Nothing happened in Stockholm?

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/old-town-in-
stockholm-sweden-gm523395133-51237318

Stockholm Syndrome never really happened, at least not how they described it to us. A little background here... Back in 1973, in Stockholm, a convict on parole, Jan Erik Olsson, attempted to rob a bank with a gun. He took four bank employees as hostages. He held the hostages for six days in the bank vault, demanding that the police release his friend, a celebrity criminal, Clark Olofson, from behind bars, some money and free passage. The police did not budge, but they managed to smoke them out by drilling a hole through the vault and infusing noxious gas inside. The puzzling thing throughout the whole fiasco was that the hostages were said to have sided with the assailant. They viewed the police as the bad guys and did not take the opportunity to escape when the police purposely laid the plan for them. It is said that the hostages later crowdsourced funds for the robber's trial. 

It was later revealed that all these were fabricated. There was even a rumour that one of the hostages was engaged to her captor. The most apparent thing was that none of the media people interviewed the hostages to get a first-hand account of what transpired in the bank. Unverified rumours started flying. Soon, the understanding was that the hostages were brainwashed. In Sweden, pretty soon, the act of hostages building psychological bonds with their kidnappers was labelled Norrmalmstorgssyndromet,  after Norrmalmstorg Square, where the attempted robbery took place.

Outside, this phenomenon was recognised as Stockholm Syndrome. Policemen at academies were taught to take note of this when handling a hostage situation. Hostages cannot be relied upon to cooperate with the police but could paradoxically work with the bandits.

To be fair, Stockholm Syndrome is not classified as a mental disorder in the DSM-5. The FBI's extensive research into numerous kidnappings indicates that only 5% of victims develop some kind of psychological bond with their captors. Additionally, 3% of the general population hates the police, anyway.

The interest in this phenomenon was piqued once again a year later, in 1974, when Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of a famous publisher, was kidnapped by an urban guerrilla group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was later caught robbing a bank with the group. She was imprisoned for seven years, only to be pardoned and freed by Bill Clinton.

It gets more complicated after this. Quite the opposite of what is described in Stockholm Syndrome, sometimes the kidnappers grow a soft spot for their victims. In 1996, thousands of party attendees at the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru, were abducted. It is said that the friendly rapport with the kidnappers helped the earlier release of hostages. Anyway, the invited guests were probably high-level diplomats who were well-versed in negotiation skills. The scenario where the perpetrators build a positive bond with their victims is called 'Lima Syndrome'.
 

Kristin Enmark
"I did what I could do to survive!"
https://varldenshistoria.se/kriminalitet/stockholmssyndromet
-gisslan-skyddade-svenska-brottslingar

Contrary to what developed in Stockholm and Lima, hostages sometimes invoke their kidnappers' aversion. In 1980, the Iranian Embassy was seized with 26 captives by terrorists. The hostages were argumentative, loud, and trying to escape. The terrorist quickly shot the loudest one of the lot and threw him out of the Embassy to emphasise his demands with no qualms. This is London Syndrome. The bad behaviour of the victim sparks a negative response.

In one podcast, Radiolab, finally, eight years ago, someone interviewed one of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, involved in the Stockholm bank robbery, to find out what was really happening then. Kristin volunteered to be a hostage after overhearing her co-worker speaking on the phone emotionally to her husband about her children's logistics arrangements, as she would be stuck in the crisis.

It is difficult for a third person to predict how a victim would react in a stressful situation. We fail to see why a person repeatedly finds himself trapped in an abusive relationship. We wonder for how long a battered wife gets stuck with her abusive husband. There must be more than meets the eye. The logical thing for a person on the outside is to get out. It is not so easily done.

https://ivno.over-blog.com/2023/03/les-illusions-le-syndrome-de-stockholm.html

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Intelligent Crook?

Money Heist (La Casa De Papel, House of Paper)
Spanish miniseries, Netflix Season 1-3; 2017- present

It is no secret that countries which are secular in their politics perform better in economics. Look around. Nations who appear to showcase Roman Catholic in their day to day running of their lives, e.g. countries in the Iberian peninsula, in Latin America and the Philippines, perform worse off than their Protestant counterparts. We need not talk about Muslim nations or countries struggling to go all conservative to stay relevant. 

It seems that nations that look at pleasing the Money God seem more progressive and advanced technologically and socioeconomically. By this, I mean these countries look at acquiring wealth at a level more important than to satisfy the imagined Man in the heaven or the intangible Forces of Nature. They feel money can solve their problems in this life and do not need to follow preset rules on Earth to receive its unassured retribution in another realm or on another birth.

Retractors will insist that they are missing the woods from the trees. There are more things to life than acquiring wealth that maintaining good virtue is the aim of life. We are paying for the Original Sin, and that Salvation is attained through selfless acts and His Grace.  Are these mere rants of a loser who insists the grapes that he failed to acquire must have been sour anyway?

Whatever it is, money seems the physical proof that life actually improves on Earth. Or do they? Tales of lottery winners with windfall and ending up worse off then they were initially is well known to us. 

According to Netflix, 'Money Heist' is its most-watched non-English miniseries. Even though the dubbing can be fixed in some places and there can be room for improvement in the acting department, it nevertheless, manages to keep its viewers at the edge of their seats. As the title suggests, the story revolves around a carefully planned heist at the Royal Mint. The modus operandum is to hold the staff of the mint and a group of student-visitors as hostages as the crooks use the machinery to print brand-new crisp, authentic Euros. Maybe, as the episodes drag on, due to prolonged contact with the robbers, the audience, just like their hostages, builds a sympathetic bond as like in Stockholm Syndrome.

Along the way, we are introduced to Professor, the mysterious leader of the pack and the motley crew of 8 robbers who form the rest of the gang. All of them have a sob story to explain their miserable life and how they landed there. The plan is to print €2.4 billion and to abscond through a self-built tunnel. Things become complicated as the Professor, who is stationed outside to guide through the operation and negotiate with the police, falls hopelessly in love with the investigating police chief. And it is mutual.

Initially, the story is believable, but the series progresses, it is evident that much masala is infused into it. Too many outlandish coincidences and instances of 'near misses' make one lose interest. It is only so many times that the preparator's identity can be repeatedly close to being uncovered. There were, however, many interesting discussion about human behaviour and philosophy amongst the baddies. But, do you expect villains to be so highly refined and intellectually superior? Why not? Intelligence can be used both ways - for betterment or destruction of mankind!

With the runaway success of the first two seasons, spoiler alert, and their successful heist, the producers decided to have more of their finely crafted planning. Living incognito in separate lives, one of the crook's identity is discovered and is apprehended. In the 3rd and the yet to be released 4th season, they attempt to rob the Bank of Spain of its gold. The former inspector and a former hostage are now in their team. The story only gets more bizarre. A burglar who was riddled with bullets in the 2nd season is walking around talking philosophy, and nobody is curious. There is only so much DIY medical emergencies that one can handle. Removing glass shrapnels from the eyes, treating brain injury and full-blown heart attack is not something one can do at the drop of the hat. It is becoming more and more another offering of ‘Fast and Furious’. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Memory play!

Trance (2013)

It is said that memory is a good thing. The memory of having the fingers' burnt, either by fire or the stock market, may act as a deterrent for one to repeatedly parboil his body parts. But then, the body also prunes its memories, to erase off some apparently too painful memories. Nature also becomes selfish by erasing the painful thoughts of childbearing just to continue progeny. If not for lactation and contraceptive measures, the business of baby making will never cease anytime soon.

Are painful thoughts really detrimental to the development of a person? Franz Kafka would certainly say so. Almost throughout his short life, he could not come to terms with his father's abusive alpha male type of behaviour and helpless unhelpful mother. His unfulfilled career and failed marriages were attributed by him to the unresolved issues with his upbringing. Perhaps this chronically depressed state of mind must have made him susceptible to laryngeal tuberculosis.

By then, he tried to ventilate his feelings through his writings, which he requested to be burned after his death but luckily nobody listened. His three Kafkaesque books (Metamorphosis, Trial, Castle) have become the poster children for people living under oppressive regimes. I suppose his clear memories of his bitter past unquestionably became an experience some of the victims could relate to and be a bedrock of hope to sail the choppy seas.

Well, memory is the theme in this 2013 British movie starring James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson. It is a tale of an assistant art auctioneer with an intractable gambling habit, a hypnotherapist whom he seems to treat his addiction and a band of art thieves who plan a heist during an auction.

The auctioneer predictably is drawn as an accomplice but unfortunately forgets where he hid the loot after sustaining an intracranial haemorrhage. The impatient crooks waste no time to try to get our hero to remember, through might, persuasion or even hypnosis!

The plot gets twisted as the hypnotherapist tries to explore the crevices of his brain to give us a dizzying journey between timelines akin to scenes in 'Interception'. It will fall into place with a few coincidences and logic-defying chain of events.