WHY WE LOVE THOSE WHO ARE CRUEL TO US
Stockholm Syndrome and the Story of the Nazi Schoolteacher
ON AUGUST 23, 1973, A GROUP OF BURGLARS ENTERED AND commandeered a Kredibanken bank branch in Norrmalmstorg Square in Stockholm, Sweden. Over the next five days, several bank employees were held hostage in a vault by the burglars, who eventually surrendered to the authorities. What happened next was a very peculiar phenomenon. Most of the bank employees who underwent the nightmare of captivity expressed support and sympathy for the hostage takers in press interviews. Some even offered to serve as character witnesses in their defense during the subsequent trial.
About a year after these events transpired, Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by a group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), which had ambitions to implement a series of terrorist acts in support of radical left-wing causes, similar to the actions of the Italian Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Red Army faction in Germany. After two months in captivity, Hearst chose to join her captors, issuing a statement to the press in which she disowned her family and declared herself a member of the SLA. A short time afterward Hearst participated in a failed bank robbery along with other members of the SLA, which led to her arrest.
These two incidents, along with others, prompted psychologists and psychiatrists to identify a new psychological phenomenon termed Stockholm syndrome (or Hearst syndrome). Researchers in evolutionary psychology tend to consider Stockholm syndrome to be a behavioral phenomenon that developed in early human history. Here is the standard explanation of where it comes from. In early hunter-gatherer societies, individual tribes were competing with one another for a limited pool of food, which often led to intertribal conflict. In these situations, males would often kidnap female members of rival tribes. Natural selection favored women who successfully managed to integrate into the new tribal environment in which they found themselves: they survived and even bore the children of their captors. Women who were unable to identify emotionally with their captors usually did not survive, and if they managed to survive they often did not have offspring.
I do not regard this explanation to be fully satisfactory. First of all, Stockholm syndrome affects men as well as women. Secondly, the evolutionary explanation is too narrow and restricted relative to the wide range of expressions of the syndrome.
Stockholm syndrome is only the most extreme expression of a broader syndrome that we all, to some extent, suffer from: when we are in relationships with figures of authority, we tend to develop positive feelings toward them. People often persist in clinging to these positive feelings even in the face of injurious and unjust treatment by those in authority over them. The less opportunity people have to change their situation, the more they tend to express positive feelings toward authority figures and to blame themselves for any unjust treatment they receive at their hands. There are too many examples to list: battered women who refuse to part from their abusive husbands, unbearable bosses whose actions are inexplicably forgiven by their employees, important customers who get away with arrogant and even demeaning behavior.
I am not referring to situations in which we are fully cognizant of being in a humiliating position but stifle our anger for tactical reasons, understanding that expressing them will only be counterproductive. I am referring to cases in which we express perverse sympathy for harmful individuals or completely ignore their actions simply because they have a position of authority. A temporary boss or an unimportant customer, in contrast, will get a swift reaction from us unless the price we would pay for that reaction is too high.
In many cases, when the balance of power is especially unfavorable for us, our emotional mechanism cooperates with our cognitive mechanism to moderate our feelings of insult and anger. This is rational emotional behavior, which in proper dosage can boost our chances of survival. In extreme situations, however—as in those of battered women—that same behavioral pattern can be extremely detrimental for us. Our emotional mechanism also exaggerates the extent to which we feel gratitude toward figures of authority in return for making small and insignificant positive gestures. This can lead us to over-ascribe importance to such gestures and to develop unsubstantiated trust in the kindness and decency of the authority figure. This is the secret of success in the good cop/bad cop method of interrogating police suspects—after the bad cop has played his part and failed to elicit a confession, the good cop suddenly appears like an angel who has the suspect’s best interests at heart, offering coffee or cigarettes.
I learned to appreciate the emotional power of such small gestures, even when made by particularly frightening authority figures (and perhaps especially then), from a story my father told me. In 1932 my father, Hans Winter, was the only Jewish student at the Immanuel Kant Elementary School in Königsberg, Germany. My father had a particularly vivid memory of his history teacher, Dr. Gruber, a devout Catholic, who was also an enthusiastic Nazi supporter. Gruber ignored the official Weimar Republic school program. He had his own lesson program—a virulently anti-Semitic and racist one, which taught that Germany was the cradle of human civilization while Jews were descendants of Neanderthals. He was quite aware of my father Hans’s Jewishness and took great pleasure in humiliating him in front of the other schoolchildren. In one instance, for example, little Hans was called to the front of the classroom and instructed to recount the story leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus. Gruber also fully ignored the Weimar government’s strict order against political rallies at schools. His lavish Nazi rallies during schooltime turned into routine practice, and when little Hans hesitantly mentioned these at home, Gruber almost lost his job. After that he would call Hans to the front of the classroom less often, but he would never take his eyes off the child.
In early February 1933, a large ceremony, orchestrated by Dr. Gruber, was held at the school to mark Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of Germany. The previous administration’s restrictions on political activity in schools were reversed overnight, and by eight o’clock that morning the flags and banners festooned with the swastika were ready. Fearful and indignant, little Hans decided that he could not bear to participate. He gave the flag he was carrying to the boy standing in front of him and slipped away from the parade.
Hans quickly fled from the school’s parade grounds, running into the school building to hide in the bathroom. But even within the bathroom he heard someone singing the Nazi anthem from within one of the cubicles. Before he even had a chance to identify the voice of the singer, the cubicle door swung open and Hans found himself face to face with Dr. Gruber, now dressed in a starched SA uniform.
Hans made an immediate about-face and began running with all his might, with Gruber chasing right after him while at the same time trying to button the top of the fly of his trousers. “Hans Winter, halt!” roared Gruber at the top of his lungs. Hans refused even to consider this possibility, accelerating his pace even more. Hans swiftly ran out of the school grounds straight into the bustle of the city, judging that if he could reach the offices of his uncle’s wheat export company, about a half-mile from the school, before Gruber could catch him, he would be safe. There was a good chance that Hans’s father might be there, and if his father would see what Gruber was trying to do, he would find a way to relieve Hans of ever having to see Gruber again.
Temperatures in Königsberg in February are often far below freezing, and to Hans’s misfortune, the streets were coated with a thick layer of ice that day. After only a few hectic minutes of running through the slippery city streets in the freezing cold, Hans’s feet lost their grip on the ice. He went flying onto the pavement, injuring a leg in the process. As he lay flat on his back, moaning with pain, Hans could hear Gruber, gasping for air, approaching. He was certain that within seconds Gruber’s heavy body would land on him, pressing his head into the ice and leaving him helpless, with no one to rescue him from the full extent of Gruber’s revenge.
What happened next had a greater influence on my father’s personality—for better or worse—than any other event in that fateful year in which the Nazi’s took power in Germany.
Gruber gingerly approached Hans, who by this point was trying to play dead as best he could, and picked the boy up in his arms. He whispered softly: “Hans, what happened? Show me where you are hurting.” After hugging Hans warmly, Gruber carefully inspected his injured foot. Hans watched Gruber warily, but with a nod of his head indicated that the pain was receding. Gruber then helped Hans stand up again, patted his head and pointed to a nearby café. After being served a cup of hot tea and a plate of chocolate cake, paid for by Gruber, Hans looked suspiciously across the table.
Gruber sat there leaning his chin on his arms, placing his head parallel to Hans’s. He explained that he’d been chasing my father to make amends with him, not hurt him. “In fact I wanted to tell you that as an educator and your personal teacher I regard myself as responsible for your health and well-being in our school. No one can harm you, not a student, not a teacher, no one. Promise me that you will inform me of any attempt to hurt you.” Gruber continued talking this way, stressing that now that Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany, respect, justice, and decency would surely be the hallmarks of the new Nazi Germany. After completing this speech, he calmly turned his attention to eating the cake he had ordered for himself.
I heard my father retell this story many times. Whenever he got to describing the scene in the café his eyes welled with tears and his voice choked. Was my father reacting this way because of the general memories he had of how much he had suffered in his last year in school in Germany or perhaps because of the utter fear that had gripped him when he was being chased by Gruber, who was certainly a vile man? I do not believe it was due to either reason. I think my father reacted that way because of the kind gesture he received in the most unexpected place, at the most unexpected time, from the most unexpected person. He apparently regarded Gruber as a hero—in fact, as a sort of righteous man.
How could miserable Gruber, who exhibited a few minutes of decency, have merited this response? I never dared to ask my father this question directly, but Gruber apparently was the object of my father’s empathy for years precisely because he was vile, not in spite of his usual ugly personality and behavior.
My father’s emotional reaction was a moderate expression of Stockholm syndrome. Little Hans was in a situation in which he was under the authority of a teacher who made his life miserable during the very frightening time period at the beginning of the Nazi rule. The empathy that this teacher received from his pupil in exchange for a very inexpensive price is the result of a rational emotion that protected my father and enabled him to survive his last, difficult months in Germany. A particular emotion may be rational at a specific moment in time, but it can also be deeply embedded within us and survive for decades even after it has ceased to protect us.