Understanding Stockholm Syndrome

In August of 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson walked into the lobby of a bank in central Stockholm. He fired his submachine gun at the ceiling and yelled “The party starts now!” Then he started taking hostages. For the next six days, Swedish police and international media would tie themselves in knots trying to understand what seemed to them a sordid attachment between captor and captives. And this fixation, later pathologized as “Stockholm Syndrome,” would soon spread across the globe, becoming an easy, often flippant explanation for why people—especially women—in crisis behave in ways outsiders can’t understand. But what if we got the origin story wrong?

Today on Radiolab, we reexamine that week in 1973 and the earworm heard ‘round the world. Is “Stockholm Syndrome” just pop psychology built on a pile of lies? Or does it hold some kernel of truth that could help all of us better understand inexplicable trauma?

Special thanks to David Mandel, Ruth Reymundo Mandel, Frank Ochberg, Terence Mickey, Cara Pellegrini, Kathy Yuen, Mimi Wilcox and Jani Pellikka.

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EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by - Sarah Qari
with help from - Alice Edwards (also contributed research and translation)
Produced by - Sarah Qari
with help from - Rebecca Laks
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom
Additional Field Recording by - Albert Murillo (CC-BY)
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton
and Edited by  - Alex Neason

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Please put any supporting materials you think our audience would find interesting or useful below in the appropriate broad categories.

Videos/Documentaries: 
Bad Hostage by Mimi Wilcox
Stolen Youth: Inside The Cult at Sarah Lawrence

Podcasts:
The Memory Motel Episode #13: The Ideal Hostage, hosted by Terence Mickey
Why She Stayed, hosted by Grace Stuart
Talk to Me, The True Story of The World’s First Hostage Negotiation Team, hosted by Edward Conlon
Partnered with a Survivor with David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Social Media:
Grace Stuart on Tiktok

Books: 
Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome by David King
See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control, and Domestic Abuse by Jess Hill
Slonim Woods 9, a memoir by Daniel Barban Levin

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Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.