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All In The Mind

Is Stockholm Syndrome a sexist myth?

All In The Mind

ABC listen

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Science

4.4785 Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A bank heist, a hostage drama and a dubious diagnosis.

It's 50 years since the robbery that inspired the term 'Stockholm Syndrome', and today we explore the origins of the proposed condition  - and probe the many problems with that label. 

Transcript

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0:00.0

ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

0:09.1

The scene is Stockholm, Sweden, 50 years ago.

0:13.2

It was shortly after bank hours had opened on the morning of August 23, 1973, that into into a bank in central Stockholm walked a man who was

0:25.1

wearing a wig, toy glasses, had makeup on his face, and from underneath a jacket, he pulled a machine

0:35.1

gun and fired it up into the ceiling of the bank and yelled out that the party has

0:40.9

just begun.

0:44.0

The man who walked into the bank that morning, his name was...

0:48.1

Yana Eric Olson.

0:49.8

And he was a lifelong criminal.

0:51.5

He's 32 years old.

0:53.3

I've been engaged in safe cracking and armed robbery since he was a lifelong criminal. He's 32 years old, I've been engaged in safecracking and armed robberies since he was 16 years old.

0:59.5

And this particular bank was his next target.

1:02.0

There are probably about 40 people in the bank at this point.

1:05.7

In the panic, some bank employees are able to flee, others hit the floor.

1:10.4

He starts ordering some of them to tie up each other.

1:14.5

And then a silent alarm is sounded, and a couple of plain-closed policemen come upon the scene.

1:20.9

A brief shootout follows.

1:22.9

A policeman is injured in the hand, and they retreat, leaving Olson in the bank with his hostages.

1:28.6

He pretty much will end up taking four of the bank employees as hostages that day. And they're

1:34.8

going to be the one to remain with him throughout the six-day siege.

1:42.6

Stockholm Syndrome. That's a term you've probably heard of.

1:46.0

And if you have, you kind of know exactly what it means without thinking too much about it, right?

...

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