neonascent

The BBC reports that Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager abducted and kept captive for 10 years of her, life mourns the death of her captor. The journalist is quick to point out that

Police suspect she may have been suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” – a condition where some abductees gradually begin to sympathise with their captors.

Of course, we cannot be allowed to entertain the idea that a “normal” or “positive” emotional attachment developed from such a criminal scenario as abduction! I think it’s interesting to examine the psychoanalytic explanation for Stockholm Syndrome, as presented in its Wikipedia entry:

According to the psychoanalytic view of the syndrome, the tendency might well be the result of employing the strategy evolved by newborn babies to form an emotional attachment to the nearest powerful adult in order to maximize the probability that this adult will enable – at the very least – the survival of the child, if not also prove to be a good parental figure.

With the institution of Family touted as the foundation of a civilized society, it would be devastating to concede that it is based on simply an evolved survival instinct – familiar bonds being a throwback to psychological necessity. However, I don’t think it should really come as a surprise that this is so. Natacha’s situation brings us up against the uncomfortable question of what makes an emotional response valid – was Wolfgang Priklopil an Abductor or Father?

Wolfgang Priklopil [...] effectively brought her up. He provided her with clothes, food, helped her with her studies.

Two points that could be raised to disqualify the similarity between Natascha’s so-called Stockholm Syndrome and a socially accepted/validated parent-child emotional bond. One is that she is not genetically related. I would suggest that society is quite happy to accept love expressed within a foster family. A second, which has not yet been confirmed, is that there may have been sexual contact between the abductor and Natascha. Sadly this is not unheard of within a biologically related family unit, and significantly, the expression of loyalty, love, etc of a child within an physically/sexually abusive family is another locus of diagnosed Stockholm Syndrome.

I suggest that the Stockholm Syndrome categorization of any love and attachment within a socially unacceptable scenario is used to insulate “good love” from ‘bad love”. We would like to think that love towards someone who is abusive is the result of some “psychological condition” while the love within a (nice, atomic, idealised) family is out of choice. It is possible that I am being too critical of such double-standards however; while the emotional attachment known as love is a result of psychological evolution, the primacy and value of the family unit within our society is also the result of a much more recent social evolution.