equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome,

We become bonded to the person who aggresses against us,” said Dr. Ochberg. “And that’s the Stockholm syndrome.

Stockholm Syndrome. Temporary insanity.

Stockholm syndrome,

How could this be happening? No way, no way, was she attracted to a kidnapper. “Stockholm syndrome,” she murmured. He smiled, those gorgeous lips moving. “Keep telling yourself that.

More often than not, a statist's argument against Anarchism boils down to an unwillingness to take control and responsibility for their own lives, actions, and communities. The sad truth is that the human animal has been domesticated to the point where it actually fears Liberty.

We are dealing with a genuine Stockholm syndrome on a mass scale - when the hostage becomes the accomplice of the hostage taker - as well as a revolution of the concept of voluntary servitude and master-slave relations. When the entire society becomes an accomplice to those who took it hostage, but just as much when individuals split into, for themselves, hostage and hostage taker.

Yeah, what’s so wrong with that? We’re hanging out now and it’s not that bad. It might even be nice if we were talking about something other than me developing a wicked case of Stockholm syndrome.

We have to HIDE from each other because we think that we are the only ones BROKEN. We think we're the only ones whose original selves we ground up and smashed under the jack-booted heel of cultural lies and superstition, patriotism, war lust, war hunger, and a denial of AGGRESSION AGAINST CHILDREN THAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF CULTURE. Culture is everything that is NOT TRUE. If it's true, it's called 'math' or 'science' or 'facts'. Culture is the Stockholm syndrome we have with the historical lies that are convenient to the rules. We love the lies, because we don't think we can be loved if we don't.

Generalized Stockholm Syndrome results from having one’s physical and/or psychological survival threatened by one or more individuals and then being shown kindness by other individuals who are perceived as similar to the threatening individuals in some ways. Generalized Stockholm Syndrome is explained in its simplest form by two psychological concepts: Graham’s Stockholm Syndrome theory and stimulus generalization. Graham’s theory predicts that, because the victim is suffering despair and needs nurturance as a result of terror created by the threat to survival, he or she bonds to the first person who provides emotional relief. The bond is particularly likely to develop if the person who provides emotional relief is the abuser, because kindness by the abuser creates hope that the abuse will stop.

Can I have a tattoo?" "Ask Dad." "He says over my dead body." "Well, then." "Can I get one if I'm older?" "Yeah. If you still want one when you grow a brain." "When I'm seven? Cos that's well old." "Aahh... bit older than that, maybe." She goes tearing out of the room yelling, "PIP SAYS I CAN GET A TATTOO WHEN I'M EIGHT!

Lockhart twitches. “I do not think Stockholm syndrome means quite what you think it means.” “What, the tendency of people—usually women—in unfamiliar societies to enculturate rapidly?” Lockhart inclines his head. “Point.

It may seem completely counterintuitive, but in my experience, depressed people are the least likely to be willing to change any of their life patterns. In other words, people who hate their lives are the least likely to change them. When you love your life, you are more open to change. When you somehow find yourself in a life you never wanted, it has a paralyzing effect. It becomes a subtle version of Stockholm syndrome, where you develop an unhealthy relationship to your captor and disdain for anyone trying to set you free.

The black man has been manipulated by the offspring of the evil bastards who kidnapped and enslaved his forefathers. A black man using the white man’s Bible is the best example of Stockholm syndrome to date. If blacks are in a white man’s heaven, they are janitors and maids.

There's this thing. I can, like, do a cast of your cock and make a vibrator out of it. How cool's that? Cos then, right, then I can suck you off and have you fucking me at the same time, like there's two of you. I've gone all tingly." Lindsay doesn't know what to say for a second so he just stares at Valentine with something he imagines must look like horror. "What the hell am I doing with you?" "Broadening your horizons. Or something." "I must be crazy." "That's okay, that's why it works. We're both a bit warped. Together we make sort of one whole person.

The Stockholm Syndrome, the Theatre of Cruelty, voluntary servitude, living coin, the ready made, the accursed share, the total social fact, dust-breeding, the perfect crime - we find all these figures in the reality-TV cocktail, in that potlatch of vacuousness. It even drags the judgement that condemns it into its vacuousness.

There are people everywhere. Lindsay wants to be sick, it's like he can feel all their eyes on him, but he does it anyway and when he finally moves away a good minute later Valentine seems to have turned from himself into a silly bashful schoolgirl, blushing and smiling and not quite looking up. "Oh," he says, like that explains everything. "Yeah." "Thank you." "That's a shit thing to say when somebody's just ripped all his principles in half to make you feel better." "Thank you very much?" "You're welcome.

What can I say about life? Do I praise it for letting you live or damn it for allowing the rest? Have you heard of the Stockholm Syndrome? Hostages begin taking the side of their captors, in their gratitude not to have been killed outright. Let us not thank some hypothetical God. Instead, rest and gain strength for the new campaign... [p. 105].

Both previous examples resulted in Stockholm syndrome, in which people factually defended their subjugators though subconsciously they knew they were being abused; irrational, but like the Danes, they still present themselves as joyful. “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Ha ha ha. But what if, right, when you come home, what if I ain't wearing nothing but Nutella?" "Your double negatives make me want to kill you." "But what if?" "I'll throw you in the shower and make you wash it off, then I'll fuck you, then I'll kick you out." "Don't you like Nutella?" "I hate Nutella." "You're weird. Peanut butter, then. Honey. Marshmallow fluff. Jam. Lamb vindaloo?" "I can work with that one." "Might sting a bit." "That's your problem, if you're gonna stick it all up yourself and hope if gets me going.

There's nothing—nothing—more monstrous than that beguiling face Pestilence wears, his golden crown resting proudly on his head.

The point being made here is that hostages and outsiders view the hostages’ ability to escape differently. What looks to outsiders as an opportunity for escape may look like a test (a trick) or a death trap to hostages. It is hostages’, not outsiders’, perceptions of hostages’ ability to escape that determines whether or not hostages develop Stockholm Syndrome.

You are gonna shoot me," he says. "One day." He's still holding Lindsay's hand, he's looking down at where their fingers are wound together and not at Lindsay's face, but his voice is clear. "I ain't thick. I know you'll get sick of me. You can't just let me go, I know too much, you'd be freaked out forever in case I snitched. You'll get proper sick of me one day, not just annoyed, and then you'll shoot me. It's okay." "I won't get sick of you," Lindsay says. He feels numb and far away, as if its somebody else talking, and almost like he's going to throw up, a sort of lurch in his stomach like when you're at the top of the the Angel tube station escalator and somebody a bit too eager to get on the train shoves you from behind. "Yeah you will. I'm gonna be with you til I die, though. Least I can say that and know its true, how many people can do that? Bit romantic, really. If you squint, and look at it sideways.

Please, please, you have to, I never ask you for anything, please just do it." "What are you talking about? You always ask me for everything." "Okay, then, but you always do it, so don't change the rules now." He knows its true. That's just the way they work. As much as he grouses and sneers and makes a big show of authority, he can't deny the kid a thing. If he wants a vintage Aston Martin so he can play at being James Bond, he gets one. If he wants to go one top, he can. He says he's never been to Africa and Lindsay goes online and books flights that same day to Morocco because he wants to see the smile when he presents Valentine with tickets. When the kid suggests setting a camcorder up in the bedroom so they can watch the tape back later and laugh at their stupid sex-faces, Lindsay goes along with it, wincing all the way, because he always says no and he never really means it in the end. This is love, he supposes, and it's mental.

Since nobody really wants to be a trans woman, i.e. nobody wakes up and goes whoa, maybe my life would be better if I transitioned, alienating most of my friends and my family, I wonder what’ll happen at work, I’d love to spend all my money on hormones and surgeries, buying a new wardrobe that I don’t even understand right now, probably become unlovable and then ending my short life in a bloody murder. In fact, if there’s one thing a lifetime of Stockholm syndrome with hegemony gives you, it’s a thorough understanding of cultural tropes about trans women.

Sorry,” the bank robber said in a weaker voice, and even if none of them replied, that was how it started: the truth about how the bank robber managed to escape from the apartment. The bank robber needed to say those words, and the people who heard them all needed to be allowed to forgive someone. “Stockholm” can also be a syndrome, of course.

Sure, but there’s… exploitation with consent and without it, I guess? Not all relationships are parasitic.” “Yes,” he said. “Some are commensal. But I also consider this: as long as there have been exploited classes, the world has been looking for ways to keep those exploited classes from striving. Better to keep them from even feeling striving. Bleed them, starve them, terrorize them into learned helplessness, seduce them into Stockholm syndrome so they police themselves. Provide them with drugs—legal or illegal— and then use the sequelae of those addictions to control them further. Give them a minimum comfortable living so they’re not motivated to overthrow the government. There are ways, and some ways are more ethical than others.

Yes, you do hate Switzerland. And," doctor Messerli paused for effect, "you love it. You love it and you hate it. What you don't feel is apathy. You're not indifferent. You're ambivalent." Anna had thought about this before, when nights came during which she could do nothing but wander Dietlikon's sleeping streets or hike the hill behind her house to sit upon the bench where most often she went to weep. She'd considered her ambivalence many, many times, and in the end, she's diagnosed herself with a disease that she'd also invented. Switzerland syndrome. Like Stockholm syndrome. But instead of my captors, I'm attached to the room in which I'm held captive. It's the prison I'm bound to, not the warden. Anna was absolutely right. It was the landscape. it was the geography. The fields, the streams, the lakes, the forests. And the mountains. On exceptionally clear days when the weather was right, if you walked south on Dietlikon's Bahnhofstrasse you could see the crisp outlines of snow-capped Alps against a blazing blue horizon eighty kilometers away. On these certain days it was something in the magic of the atmosphere that made them tangible and moved them close. The mutability of those particular mountains reminded Anna of herself. And it wasn't simply the natural landscape that she attached herself to emotionally. It was the cobblestone roads of Zürich's old town and the spires of this church and the towers of that one. And the trains, the trains, the goddamn trains. She could take the train anywhere she wanted to go.

For thousands of years, scarcely anyone left. Korea was the hermit kingdom, with its spiritual basis in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shamanism, until 1910, when it was annexed by Japan and colonized for thirty-five years thereafter, followed by the Korean War in 1950. Having been born and raised under these brutal colonizers, my paternal grandfather spoke fluent Japanese. Shortly before his death, in the mid-1980s, he came to stay with my family in Queens, where he befriended a young Japanese woman, a missionary from the Unification Church. When my father confronted him about his sudden interest in the cult, my grandfather answered that he didn’t care about the Moonies, he only enjoyed the chance to speak Japanese with his new friend. Like others from his generation, he suffered from a sort of Stockholm syndrome and missed the language of his oppressors.

If one (inescapable) group threatens another group with violence but also—as a group—shows the victimized group some kindness, an attachment between the groups will develop. This is what we refer to as Societal (or Cultural) Stockholm Syndrome) and it is expected to develop under Situation 3 Generalized Stockholm Syndrome conditions. That is, it is expected to develop in a culture in which it is socially mandated and socially predictable that members of the oppressor group will both victimize and be kind to members of the oppressed group. However, the identity of the particular member of the oppressor group who metes out the violence or shows kindness to any particular member of the oppressed group is random and may be determined by variables such as physical proximity. Because the transactions between oppressor and oppressed group members are pervasive and the traumatizers are omnipresent, members of the victim group perceive that they cannot escape the abuse and therefore look to their traumatizers for nurturance and protection. A Stockholm Syndrome psychology is expected to generalize to any and all interactions with members of the violent group, even members of that group who are not themselves violent, or who are less violent, toward members of the victimized group.

Suddenly, he's aware of something pushing onto his lap. The stupid monkey. "Give him a cuddle," Valentine says. He's slid his thumb to the corner of his mouth so he can talk, but it still sounds slurry from the way he's holding it, so it won't fall out. "He'll stop you being all grumpy and stressed. He smells nice." "It smells like its rotting," Lindsay says. He picks the thing up and sits it on the steering wheel so he can get a better look at it, trying not to touch its saliva-drenched foot. "No he don't. He smells like being sleepy, and hiding under your covers when everybody's pissed off and shouting. He smells like what it feels like being all warm and safe under your covers." Lindsay brings the thing to his face to give it an experimental sort of sniff. "Wrong. It smells like your spit." And his shampoo, and sort of musty, and something indefinable but unmistakable that makes him think of the way Valentine looks first think in the morning, when his hair's sticking up every which way and he's frowning slightly on opening his eyes like he can't remember where he is. He reaches over to tuck the monkey back between the kid's knees.

God created us to be in fellowship with Him. However, when sin entered the world, we became prisoners of Satan. Humanity settled into a life of captivity, and the memory of what it was like to be truly free faded. Many people have developed the equivalent of Stockholm syndrome, viewing the devil as harmless and responding to God with distrust. Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection provided the victory necessary for our freedom. When we trust Him for salvation, He rescues us from the enemy’s dark territory and transports us to His kingdom of light.

Two cognitive distortions deserve further explanation: the victims’ belief that they love their abuser, and self-blame. The victims’ misattribution—that love, not terror, is responsible for their arousal and behavior—is a cognitive distortion that develops when victims see no way to escape. Stockholm Syndrome would not develop without this misattribution (cognitive distortion), nor would the syndrome persist without its continuance. This is so because, as Walster and Berscheid note, “Once the subject has . . . identified the experience as love, it is love” (1971). If victims were to reinterpret their arousal and hypervigilance as due to something other than love or caring, the bond would vanish, though the behavior and arousal might remain the same.

Stimulus generalization accounts for a great deal of learning and is so reliably demonstrated in animals (including humans) that it is referred to as a scientific law in the field of psychology. Here an animal that has learned to give a certain response to a certain stimulus will also give that response to stimuli other than the original stimulus, as long as the other stimuli are sufficiently similar to the original one. To understand the importance of stimulus generalization to bonding, consider the following Stockholm Syndrome-conducive situation: An abuser behaves kindly after being abusive and threatening the victim’s survival. The abuser’s kindness creates hope in the victim that the abuser will discontinue the abuse and let the victim live. This hope pushes the victim to try to get on the good side of the abuser, which requires the victim to see the world from the abuser’s perspective and to remain hypervigilant to the abuser’s wants and needs. In the efforts to keep the abuser happy (nonviolent), the victim bonds to the abuser.

The victims unconsciously try to view the world as the abuser does, for only by doing so can they anticipate what they need to do to keep the abuser happy and feeling kindly toward them. They thus see the abusers/captors as the “good guys” and those trying to win their release (e.g., parents, police, therapists, or friends) as the “bad guys,” for this is the captor’s view. Similarly, the victims perceive themselves to deserve abuse at the hands of the abuser, because that is the way the abuser perceives things. For similar reasons, the victims displace their repressed anger at the abuser onto the police. They also transfer the abuser’s anger and destructiveness onto the police, whom they see as more likely to kill them (or get them killed) than the abuser/captor. If victims are subjected to the Stockholm Syndrome precursor conditions for a prolonged period of time (e.g., months or years), even their sense of self comes to be experienced through the eyes of the abuser, replacing any former sense of self that once existed.

The intense push-pull dynamics seen in persons with Stockholm Syndrome have developed because, on the one hand, victims naturally push away from the person who is threatening their survival, but, on the other hand, to survive they must also bond with (pull toward) the very person who is threatening them in the hope of winning him or her over. These opposing forces are played out with an intensity expected of issues determining life and death. After long-term exposure to chronic interpersonal abuse, victims generalize these push-pull dynamics to their relations with others. Victims of chronic interpersonal abuse, fearing retaliation if they express their anger at their abuser for the abuse done to them, will displace that anger onto themselves and others who have less power over them than does (or did) the abuser. Thus, another effect of long-term interpersonal abuse is displaced anger.

Because the symptoms—splitting, intense push-pull interpersonal dynamics, displaced anger, and lack of sense of self— parallel those seen in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), we have proposed that the four Stockholm Syndrome-conducive conditions not only give rise to the syndrome, but may eventuate in BPD if abuse is sufficiently severe and long-term. In less severe cases, the victim is likely to show only borderline personality characteristics (BPC). We conceptualize BPD and BPC as survival strategies, wherein the syndrome’s psychodynamics are generalized to persons other than the abuser/captor. We also propose that BPD and BPC can develop at any age, even in adulthood, as a consequence of prior chronic, long-term interpersonal abuse (Graham and Rawlings 1991).