Ethiopian Review

Victims like Jaycee Dugard are expected by society to act “normal”. “Normal” behavior might be defined as hating the captor and trying to escape. But Jaycee Dugard and others like her are in abnormal situations where normal rules of behavior don’t apply. They are trying to survive.

Stockholm Syndrome was first noticed in 1973 and it can occur in any situation when an individual is forced to endure violence. When the victim bonds with the perpetrator of the violence, this is known as Stockholm Syndrome.

Survival is complicated. Jaycee Dugard’s captor, Phillip Garrido, had total control over Jaycee, including the power to take away her life, or to preserve it. Any act of kindness by the captor can be received with gratitude and magnified by the victim, because the captor’s kindness brings great relief and can be the only hope for the victim’s life. Jaycee Dugard’s daughters’ lives also hung in the balance.

Victims must try to evoke that kindness from the perpetrator in order to survive. The victim becomes the type of person the captor responds well to, in order to survive. One can imagine that a compliant personality would develop.

Jaycee Dugard, like other victims, was isolated. Victims are only subject to the point of view of their captors. Reality gets fuzzy. Children’s minds are even more malleable.

The combination of gratitude for kindness, fear, and knowing the captor, can allow victims to see their captors as human beings with their own problems, and even identify with them.

Certain feelings are suppressed because they are too painful to bear. Feelings of anger toward a captor are based on wanting one’s freedom and loved ones and childhood and safety and comfort back. But the victim may be completely powerless to gain this. How does one bear the pain of knowing that he or she can’t escape his or her torture or abuse? Sometimes by suppressing all feelings relating to it.

The Stockholm Syndrome should not be too surprising, especially in a case like Jaycee Dugard, where a child spent half of her childhood in captivity. Even in less extreme circumstances, children (and adults’) psyches do complicated things to help victims deal with problems.

For example, children often blame themselves for family problems, such as a divorce. Believing that they are responsible for the family breakup allows children to feel that they have some control over what happens around them. Even if the children take the blame for the failure, this can be easier than confronting the fact that they have no control over the most important things in their lives, like whether or not their families break up or stay together.

This response occurs in children who are physically or sexually abused, as well. Believing one is  somehow responsible for it, allows the victim to feel some sense of control. When in a life and death situation believing that one has absolutely no control can be a thought too overwhelming to bear.

(By Lisa DeLuca | Examiner)