Stuck Home Scream Dome
Being held captive by Covid-19
If you’re reading this you’ve probably got the phonetic connection with Stockholm Syndrome and will no doubt be groaning a little at how contrived it is. But I’m not going to apologise. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment , it’s a popular concept but is suspect in terms of credibility. The Stanford experiment (which concluded that just about anyone could commit evil acts given the right circumstances) was designed and manipulated to give the results its designers anticipated. The Stockholm Syndrome, even if it is real thing, is rare.
Both concepts have entered into common discourse because they echo what we’ve all experienced or observed. Both contain evidence based truths but, particularly in the Stanford case, the problem lies in the generalisation of what we’ve observed specifically. For example, we see a certain trait in an ethnic group and when someone from that group commits a crime in a way that exagerrates that trait, we create an association between the two things. Yet when we think of sexual assault we assume its committed by a stranger when its more likely to be a family member. We don’t associate families with sexual assault. This segue’s well into a discussion on the Stockholm Syndrome.
Our attachment to the Stockholm Syndrome probably comes from it being played out on film. One technique…
