In 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on parole, took four employees of the bank (three women and one man) hostage during a failed bank robbery in Kreditbanken, one of the largest banks in Stockholm, Sweden. He negotiated the release from prison of his friend Clark Olofsson to assist him. They held the hostages captive for six days (23–28 August) in one of the bank’s vaults. When the hostages were released, none of them would testify against either captor in court; instead they began raising money for their defense.5 Nils Bejerot, a Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist coined the term after the Stockholm police asked him for assistance with analyzing the victims’ reactions to the 1973 bank robbery and their status as hostages. As the idea of brainwashing was not a new concept, Bejerot, speaking on “a news cast after the captives’ release” instinctively reduced the hostages’ reactions to a result of being brainwashed by their captors.5 He called it Norrmalmstorgssyndromet, meaning “the Norrmalmstorg syndrome”; it later became known outside Sweden as Stockholm syndrome.6 It was originally defined by psychiatrist Frank Ochberg to aid the management of hostage situations.7
In 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on parole, took four employees of the bank (three women and one man) hostage during a failed bank robbery in Kreditbanken, one of the largest banks in Stockholm, Sweden. He negotiated the release from prison of his friend Clark Olofsson to assist him. They held the hostages captive for six days (23–28 August) in one of the bank’s vaults. When the hostages were released, none of them would testify against either captor in court; instead they began raising money for their defense.5 Nils Bejerot, a Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist coined the term after the Stockholm police asked him for assistance with analyzing the victims’ reactions to the 1973 bank robbery and their status as hostages. As the idea of brainwashing was not a new concept, Bejerot, speaking on “a news cast after the captives’ release” instinctively reduced the hostages’ reactions to a result of being brainwashed by their captors.5 He called it Norrmalmstorgssyndromet, meaning “the Norrmalmstorg syndrome”; it later became known outside Sweden as Stockholm syndrome.6 It was originally defined by psychiatrist Frank Ochberg to aid the management of hostage situations.7