The Sociological Quarterly ISSN 0038-0253

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME AS
VERNACULAR RESOURCE tsq_1241 454..474

Michael Adorjan*
University of Hong Kong

Tony Christensen
Wilfrid Laurier University

Benjamin Kelly
Nipissing University

Dorothy Pawluch
McMaster University

First coined in 1973 to describe a pathological response on the part of individuals involved in
kidnapping or hostage-taking situations, the label Stockholm syndrome has since been used in
a much broader range of contexts including reference to wife battering and human trafficking, and
in debates about gender and race politics as well as international relations. Tracing the domain
expansion of Stockholm syndrome since the 1970s, we examine how the label offers claims-
makers a device for neutralizing the arguments of those with opposing points of view, and, in so
doing, reinforces collective narratives and formula stories of victimization.

INTRODUCTION
Over the past 30 years, there have been several high-profile cases where Stockholm
syndrome has been said to be involved. Stockholm syndrome, as it was defined by one of
the earliest psychiatrists interested in the condition, is a disorder whereby abductees
bond with or express loyalty toward their captors in an effort to save their lives or make
their ordeal more tolerable (Strentz 1980). First used in 1973 in connection with the
response of a group of employees held hostage in a robbery at a Stockholm bank, the use
of the term Stockholm syndrome used to be restricted largely to kidnaps and hostage-
taking incidents. However, since the 1970s, the term has been used in a much broader
range of cases. The power imbalance argued to be an essential dimension of the syn-
drome and the false emotional bonds these imbalances are said to create have led some
claims-makers to suggest that Stockholm syndrome occurs not only in abduction or
hostage-taking cases but in a whole host of situations and conditions not immediately
*Direct all correspondence to Michael Adorjan, Department of Sociology and Centre for Criminology,
University of Hong Kong, Room 1210, 12th fl., K.K. Leung Building, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong 999077,
China; e-mail: madorjan@hku.hk

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Michael Adorjan et al. Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource

recognizable as manifestations of the syndrome. Among the groups described as suffer-

ing from Stockholm syndrome are battered women, those who have experienced sexual
or physical assaults, abused children, incest victims, prisoners of war or political terror-
ism, cult members, concentration camp prisoners, slaves, and prostitutes.
Our interest in this article is (1) to track the emergence and expanding use of the
Stockholm syndrome label, examining in particular its increasing presence in social
problems discourse, and (2) to reflect on the appeal and rhetorical work that the label
does in social problems claims-making. In doing so, we draw on two related traditions
the social constructionist view of social problems and the debates on processes of
medicalization. The social constructionist approach in the study of social problems
attends to the ways in which individuals and groups make claims about putative
conditions that they find troublesome, offensive, or otherwise problematic (Spector
and Kitsuse 1977). A key dimension of claims-making is the framing of claims (Loseke
2003), and the language that claims-makers employ and in some cases generate to
advance their claims.
A number of years ago, Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993) called on sociologists of social
problems to pay more attention to the language of claims-making and to what they
called the condition categories that social actors construct. They defined condition
categories as typifications of socially circumscribed activities and processesthe soci-
etys classifications of its own contentsused in practical contexts to generate mean-
ingful descriptions and evaluations of social reality (p. 30). They argued for a better
understanding of how social actors construct condition categories in their claims-
making and counter claims-making activities. They identified some of the vernacular
resources and rhetorical appeals that claims-makers draw on in constructing their
claims and also some of the counter claims-making strategies they employ, suggesting
that there may well be others. In this article, we treat Stockholm syndrome as a condition
category and investigate both its construction and use as a vernacular resource. We
argue that Stockholm syndrome can effectively be used as a strategy in social problems
claims-making, particularly in cases where there are competing views to be discredited
and suggest that by looking more closely at how the label works, there is something to be
learned more generally about neutralizing counterarguments.
A related body of sociological work informing our analysis is the literature on
medicalization (Conrad and Schneider 1980; Conrad 2007). Medicalization refers to the
process of constructing behaviors or conditions specifically as medical or health-related
problems. Those who study medicalization are interested in understanding how disease
labels (or diagnoses) are constructed, promoted, and used. Just as many social construc-
tionists focus on the meaning-making work of social actors without addressing ques-
tions about the truth value of the claims made, there is a vein in the medicalization
literature concerned with claims-making processes around health-related conditions
without considering whether the disease labels constructed and/or applied are valid or
the behaviors or conditions to which they are applied are really diseases. The analytical
gaze falls instead on questions having to do with how medical understandings of situ-
ations and behaviors are promoted and the consequences when these understandings

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Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource Michael Adorjan et al.

gain currency as far as how social actors interpret and respond to their worlds.
In analyzing the construction and use of the Stockholm syndrome label, we consider
specifically the impact of using a medical paradigm to make sense of responses and
behaviors that claims-makers are seeking to discredit.
We have organized our article as follows: We begin by looking at where the term
Stockholm syndrome first originated, how it was defined, the theories generated to
explain it, and the contexts and debates in which it has been used over the years. In
presenting this definitional history, we follow roughly the sequential model laid out by
Conrad and Schneider (1980). While the process of generating disease designations
for behaviors viewed as deviant is not a central thrust of the article, we consider the
questions about the medicalizing process that the Stockholm syndrome label raises. A
more central goal for this part of the article is to document the creep in the situations
to which the Stockholm syndrome label has been applied and to discuss this creep in
relation to the concept of domain expansion (Best 2008).
In the second part, our goal is to explain the domain expansion surrounding the
Stockholm syndrome label by looking at the appeal of the label and its utility to social
problems claims-makers. After presenting our argument, we offer a brief analysis of
the Yvonne Ridley case. Ridley is a British journalist who converted to Islam after having
been released by her Taliban captors in Afghanistan in 2001, leading some commenta-
tors to conclude that she was a victim of Stockholm syndrome. The Ridley case allows
us to illustrate in a more concrete way the points we seek to make about how the label
Stockholm syndrome and others like it are used.
Our analysis centers on the professional and scholarly literature as well as the
popular press and Internet sources. Searchable online databases Factiva and LexisNexis
were searched to identify patterns of news reporting as well as to explore how the label
has been applied over time. Case studies or accounts were often featured, mostly cen-
tered on individuals ostensibly suffering from Stockholm syndrome. For the more highly
publicized of these cases (e.g., the original Stockholm case, the Patty Hearst and Yvonne
Ridley cases), we examined secondary sources. We also explored the medical, psychiatric,
and criminological literature, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) research
reports. It was among these sources that we located expert discussions about the
causes, symptoms, and treatment for Stockholm syndrome and ways to manage Stock-
holm syndrome-type situations. The materials that demonstrated the use of Stockholm
syndrome label in social problems discourse came from an even broader range of
sources including the popular press, academic treatises and journals, organizational Web
sites and personal blogs. Indeed, these sources reflect the wide array of arenas in which
social problems claims-making currently occurs (Maratea 2008). Our analysis of
the materials was shaped by the questions we began to askthe questions raised in this
articleas we familiarized ourselves with the data (Berg 2004). While the range of issues
to which the term Stockholm syndrome is applied continues to broaden in novel and
unpredictable ways, we were eventually persuaded that in terms of uncovering the main
form of social problems claims-making centered on the use of the Stockholm syndrome
label, we had reached a point of saturation.

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EARLY HISTORY AND ETIOLOGY

While the concept of brainwashing has a long history (Schein, Schneier, and Barker
1961), the more specific label Stockholm syndrome was not developed until the 1970s.
Its first usage can be traced to 1973 when Nils Bejerot, a Swedish psychiatrist, was
brought in to assist police with an incident involving the robbery of the Kreditbanken,
one of the largest banks in Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden. The escaped convict
(Jan Olsson) responsible for the botched robbery attempt took four bank employees
three women and one manhostage and also demanded that his cellmate in a nearby
penitentiary be brought to the bank. Together, the two convicts forced the hostages into
the banks vault where at various times, strapping dynamite to their bodies and making
them place nooses around their own necks; they kept them for six days. After their
release, the hostages defended their captors, refusing to testify against them. In fact, one
of the hostages started a defense fund to assist the convicts. According to some reports,
another hostage eventually married one of her captors (Strentz 1980). Bejerot, in dis-
cussing the hostages reactions as part of a news broadcast after their release, described
them as a classic brainwashing response, calling it the Stockholm syndrome.
The use of the term was reinforced a year later, when the case of Patty Hearst attracted
worldwide attention. Patty Hearst, granddaughter of publishing magnate William
Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped in February 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army
(SLA), an urban guerilla group. Shortly after the kidnapping, tapes were issued in which
Patty Hearst, using her newly adopted name Tania, decried her family, fianc, and the
police, and expressed sympathy for the SLA and its goals. In April 1974, Patty Hearst was
photographed wielding an assault rifle while robbing, along with other SLA members, a
San Francisco bank. A warrant was issued for her arrest, and in September 1975, Hearst
was arrested in a San Francisco apartment. At her trial, her defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey
argued that she had been brainwashed, making specific reference to Stockholm syn-
drome. The defense was unsuccessful. In 1976, Hearst was convicted and received a
seven-year prison term. She served 22 months before her sentence was commuted in
1979 by President Jimmy Carter, who was persuaded that Hearst had acted under duress.
In 2001 a full pardon was granted by President Bill Clinton.
Writing about the history of a related psychiatric disorder, destructive cultism
(indoctrination into cults), Robbins and Anthony (1982) make the observation that
during the 1970s, there was heightened concern about the dangers of brainwashing.
Besides the Patty Hearst case, the Jonestown massacre and the taking of U.S. hostages in
Iran also dominated the news. Robbins and Anthony suggest that the concurrence of
these events encouraged the medicalization of cult membership during the 1970s. The
climate of concern about brainwashing and mind control also facilitated acceptance of
the Stockholm syndrome label. Interest has been fueled by a steady stream of dramatic
and well-publicized cases, including the abductions of Elizabeth Smart, Natascha Kam-
pusch, and Shawn Hornbeck, a series of Mafia-related kidnappings in Italy through the
1970s and 1980s (Favaro et al. 2000), hostage-taking incidents such as the hijacking of
the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 (McDuff 1992), the storming of the Moscow

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Dubrovka House of Culture by Chechen terrorists in 2002 (Speckhard et al. 2005), the
Beslan school hostage-taking crisis in North Ossetia, and many others in the Western
world and the Middle East linked mostly to political conflict (for more details of this
history, see Christensen et al. in press).
Stockholm syndrome was typified in the psychiatric and criminological literature as
a condition resulting from situations where there is face-to-face contact between captors
and captives, where captors induce extreme fright or terror in their victims in order to
render them helpless, powerless, and totally submissive. Victims, according to psychiat-
ric claims, see no means of escape and fear for their lives. Under such circumstances, any
act of kindness on the part of the captors or even the absence of beatings, abuse, or rape
lead victims to see their captors as good guys (Symonds 1980). According to most
formal definitions of the syndrome, victims develop: (1) positive feelings toward their
captors and sympathy for their causes or goals, and (2) negative feelings toward the
police or authorities. These emotional bonds may be reciprocal; in other words, captors
may also develop positive feelings for their captives (the identification of captors with
their captives is occasionally referred to as Lima syndrome). The symptoms of Stock-
holm syndrome, it is argued, may persist long after captives are free (Skurnik 1988; Call
1999).
The etiological theories that psychiatric experts propose generally posit a psycho-
analytic explanation, emphasizing the idea of a survival mechanism. Strentz (1980)
explains that in a situation where individuals fear for their lives, the victims need to
survive is stronger than his impulse to hate the person who has created the dilemma
(p. 148). This results in a particular form of pathological transference or identification,
whereby the victim becomes attached to the captor. The positive emotional bond is
said to be a defense mechanism of the ego under stress. According to the theory, victims
do not simply play at being sympathetic to their captors. Out of fear of being seen as
insincere, they actually come to believe that their feelings toward their captors are
genuine. More recent research claims that there may be an evolutionary basis to Stock-
holm syndrome. Pointing out that similar responses have been observed in many
reptilian and mammalian species, especially primates, Cantor and Price (2007) argue
that ethological concepts such as dominance hierarchies and submission strategies go a
long way toward explaining the paradoxically positive relationships that may develop
between those experiencing traumatic entrapment and their oppressors.
The treatment typically recommended for Stockholm syndrome takes the form
of psychiatric or psychological counseling aimed at getting victims to recognize their
experiences as understandable, but nevertheless psychopathological, responses to their
circumstances. If Stockholm syndrome creates false perceptions, emotions, and attach-
ments, the goal of the treatment is an undoing and reversing [of] the factors that
brought about the traumatic psychological infantilism (Symonds 1980:135) and the
restoration of a normal state where victims responses are not distorted by fear and a
desperate desire to survive.
Alongside research into treatment, there has been some effort to develop protocols
for those most likely to find themselves in circumstances where they might be dealing

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with victims of the syndromepolice personnel, conflict negotiators, and airline

personnel. These groups are typically advised to be alert to the possibility of Stockholm
syndrome to prepare themselves for hostility on the part of hostages and even to foster
the development of Stockholm syndrome as a way of trying to protect hostages (Strentz
1980).
There have been dissenting voices. Within the law enforcement community, there
has been some skepticism about the way Stockholm syndrome has been sensationalized
and represented in the media, as well as the scholarly literature. Writing in the FBI
Law Enforcement Bulletin, Fuselier (1999) has argued that Stockholm syndrome has
been overemphasized, overanalyzed, over psychologized and over publicized (p. 22)
and that its occurrence is much rarer than is typically believed. Within psychiatry
itself, there is some questioning as to whether Stockholm syndrome is real, or simply
a media invention or urban myth (Namnyak et al. 2008). This puts the syndrome
in the category of contested illnesses (Brown 1995; Shriver, Miller, and Cable 2003;
Thompson 2003) along with such conditions as environmental disease and chronic
fatigue syndrome.
In terms of official recognition, Stockholm syndrome has not been included in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association, the
commonly used classification system for psychiatric disorders. As Murphy (1997) points
out, however, many trauma syndromes that have been identified and are commonly
referred to in the ever-growing trauma literatureincluding battered woman syndrome
and rape trauma syndromeare currently not found in the DSM; they are nevertheless
generally considered subcategories of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is
listed in the DSM. The process of creating the fifth revision of the DSM has started and
is expected to be completed in 2012. It appears the newest edition of the DSM will
include a new classification for Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified
that may or may not specifically mention Stockholm syndrome. Whether Stockholm
syndrome per se is included in the DSM and despite doubts about the veracity of the
condition, however, the term Stockholm syndrome continues to be widely used by
psychiatrists, researchers, clinicians, criminologists, advocates, victims, the media, and
in everyday discourse. In fact, as the next section shows, the range of behaviors and
situations to which the label is applied is steadily growing.
However, before turning to the expanding use of the label, we make two observations
about its emergence. Most case studies of medicalization describe situations where
medicalization occurs in a top-down direction. New labels, diagnoses, or discoveries are
generated by medical researchers and then promoted within professional circles and
among the public, eventually reaching a level of institutionalization (Conrad and
Schneider 1980). Stockholm syndrome took a different route. The Stockholm syndrome
label was constructed not to describe a carefully studied or researched phenomenon
but to characterize a specific incidencethe seemingly inexplicable behavior of the
released hostages in the botched Kreditbanken robbery. The term appeared first not in
the pages of a scientific journal but in the context of a television interview. Segments of
the psychiatric profession, however, quickly embraced the label and eventually provided

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the kind of scientific buttressing that supports most medical labels in the form of
formal definitions, specified symptomatologies, and etiological theories. Along with
other instances of bottom-up medicalization (see Schneider [1978] on alcoholism, Scott
[1990] on PTSD, Johnson and Hufbauer [1982] on sudden infant death syndrome, and
Levine and Troiden [1988] on sexual compulsivity), the case of Stockholm syndrome
underlines the fact that the impulse to medicalize can originate anywhere and that the
involvement of health professionals and the pursuit of scientific evidence can be the
consequence, rather than the genesis, of medicalization.
Second, the Stockholm syndrome case raises questions about what constitutes legiti-
mization of a medical label. Despite the fact that the existence of Stockholm syndrome
has been disputed by some experts and that there are questions regarding whether it will
ever be included in the DSM, the label continues to be used. The persistence of its use
suggests that instead of asking whether a medical label or diagnosis has achieved recog-
nition, there are more sociological insights to be mined from asking questions about
who recognizes medical labels (or contests them), under what circumstances, and with
what consequences.

DOMAIN EXPANSION
The growth in the use of the Stockholm syndrome label since the 1970s is illustrated in
the following graph. Figure 1 displays the results of a search of all Factiva database news
sources for the exact phrase stockholm syndrome (whether or not the label was the
main focus of the article), which includes 4,527 (English language) newspapers, 362 Web
news articles, 29 blogs, and 2 multimedia sources.
We also consulted LexisNexis, searching the New York Times (Figure 2), and the
Globe & Mail (Figure 3) newspapers, leading news sources in the United States and

FIGURE 1. Factiva Search of Articles Mentioning Stockholm Syndrome.

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Michael Adorjan et al. Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource

FIGURE 2. Mentions fo Stockholm Syndrome in the New York Times.

Canada, respectively. The data reveal the same trends. The Stockholm syndrome label is
being used much more extensively and, as we will show, has become a common cultural
referent.
While the patterns in terms of how frequently the label is invoked are interesting, the
more significant point to which we draw attention is the ways in which the label has
come to apply to circumstances and behaviors beyond its original application. While in
the early years the Stockholm syndrome label was restricted to cases involving abduc-
tions and hostage-taking situations, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a
broadening of the circumstances to which the label was applied. Picking up on the idea
of power imbalances at the root of the syndrome and the false emotional bonds they
were said to create, researchers and scholars increasingly claimed that Stockholm syn-
drome occurs not only in abduction cases but in a range of other situations that might
not at first blush appear to be obvious cases of the syndrome.
One group to which the label is now often applied is battered/abused women.
Through the 1980s, Dee Graham, a feminist psychologist (Graham, Rawlings, and
Rimini 1988), was instrumental in promoting the idea that the behaviors exhibited
by battered women, particularly those who denied their status as battered women or
refused to leave their partners were consistent with the symptoms of Stockholm syn-
drome. This typification has since come to permeate discourse about battered women.

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Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource Michael Adorjan et al.

FIGURE 3. Mentions of Stockholm Syndrome in the Globe & Mail.

References to Stockholm syndrome are common in academic writing about battered

women (i.e., Boulette and Anderson 1985; Follingstad, Neckerman, and Vormbrock
1988; Dutton 1992; Berns 1999; Loring and Beaudoin 2000). Such references are
common as well among service providers. A training manual for certified domestic
abuse advocates issued by the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, for example,
describes battered womens syndrome as a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome and
enumerates the cognitive distortions that serve as symptoms, including rationalizing
the abusers abuse, taking the abusers perspective, and believing that the abusers
arousal and hypervigilance is love rather than terror. A book (Rogers 2002) written for
those involved in providing pastoral care advises: Pastors can expect some members of
their congregations who have been subjected to domestic violence to have coped
through the psychological survival mechanism of Stockholm syndrome (p. 8).
Stockholm syndrome has been used as well to describe the reactions of victims of
child abuse (Stanley and Goddard 1997) and child sexual abuse, particularly in those
who resist reporting the abuse or assisting in the prosecution of its perpetrators. The
emotional bond between the survivors of child sexual abuse and the people who per-
petrated the abuse against them, argues one author, is similar to that of the powerful
bi-directional relationship central to Stockholm syndrome (Jlich 2005:107).

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A number of authors have connected Stockholm syndrome to prostitution

(Barry 1984; Farley 2003; Avgerinos 2006). Joseph Parker (2002), the clinical director of
a treatment program in Portland for survivors of prostitution explains that one of the
fundamental goals of a pimp is to create Stockholm syndrome in those being prosti-
tuted so that they come to believe that their involvement in prostitution is their choice.
The label has been applied as well to those who have experienced parental abductions
(Lowenstein 2006), incest victims (Carver 2007), prisoners of war (Hunter 1988), politi-
cal prisoners (Wardlaw 1982; Turner 1985), cult members (Tobias and Lalich 1994),
suicidal terrorists (Speckhard et al. 2004), victims of sex trafficking (Freed 2007), victims
of human trafficking more generally (Canada Department of Justice 2002), and cases of
elder abuse (Scaletta 2006). In other words, rather than being used in a restrictive sense
to apply to a circumscribed type of brainwashingbrainwashing that occurs in the
context of an abduction or hostage-taking situationStockholm syndrome has become
a more generalized term used by experts to refer to a range of situations where mind
control is seen to be involved, including situations of sustained or long-term abuse.
The label is also appearing with greater frequency in everyday discourse including at
Internet sites, in chat room discussions, and on personal blogs, as well as in popular media.
Reacting to newly announced repressive antismoking regulations in Australia and
comments by then Prime Minister John Howard that smokers were pariahs, one post
claimed that the lack of a public outcry from the one in four Australians who smoke could
be only be explained as a symptom of Stockholm syndrome (http://blog.libertarian.
org.au/2007/10/19/stockholm-syndrome/). Stockholm syndrome has been offered as
an explanation as well for everything from Britney Spears alleged relationships with
members of the paparazzi who have tormented her since her rise to fame (http://
www.p2pnet.net/story/14810) to the strong bonds that develop between household pets
and their owners (http://www.veggieboards.com/newvb/showthread.php?59838-quot-
Pets-quot-slavery-amp-the-Stockholm-syndrome.&highlight=stockholm+syndrome),
and the success of 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (https://groups.
google.com/group/alt.recovery.na/browse_thread/thread/8a4bec716eec009a/f9cb89e45
9a62868?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=stockholm+syndrome#f9cb89e459a62868).
Another significant development in the definitional history of the label has been
its application not to individual responses, but to collective or group reactions. In a
book published in 1994 called Loving to Survive, Dee Graham, the psychologist who
first applied the Stockholm syndrome label to battered women, introduced the term
societal Stockholm syndrome (Graham, Rawlings, and Rigsby 1994). Graham and her
coauthors claimed that the key to understanding the psychology of not simply battered
women but all women is the ever-present terror they experience in the face of mens
violence. The fear that they might anger men or be sexually assaulted by them leads
women to respond by trying to please men and exhibiting feminine behaviors of sub-
mission. Like the Stockholm hostages who bonded to their captors, the book argues that
women bond to men in order to survive.
A similar argument has been made with respect to the putative reluctance among
African Americans to take a stand against racism. Huddleston-Mattai and Mattai (1993)

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claim that as the direct result of slavery many African Americans, particularly those who
have achieved positions of success or power, have developed a slave or Sambo men-
tality. They describe this response as a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome:

This manifestation of the Sambo mentality or the Stockholm syndrome may become
externalized through attempts to mimic Euro-Americans, to dissociate from any-
thing identifiably or perceived as identifiably African-American, and even to exhibit
embarrassment when another African-American demonstrates behavior that is
thought to be viewed negatively by Euro-Americans. (p. 350)

Journalists and political commentators have also made reference to the Stockholm
syndrome label to explain political situations, international relations, and global
conflicts. Pilevsky (1989), for example, in his book Captive Continent, analyzes politi-
cal tensions during the 1980s between Western Europe and its traditional ally, the
United States. Pilevsky claims that the former Soviet Union was responsible for the
tensions, actively pursuing a policy that fostered a hostage-captor mentality among
Western Europeans. This in turn, he insisted, generated a Stockholm syndrometype
response whereby Western Europeans began distrusting the United States and shifted
either toward a nationalistic neutralism or a pro-Soviet position on many significant
issues.
Other instances of the use of the label include explanations for the apparent
willingness of the Indian government to appease Pakistani terrorists (Kaushal 2005),
the alleged sympathy of the Israeli left for the Arab cause and the peace process
(Levin 2005), the purported rise in conversions to Islam after 9/11 (Richardson 2006),
and the resistance of some Taiwanese to reunification with China (Chu 1999). Others
have made references to corporate Stockholm syndrome described as the phenom-
enon wherein employees of a business start to identify with, and are exceedingly loyal to,
an employer who is manifestly hostile to their own self-interest (http://c2.com/cgi/
wiki?CorporateStockholmSyndrome; see also http://feuerthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/
07/corporate-stockholm-syndrome.html).
The broadening of the meaning of the Stockholm syndrome label and its applica-
tion in an ever-increasing range of situations serves as a good example of domain
expansion. Joel Best (2008) defines domain expansion as the redefining of a troubling
condition to encompass a broader array of cases (p. 338). When a claim about a
condition has gained acceptance, it is possible to build additional claims on that foun-
dation. Domain expansion has been observed in relation to medical labels where
already existing labels are broadened and made more inclusive. For example, the
concept of hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder (ADD), once understood as
affecting only children, has recently been expanded to include adults (Conrad and
Potter 2000). Increasingly, reference is also being made to children with nature deficit
disordera condition characterized by an alienation from nature that results in
depression, obesity, and ADD (Louv 2006). Addiction (Peele 1995; Schneirov and
Geczik 1998) and PTSD have expanded well beyond their original parameters

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(Summerfield 2001). Postnatal depression, once understood as afflicting women, is

now said to affect men as well (Lee 2006).
The use of the Stockholm syndrome label shows a similar pattern.A phenomenon that
did not once exist, or at least had not been named, is now widely recognized, and as some
would have it, fairly prevalent in one form or another. Moreover, the label has become the
rubric for an ever-widening range of responses not only at the individual level but at the
societal level. The use of the label to describe broader social issues like gender, racial, and
global relationships, reflects domain expansion of a different order. While many labels
have lent themselves to domain expansion, there are few that have crossed the line as
Stockholm syndrome has from discourses about individual behaviors to discourses about
collective responses and those of entire nations, peoples, races, and genders.

DECONSTRUCTING THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME LABEL

How can the appeal of the Stockholm syndrome label be understood? Put differently, if
the Stockholm syndrome label is thought of an interpretive or explanatory scheme
employed as a resource by social actors and scholars alike, in what situations is it invoked
and what work does it do? Beginning with the circumstances that first gave rise to the
label, Stockholm syndrome provided a way to make sense of a situation that was seen as
incomprehensible. Hostages, their lives violently disrupted and imperiled by criminals,
respond not by decrying their captors but by sympathizing with them, not by assisting
police who were trying to save them but by turning against them. Interpretive sociolo-
gists have long argued that social actors deal with the complexity of their worlds by
defining, categorizing, and attaching meanings to situations. Applied more specifically
in the social problems literature, these definitions of the situations (Thomas 1923) are
referred to as typifications (Best 1995; Loseke 2003). Typifications can sometimes be
couched in formula stories (Loseke 2001, 2007; Berns 2009). Formula stories may be
thought of as templates or narrative models that lay out casts of characters (victims and
villains) and predictable story lines (Loseke 2008). Successful story lines become part of
popular wisdom, what we all know about the world.
The formula story for abductions and hostage-takings typically casts captives as
innocent victims and their captors as villains, and offers a plot that has victims, once
they are released, exhibiting relief, gratitude toward their rescuers, and at most pity for,
if not outrage at, their captors. When captives resist their victim roles, refusing in some
instances even to see themselves as captives; when they reject the demonization of the
villain or more dramatically support the position of villains against the authorities who
are trying to apprehend them, the formula story is disrupted. Within the context of the
formula story, their actions are counterintuitive. They do not make sense. The disrup-
tion challenges taken-for-granted assumptions about how individuals should feel and
behave, the relationships they should share with one another, and how events should
unfold. Normal victims respond as the formula story dictates. Only disturbed
victims respond in the paradoxical ways that the Stockholm syndrome label describes.
In other words, any response other than the response that meets the normative

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Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource Michael Adorjan et al.

expectations of the formula story is treated as a manifestation of the psychopathological

condition, not as an act of agency on the captives part. Logical thinking and sound
judgment is denied (Reich 1980).
If the formula story for abductions or hostage-taking situations offers one definition
of the situation, the experiences of those in situations said to be suffering from Stock-
holm syndrome can be understood as offering another. In the pitting of one definition
of the situation against another, the invocation of the Stockholm syndrome label effec-
tively accounts for the nonsensical definition proffered by victims by rendering them
as not in their right mind, not acting rationally, acting and thinking under duress,
and experiencing the effects of trauma. Restored to their normal state, in a normal
state of mind, they would see things differently, they would respond differently, and
they would feel differently. Moreover, resistance becomes impossible in a framework that
defines resistance as a symptom of the condition. For captives to argue that they are not
victims does not raise questions about the relevance of the formula story or the appro-
priateness of applying the victim label to them; on the contrary, it reinforces the victim
label, making victims even more sympathetic than they would be otherwise. They are
seen as having had to endure not only the trauma of their abduction, incarceration, and
maltreatment at the hands of their abductors, but also the distorted perceptions their
trauma has precipitated. In this scenario where the mind is seen as having been affected,
coping is not coping, feeling a sense of agency is not real agency, and the appearance of
normalcy is not real normalcy.
The strategic use of the label can be seen in debates about battered women where
experts and advocates point out that battered women often deny, minimize or rationalize
their abuse, or assume at least some of the responsibility for the violent dynamic in their
relationships but insist that these are merely cognitive distortions connected with
Stockholm syndrome (Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence 2006). The Stockholm
syndrome label positions women who deny, minimize, or rationalize their abuse, and
those who opt to stay in their abusive relationships and who try to defend their decisions
as reasonable as traumatized and sick. The invocation of the label does not leave room for
consideration of womens own experiences of their relationships with their partners or
the ostensible reasonableness of their decisions in some cases to stay with their partners.
At the point at which a woman begins to defend her decision to stay, the content of what
she has to say becomes irrelevant. The mere act of trying to explain or defend her position
identifies her as a sufferer of Stockholm syndrome. Those who know better, it is presumed,
and those with expertise in family violence and years of experience in advocacy work have
a responsibility to intervene on behalf of battered women and, in the interests of their
cure, to ensure that they understand their perceptions as delusions. Graham et al.
(1988), for example, have argued that helping battered women to understand the dynam-
ics of Stockholm syndrome gives them the perspective that they need to let go of the
battering relationship at a cognitive and emotional level, and prevent relapses (p. 217).
Another area where strategic use of the Stockholm syndrome label applies is the
debate over prostitution and the prostitutes rights movement. According to those who
argue that prostitutes are victims of Stockholm syndrome, prostitutes and their defenders

466 The Sociological Quarterly 53 (2012) 454474 2012 Midwest Sociological Society
Michael Adorjan et al. Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource

may claim that prostitution is a choice made freely, but no one really wants to have sex
with five, ten or twenty strangers a day, every day (Parker 2002). No reasonable person
with realistic options would choose prostitution. Parker (1998) argues that Stockholm
syndrome often is the real reason for what others see as the choice to stay in the sex
industry. Prostitutes are not really making a choice when they get into or stay with
prostitution. Those who understand their decisions as a choice that they have freely made
and defend their decision as a legitimate one are not acting or responding reasonably. No
less than the hostages in the Kreditbanken robbery, they are captives of their pimps and/or
of a system that perpetuates their oppression. With no possibility of escape and as a
survival mechanism, they internalize the perspective of their oppressors and turn against
those who desire only to rescue them.

THE YVONNE RIDLEY CASE

An example of the rhetorical work that the Stockholm syndrome label does can be found
in the case of Yvonne Ridley. The case is particularly interesting because its circumstances
are set against a larger context of debates around gender and anti-Islamic sentiment in a
post-9/11 political landscape. Yvonne Ridley is a former Sunday Express journalist, who
in 2001 was captured and held for 11 days by the Taliban in Afghanistan. After her release,
she returned to London and in 2003 became a full convert to Islam. In the aftermath of
her conversion, Ridley began to espouse a range of controversial views in defense of Islam
and became fiercely critical of the West. She has characterized Islam as a religion that
respects and even empowers women, referring frequently to its position on women as
Muslim feminism. The Qurran, she has claimed in an interview (Napier 2004),makes
it clear that women are equal in spirituality, worth and education. She has praised the
sense of community and mutual generosity that Islam fosters among women:They want
each other to do well, says Ridley (in ODoherty 2004), I hadnt expected this. In the
West were all too busy pinching each others boyfriends, and criticising each others
clothes or weight. She has taken the position that to wear the hijab and niqab is liberat-
ing for women: You tell me, she has said, what is more liberating: Being judged by
the length of your skirt and your cosmetically enhanced breasts or being judged by your
character, mind and intelligence? (Shimron 2007).
Ridley has also repeatedly decried the unfair treatment that the Taliban has received
at the hands of Western media. She has referred to Muslim suicide bombings as mar-
tyrdom operations and openly expressed sympathy for terrorists such as Jordanian Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, once describing British Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, serving
a seven-year jail term for inciting murder and hate-fueled racism, as quite sweet really
(Caldwell 2007). Ridley often expresses her views stridently and provocatively. Com-
menting on Ridleys talent for stirring a crowd, one journalist observed: Drinking
Coca-Cola is like drinking the blood of Palestinian children! she will shout, and up go
the cries of Allahu Akbar! (Cooke 2008).
From the moment of her conversion, almost every reference to Ridley and her views
is accompanied by the suggestion that she suffers from Stockholm syndrome. Ridley

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Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource Michael Adorjan et al.

herself has consistently rejected the notion, explaining repeatedly over the years that
she does not fit the definition of the disorder: To suffer from Stockholm syndrome, you
have to bond with your captors. You have to have an empathy with them. During my 10
days (of captivity), I did not bond with my captors. I spat at them. I swore at them. I threw
things at them. I was aggressive. I was rude (and) obnoxious. I was the prisoner from hell
(Csillag 2007). As Ridley explains it, although she was under pressure to espouse Islamic
views during her captivity, she resisted. She did, however, promise her captors to read the
Quran if releaseda promise she kept. What started as an academic study, she said, led
eventually to a spiritual awakening (Newsweek International 2002).
Recognizing the effect that an assertion of Stockholm syndrome would have on her
credibility as a spokesperson for the views she espouses, Ridley has tried to expose the
assertion as a strategy for discounting the arguments she makes about Islam and anti-
Muslim sentiment in the West. She has pointed out:

that [the assertion of Stockholm syndrome] comes from people who cannot accept
that a Western woman has rejected what they see as Western values to embrace Islam.
Because they cant understand it, they fear it. And because they fear it, they have to
attack it. The easiest thing they can come up with is Stockholm syndrome. (Csillag
2007)

In an interview in The Muslim Observer, Ridley says even more clearly: The syn-
drome thing is used by detractors and those who cannot explain why a professional
Western woman would embrace Islam (http://muslimmedianetwork.com).
Despite her protestations, indeed because of them, Ridley continues to be seen as a
victim of Stockholm syndrome. The more outrageous her views, from the perspective of
her critics, the clearer the evidence that she continues to suffer the long-term effects of
having been traumatized by her abduction. The more vehement her denials, the more
pitiable she can be portrayed to be.

CONCLUSION
Stockholm syndrome is increasingly being used in social problems discourse and politi-
cal debates to discredit the claims of others. We have tracked its history from its origins
in the context of kidnappings and hostage-taking incidents through to its application to
a broader range of behaviors where individuals are described as being so oppressed or
traumatized that they cannot think straight or express their own agency. While there are
elements of this history that can be described as domain expansion, we have shown that
the use of the label to describe the collective responses of entire social groups appears to
represent a more diffuse type of expansion.
Used in social problems discourse, the Stockholm syndrome label can be understood
as a rhetorical power play, an effort to discredit counter claims-makers. The label offers
claims-makers a way to neutralize the arguments of those with opposing points of view.
It does so by medicalizing the alternative and problematic perspective of the other

468 The Sociological Quarterly 53 (2012) 454474 2012 Midwest Sociological Society
Michael Adorjan et al. Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource

(Conrad and Schneider 1980). The label promotes particular formula storiesthose
constructions of conditions and events that claims-makers seek to institutionalize
as what we all know to be true. The label, its construction of social reality, of what is
real and false, of who sees clearly, and whose views are distorted become part of our own
taken-for-granted assumptions about the world. The invocation of the Stockholm syn-
drome is meant to establish the point of view of the social actor invoking the label as the
truth, and all competing claims as suspect, illegitimate, or nonsensical.
We are not the first to draw attention to the implications of framing problem
behaviors, reactions, responses, or positions in medical terms. Conrad and Schneider
(1980) pointed out that among the consequences of medicalization is the individual-
ization and depoliticization of any meaning those behaviors may have. They illustrated
the point using the example of political dissidents in the Soviet Union who were
declared mentally ill and confined to mental hospitals. This strategy neutralized their
dissent rendering it, officially at least, merely symptomatic of mental illness. An equally
powerful example of the way in which medical labels can depoliticize individuals
responses is Thomas Szaszs (1981) analysis of the drapetomania and dysaesthesia aethio-
pis labels. First described in the prestigious New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal
in 1851 by Samuel A. Cartwright, drapetomania refers to a disease characterized by an
effort on the part of the Negro slave to escape from his/her white master.
The strategy of using medical (especially mental illness) diagnoses as a tool for
silencing others, neutralizing counterclaims, depoliticizing debate, or pre-empting it
altogether continues with a growing range of mental illness labels available to be used by
social actors against those with different experiences, views, beliefs, and ideologies. It is
sometimes easier with the benefit of historical perspective to see the strategic and
political uses of these labels. To the extent that more contemporary versions, like Stock-
holm syndrome, gain currency, it is harder to see that these labels work in the same way
and are intended to accomplish the same political ends. The labels, their constructions
of social reality, of what is real and what is false, of who sees clearly, and whose views are
distorted become part of our own taken-for-granted assumptions about the world. Our
intent in this article is not to challenge the Stockholm syndrome label nor its use in
any particular social problems debate but to draw attention to how the label works to
generate those assumptions.
While we have framed our analysis of Stockholm syndrome in the context of the
constructionist literature on social problems, the ideas we have explored here have
relevance to a broader range of discussions and debates in sociology. The way in which
the Stockholm syndrome label is used to construct individuals and groups as victims of
their experiences, and the way in which those so labeled either take on or challenge the
attribution makes Stockholm syndrome an interesting case to examine in relation to
debates about victim contests, where the concern is with the extent to which political
discourse has become essentially about claims for and against victimization and victim
status (Cole 2007). The strategy for neutralizing opposing claims that Stockholm
syndrome represents can also be looked at in relation to the growing literature on
culture wars (Hunter 1991), where the interest is in better understanding how moral

The Sociological Quarterly 53 (2012) 454474 2012 Midwest Sociological Society 469
Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource Michael Adorjan et al.

entrepreneurs compete to define familial, educational, religious, and cultural mores.

In the context of the culture wars, the use of the Stockholm syndrome label in social
problems discourse can be seen as a strategy of moral regulation. The Stockholm
syndrome case can also be considered in relation to ongoing sociological interest in the
social construction of the mind (Coulter 1979), and how interpretations of mental states
coincide with interpretations of personal and social problems (Weinberg 1997; Fox
1999). Further exploration of these points of connection may be useful in establishing
the relevance of the concept of vernacular resources beyond the social problems litera-
ture and in refocusing attention on generic processes of reality construction founda-
tional to the sociological enterprise.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Publishing success is socially mediated. The authors are grateful to the anonymous
reviewers as well as the editors of The Sociological Quarterly for their helpful and
encouraging feedback. The article benefited also from the thoughtful comments of
many colleagues and peers. The article originated as a discussion the authors had as part
of the Canadian Constructionist Circle.

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