Stockholm Syndrome

In August 1973, a bank robber named Jan-Erik Olsson seized four employees of Stockholm's Kreditbanken and held them in a vault for six days. During the standoff, the hostages expressed sympathy for their captors and distrust of the police — behavior that Swedish psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who advised police during the crisis, termed "Norrmalmstorg syndrome." The international press renamed it Stockholm syndrome. American psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, working with the FBI and Scotland Yard, later refined the clinical definition in the late 1970s, expanding it beyond bank robberies to captivity situations broadly.