Archive for the ‘hostage captor leader intimidation’ Category
Stockholm Syndrome
People tend to attracted to the one with similar or stronger personality.
The one with extrovert personality will certainly attracted to the one which is talkative, enthusiastic to human interaction, assertive, and gregarious. The uniqueness is that people tend to be attracted, even fall in love to the one who has stronger personality. This phenomenon realy happened and reflected in Stockholm Syndrome.
The story of Stockholm Syndrome
There was a unique story in the summer 1973 when four hostages were taken in a bank robbery at Kreditbanken in Stockholm, Sweden. Six day later, at the end of their captivity – the hostage refused to testify against their captors, raised money for their legal defense, and according to some reports one of the hostages eventually became engaged to one of her jailed captors.
Similar situation also happened in the case of Patty Hearst, who after being kidnapped and tortured by the Symbionese Liberation Army, took up arms and joined their cause, taking on the nom de guerre of “Tania” and helping the SLA rob banks.
“They weren’t bad people. They let me eat, they let me sleep, they gave me my life”
— A hostage from Flight 847
Why this case happened?
Stockholm syndrome is an example how weaker people (hostage, employee, student, etc.) for the sake of survival, try to keep captors (robber, boss, teacher, etc.) happy, further they tend to identify themself to the captor which result in sympathizing the captors instead!! In an isolated and death threatened condition, this syndrome typically takes about three or four days for the psychological shift to take hold.
So we can understand why battered spouse, member of religious cult, junior (remember the case of STPDN case in Sumedang, West Java) even household pets are attracted, sympathize and defend the captors.
Weak people tend to love stronger one, as we choose healtier pet… so does in personality. People who have strong personality will attract people’ heart and mind.
Leader as Great Intimidator
Ideally Leaders are considered successful when they have good attributes, and deliver business result. In contrary, many famous leaders deliver result in term of sales, revenue, profit and efficiency but do NOT considered as good people. They tend to intimidate employees and focus merely on productivity (transactional leader) – but they are adored. Employees are actually kept in the company due to difficulty in finding next jobs, while everyday they are tortured emotionally by the boss. Certainly in this case also, Stockholm Syndrome will happen,… and this certainly will unless employees have guts and not depend on the company in term of income, and self identification and meaning.
