“Everyone down, let the party begin!“: with these words, Jan Erik Olssona 32-year-old criminal expert in opening safe deposit boxes and explosives broke into machine gun in hand and under the influence of narcotics, on a bench in the center of Stockholm on August 23, 1973. It could perfectly be a scene from La Casa de Papel or many other movies and series whose plot revolves around robberies, but it was a real situation. From that hostage taking, which lasted six days, a new concept would emerge: the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, which became popular throughout the world, defined as the favorable attitude or even attraction that some kidnapped people may develop towards their captors but which continues to be controversial for psychiatrists.
In that robbery, Olsson detained submachine gun point four bank employees, three women and one man, and used two of them as human shields, brandishing his gun and constantly threatening to kill them if they did not deliver what he asked for: 3 millions of Swedish krona, a car and the release of his sidekick Clark Olofson, one of the most dangerous criminals in the country. Olofsson was 26 years old, robbed banks, had been linked to the murder of a policeman and had already escaped from prison twice. After going off the alarms, dozens of agents went to the area. Negotiators, agents and even snipers they entered the scene, but Olsson had no intention of giving up.
Given his reckless attitude, at first, the authorities agreed to both requests and shortly after, Olofsson entered the bank. In just a few minutes, Olofsson took control of the kidnapping and the negotiations with the police. It was then that this criminal began to display his abilities. “He had charisma, he spoke very well,” recalls Bertil Ericsson, a photographer who covered the event at the time. The kidnapping was going to go on for a long time.
Gift of people
Olofsson’s ability to get along with people was innate, and was such that even Olsson, under the influence of drugs as he was then, reassured by having his presence. Some witnesses say that the climate of the kidnapping really changed when Olofsson appeared. “I have often thought about this absurd situation in which we find ourselves,” recalls one of the hostagesKristin Enmark, who was 23 years old at the time and whose strange behavior gave rise to the controversial concept of Stockholm Syndrome. To this day he has recounted his experience in a book in which he has assured that he took more than 10 years in being able to pronounce about what happened because he was ashamed of what he had said during the kidnapping.
Olofsson “promised me that nothing would happen to me and I decided to believe him,” says Enmark. The kidnappers, to show the police that they were serious, decided to shoot him in the leg one of the hostages, and Enmark came to defend his actions. During the week that the kidnapping lasted, on several occasions, the young woman came to speak positively of her captors: “I completely trust Clark and the thief. I am not afraid of them at all, they have not done anything to me. They are being very kind“, she came to say on the second day of captivity during a telephone call with the Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme. According to the telephone recordings, the hostage came to assure that she feared more for the police actions than those of her captors.
On the sixth day, this totally film kidnapping came to an end. The police sprang into action, piercing the roof of the bank and storming into the place, firing tear gas. Olsson surrendered and the hostages were released. The thieves were tried and jailed, but became celebrities. They received letters from many admirers, especially Olofsson.
“Neither love nor physical attraction”
The negotiating team included a psychiatrist, Nils Bejerot, who analyzed live the behavior of the robbers and the hostages. It was he who coined the concept of “Stockholm syndrome”, contested by many of his colleagues, although he initially called it Norrmalmstorg Syndrome, the name of the square where the kidnapped bank was located. Around the concept there is a strong controversy. There are those who deny that it is a psychiatric condition.
“It’s not a psychiatric diagnosis,” objected Christoffer Rahm, a psychiatrist and researcher at the Karolinkska Institutet, author of an article titled: “Stockholm Syndrome: Psychiatric Diagnosis or Urban Myth?” The term “can be described as a defense mechanism that helps the victim to survive” in an extreme pressure situation. “Thanks to that positive bond, you develop a form of acceptance of the situation, which in turn reduces your stress,” explains Rahm.
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For Cecilia Åse, professor of Political Science at Stockholm University, the concept hides a “gender dimension”. The authorities interpreted the statements of Kristin and the other hostages “in a very sexualized way, cas if they had fallen under the influence of a syndrome” that had clouded their reason. This vision was fueled by many rumors, especially about the relationship between Kristin and Clark.
Although they would later have an affair, nothing seems to indicate that the love story began in the bank those days in August 1973. “For my part, there was no love or physical attraction, he was my chance for survival and he protected me from Olsson” , says the woman who inspired the character “Kicki” from the Netflix series “Clark”. According to Professor Åse, “Stockholm Syndrome is an invented concept” to hide the lack of state protection.