Stockholm Syndrome in Battered Women - Criminal Justice

Battered women’s paradoxical responses to their abusers have perplexed professionals and laypersons alike. These responses include expressing love for the abusers, denying or minimizing the abuse, blaming themselves for the abuse, continuing to stay with the abusers, returning to the abusers after fleeing, and refusing to testify against the abusers after they have been arrested for abuse. Laypeople and professionals alike often label these behaviors ‘‘masochistic,’’ suggesting that these women seek out partners who abuse them so as to obtain some perverse psychological gratification. However, intimate violence is characterized by coercion, in which external, or situational, forces are likely to exert more control over behavior than are internal, or dispositional, ones. Consistent with such a social psychological perspective, Graham and associates (Graham 1994; Graham and Rawlings 1991) contend that these puzzling responses by battered women can be understood through a survival mechanism of bonding with the abuser, also known as ‘‘Stockholm Syndrome.’’ Graham’s Stockholm Syndrome theory (1994), based on the literature of hostage and hostage-like groups, aids in understanding the behaviors of battered women which many find confusing and frustrating.

Stockholm Syndrome was coined by Lange (1974), who described a curious bond which developed between bank-employee hostages and their captors after a failed bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. After exploring this account, as well as extensively surveying nine ‘‘hostage’’ groups (hostages, concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war, civilians held in Chinese Communist prisons, cult members, abused children, incest victims, battered women, and pimp-procured prostitutes), Graham and associates identified conditions under which this bonding develops; the psychodynamics of the bonding; evidence that a bond (which is bidirectional) has developed; and psychological consequences of this bonding.

Each of these aspects of the theory is discussed in this research paper. Since it addresses the issue of Stockholm Syndrome in battered women in particular, female pronouns have been used throughout when referring to the abuse victim, even though women and men are equally likely to develop Stockholm Syndrome, given exposure to the right conditions. Similarly, the abuser is referred to as male, though dynamics are the same whether the couple is heterosexual or homosexual and regardless of the sex of the abuser or victim.

Outline

I. Conditions Necessary for the Development of Stockholm Syndrome

II. Psychodynamics of the Stockholm Syndrome

III. Indicators of Stockholm Syndrome

A. Cognitive Distortions

B. Personality Distortions

IV. Questions Frequently Asked about Stockholm Syndrome

V. Breaking Out of Stockholm Syndrome: The Unbonding Process

VI. Stockholm Syndrome in Children of Battered Women

VII. Conclusion: Why Is It Important to Be Aware of Stockholm Syndrome in Battered Women?

I. Conditions Necessary for the Development of Stockholm Syndrome

Four conditions identified by Graham and associates as necessary precursors for the development of Stockholm Syndrome in victims of domestic violence are as follows.

The victim perceives a person threatening her survival. The threats may be physical or psychological. It is not important whether others view her survival as threatened, but rather whether she does.
The victim perceives the abuser showing her some kindness, however small. For example, the kindness may be that for one day out of the month he does not abuse her.
The victim is isolated from outsiders. This isolation may be physical—she is not permitted to have contact with family or friends—and/or ideological—she is permitted exposure to only the abuser’s perspective.
The victim does not perceive a way to escape the abuser. Batterers use violence to help ensure that their partners do not leave them.

Bachman and Saltzman (1995) found that compared with married women, divorced women were almost nine times more likely to be victimized, and separated women were almost twenty-five times more likely to be victimized. Furthermore, although the criminal justice system is charged to protect all citizens, it fails battered women in many respects, making escape from an abuser extremely difficult when the abuser elects to continue his abuse even after ‘‘separation.’’ For example, historically, despite the greater seriousness of intimate violence than stranger violence, arrest has been less likely when victim and offender are married (Berk et al. 1984), and sentences for convicted spouse assailants are lighter than those for convicted stranger assailants (Goolkasian 1986). Police have been slow to treat the home as a crime scene when there is evidence that domestic violence has occurred. They frequently fail to collect the evidence needed to convict the abuser, putting the onus of conviction entirely upon the woman’s word in a misogynistic court. Graham witnessed a Cincinnati, Ohio, judge ordering an abuser to marry his victim or else go to jail, totally ignoring the woman’s feelings about marrying a man who had battered her.

II. Psychodynamics of the Stockholm Syndrome

The psychodynamics of the Stockholm Syndrome as hypothesized by Graham and associates (1991, 1994) are as follows. A victim—who does not see a way to escape—perceives her survival being threatened. This traumatized victim, if isolated from outsiders who could provide nurturance and protection, must look to the abuser to meet those needs. If the victim perceives kindness, however small, from the abuser, the victim develops hope that the abuser will let her live. To further this end, she strives to make the most of whatever kindness he feels toward her. In an effort to increase any positive feelings he might have toward her, she strives to see the world from the abuser’s perspective, doing what she can to keep him happy, and thereby helping to ensure her survival. In the process, the victim becomes hypervigilant to the abuser’s needs and unaware of her own needs. She eventually views the world from the abuser’s perspective, losing touch with her own perspective, which is unimportant or even counterproductive to her survival. By misinterpreting her own feelings of high arousal—created by the trauma of having one’s survival threatened—as love, not terror, she is able to create and maintain hope of surviving and of a future without abuse, feel more in control, fend off feelings of terror and hopelessness, and feel less like a victim. She thereby begins a process of bonding to the positive side of the abuser, denying the side of the abuser that produces the terror. With the denial of the violent side of the abuser, and thus the denial of danger, the victim finds it difficult to psychologically separate from the abuser. Other mechanisms that make it difficult for the victim to psychologically separate from the abuser include: fear of retaliation for any show of disloyalty to the abuser; losing the only positive relationship available to her, due to her isolation from others; and losing the only identity that remains—her self as seen through the abuser’s eyes (which, in the case of the adult victim of chronic abuse, has replaced any previous sense of self).

III. Indicators of Stockholm Syndrome

Graham and associates (1991, 1994; Rawlings et al. 1994) identified a number of indicators that Stockholm Syndrome has developed in a victim:

The victim is bonded with the abuser. Actually, the bond is bidirectional, with the abuser also being bonded to the victim. The bond works as a safety strategy because the batterer is bonded to his victim as well. However, and contrary to other hostage situations, in domestic violence cases wherein the abuser has borderline personality disorder, the bond may actually encourage the violence. Also, since the batterer uses violence to maintain the relationship, the bondedness of the abuser may put the battered woman at risk should she decide to leave him.
The attachment to the abuser is an anxious one, not the secure attachment one expects with a loving partner.
The victim is intensely grateful for small kindnesses shown by the abuser. These kindnesses can be so small that observers may not recognize them as kindnesses at all. An example would be the abuser buying the victim a hamburger for her birthday, and the victim viewing this act as proof that he loves her. (This example comes from a clinical case supervised by Rawlings.)
The victim denies, minimizes, or rationalizes the abuser’s violence. She denies her own anger at his abuse. These cognitive distortions are essential for the victim to bond to the abuser.
The victim flip-flops in her perceptions of both the abuser and abusive events, seemingly being unable to hold on to a perception or maintain a belief regarding her own experiences. These observations suggest that she finds it difficult to know what is real and what is not.
The victim is hypervigilant to the abuser’s needs and seeks to keep the abuser happy. To do this, the victim tries to ‘‘get inside the abuser’s head’’ in order to predict what would calm or upset him. Because the victim is so focused on the abuser’s needs, she loses touch with her own needs.
The victim sees the world from the abuser’s perspective. If the abuser sees persons or situations as threats, the victim also sees them as threats.
The victim sees outside authorities trying to win her release (e.g., police, therapists) as the ‘‘bad guys’’ and the abuser as the ‘‘good guy.’’ She sees the abuser as protecting her. The victim finds it difficult to leave the abuser even after her release is won. Due to her isolation, the abuser is often her only source of support and nurturance; also, her sense of self becomes dependent on her relationship with the abuser.
The victim fears that the abuser will come back to get her even after the abuser is dead or in prison.
The victim shows traumatic stress symptoms. These include physical and psychophysiological complaints, depression, low self-esteem, anxiety reactions, paranoid patterns, and feelings of helplessness. After physically and psychologically separating from the abuser, full-blown posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is experienced with classical PTSD symptoms, including nightmares and flashbacks. This is due to the split-off feelings and perceptions associated with trauma reemerging into consciousness, thus beginning the process of integration and healing (cf. Allen 1997).

Graham (1994) identifies sixty-six different indicators of Stockholm Syndrome, of which those listed previously are only a small subset. Graham et al. (1995) developed a three-factor scale to measure Stockholm Syndrome, and this scale was derived from the sixty-six indicators.

A. Cognitive Distortions

Perhaps the most prominent psychological feature associated with Stockholm Syndrome is the breadth of cognitive distortions associated with it. When discussing the abuser and the abuse with a battered woman evincing the syndrome, one feels unable to pin down facts, as though facts are slippery slopes that are forever changing. Why is this? Being able to bond with an abuser involves developing cognitive distortions that strengthen and maintain the bond, and thus maintain hope. Graham (1994) proposed that bonding with an abuser is a cognitive distortion maintained only when other cognitive distortions such as denial of abuse are in place. Many of the indicators of Stockholm Syndrome listed previously are examples of cognitive distortions (e.g., 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10). An expanded list of cognitive distortions observed in Stockholm victims can be found in Graham (l994).

B. Personality Distortions

Bonding with abusers who provide abuse alternating with nurturance—known as the cycle of abuse (Walker 1979)—may eventually lead victims to develop borderline-like personality characteristics and behaviors (Graham 1994). Survival behaviors developed in the context of chronic, interpersonal abuse may be generalized to others in ways that appear, in their current context, as maladaptive and self-defeating. The Stockholm Syndrome theory gives an alternative understanding of behaviors listed later which are associated with borderline personality characteristics in victims of chronic interpersonal trauma:

Victims develop only superficial general relationships and exhibit intense ‘‘push-pull’’ dynamics in intimate relationships. The ‘‘push’’ is due to the abuse that is being denied, while the ‘‘pull’’ is due to the need to create and maintain a bond with the abuser so as to help ensure survival.
Due to taking the abuser’s perspective, the victim lacks a sense of self and feels ‘‘empty.’’ This continues after freedom is won until such time as the victim is able to begin viewing the world through her own eyes, not those of the abuser. To do this she must achieve the difficult challenge of feeling safe from the abuser, an event which may never happen.
The victim shows abandonment depression. She has catastrophic responses to loss, for it is the abuser’s love of her, she feels, that is the only thing causing him to keep her alive. Bonding with an abuser leads to the loss of an integrated self; thus, she looks to others, as she did with the abuser, to provide self-soothing and protection.
The victim shows impulsive, self-destructive behaviors (e.g., drug abuse, promiscuity). These behaviors may reflect the victim’s taking the perspective of the abuser, which is that the victim deserves to be abused.
Due to chronic terror, the victim may experience disturbed states of consciousness (e.g., depersonalization, dissociation, and de-realization) under stress.
Perceptions and cognitions seem to slip away, as the victim appears unable to maintain a stable view of an event or person. These flip-flopping perceptions, which suggest that she has difficulty knowing reality, make maintaining boundaries difficult, as even perceptions change regarding where boundaries should be. This waffling is due to the need to distort terror in order to see it as love or caring, so no perception can be trusted or really known.
The victim expresses rage toward safe, intimate others, rather than toward the abuser. This is because abandonment by the abuser threatens survival, diminishes hopes of surviving, and increases terror.
The victim shows ‘‘splitting.’’ Abuse causes the victim to deny the abuser’s violent side and to bond with his positive or nurturing side. There is a need to see the abuser as all-good or all-bad. Gray thinking permits anxiety, fear, and doubt to creep in. This black-or- white or all-or-none thinking generalizes to relationships with intimate or threatening others and events. Due to the flip-flopping of perceptions, a person may be idealized as all-good at one moment and all-bad the next. Some people or groups will be viewed as all-good or all-bad.
The victim shows a clinging, childlike dependency due to the experience of interpersonal trauma in which she was helpless and dependent of the whims of the abuser, whom she sees as all-powerful.

IV. Questions Frequently Asked about Stockholm Syndrome

In presentations conducted by Graham and Rawlings on Stockholm Syndrome in battered women to both professional and lay groups, several questions are commonly raised. A few of these common topics are discussed later.

Women who develop Stockholm Syndrome do not do so because they have weak or defective personalities, because they have been previously abused, or because they were socialized in a certain way. Victims who develop Stockholm Syndrome do so because they have a desire to survive, and it is believed that bonding with an abuser is a survival strategy. Stockholm Syndrome develops in hostages taken at random (e.g., airplane hijackings), and there is no reason to believe that these people have weak personalities or have been subjected to a particular type of socialization experience (cf. Graham1994). It is the abusers, not the victims, who are likely to have had personality defects and/or abusive backgrounds prior to the occurrence of spousal abuse. Battered women may exhibit behaviors that resemble personality distortions due to chronic, interpersonal abuse, as discussed previously.

Victims do not stay with their abusers because they are bonded to them. Other theories of traumatic bonding, such as those proposed by Dutton and Painter (1981) and Symonds (1979), identify the bond as the primary factor preventing the woman from leaving. In contrast, Stockholm Syndrome theory maintains that victims bond with their abusers because they see no other way to safely escape. The reality is that victims are at the most risk if and when they leave their abusers (Bachman and Saltzman 1995).

One would least expect to see Stockholm Syndrome in a victim of interpersonal abuse when the victim perceives a way to escape the abuser, when the victim perceives no kindness by the abuser, and when survival is not of paramount importance to the victim.

Battered women can break out of the Stockholm Syndrome once it has developed, as discussed later.

V. Breaking Out of Stockholm Syndrome: The Unbonding Process

Except for the work of Allen (1991, 1997), there is little empirical evidence as of this writing describing the struggles that battered women experience while extricating themselves from their abusive partners. When a battered woman flees to a shelter and subsequently returns to her abuser, she is viewed as a failure. Some shelters deny refuge to women who show a repeated pattern of leaving and returning to their abusive partners. Allen (1991, 1997) provided a different perspective on this pattern, viewing it as a process of unbonding. She argued that each time a woman leaves and returns to her abusive partner, she is working through a psychological process which may eventually lead to termination of the relationship. Allen (1991) developed a Stages of Unbonding Scale (SUS) to measure a battered woman’s progress along a pathway of disengagement from her abusive partner, consistent with the psychodynamics involved in the development of the Stockholm Syndrome bond. The scale is made up of thirty-seven items designated as psychological ‘‘tasks.’’ Participants are asked to indicate the level of priority they assign to working on each task. Based on a study of battered women in abuse shelters who filled out the SUS and other instruments, Allen constructed an empirically based clinical model of the psychological stages of disengagement from the abusive partner. She found that progression through the stages was characterized by an increase in self-reliance and a decrease in attachment to the abusive partner. Subsequently, Allen (1997) conducted a replication of the 1991 study. The 1997 study, which involved women in thirty shelters across the country, showed a substantial replication of the 1991 study. For simplicity, the discussion here will focus on the stages as described in the 1997 study.

Stage 1: Immersion with Partner

In this stage, women’s bonds with their abusive partners are extremely strong. The women are enmeshed in their partners’ thoughts and feelings as they attempt to anticipate the partners’ actions in their efforts to keep their abusers nonviolent. As a consequence, they experience a profound loss of their own sense of self. An example of a high-priority task for these women was, ‘‘How to get my partner to forgive me for leaving him.’’

Stage 2: Out of Denial: Questioning Attachment to Partner

Unbonding begins to take place at this stage. These women are able to see both the abusive and kind sides of their partners. An example of a high-priority task for these women was, ‘‘To understand how I can love someone who treats me so badly.’’

Stage 3: Imagining Oneself with One’s Partner: Confidence vs. Self-Doubt

The women begin to imagine living without their partners. They are seeking to address both sense of self and financial independence issues. An example of a high-priority issue for these women was, ‘‘Proving to myself that I can take care of myself apart from my partner.’’

Stage 4: Reclaiming the Self

The women at this stage are focused primarily on reclaiming their own sense of self and personal power. An example of a high-priority task for these women was, ‘‘To discover the strength and power within me.’’

Identifying a battered woman’s progress along the unbonding process involves carefully listening to her. For example, women exhibiting a high degree of Stockholm Syndrome will obsessively focus on their abusive partners’ needs, wants, and beliefs but appear clueless about their own needs, wants, and beliefs apart from their partners’. They also show a great deal of flip-flopping. Several conditions which Allen identified as facilitating movement through the stages were assigning the responsibility for the abuse to the batterer himself, feeling anger toward the batterer, using therapy, and having a spiritual faith to rely on. When dealing with a battered woman who exhibits a high degree of Stockholm Syndrome, some caveats are useful in distinguishing between helpful and unhelpful interventions. Unhelpful interventions for women highly immersed in the Stockholm Syndrome include the following:

Attempting to persuade the battered woman to leave her abusive partner. Her attachment to her abuser is a survival strategy which she is probably not ready to relinquish. She will most likely break off a relationship with anyone who presses her to leave, since that person will be perceived as a threat to her survival.
Criticizing her partner. If the partner is criticized, the woman will feel a strong need to defend him, and again, this places the critic in an adversarial position.
Putting the woman on medication. Battered women are often misdiagnosed with psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety, for which they are given psychotropic drugs. These medications may blunt negative affect, making it more difficult for a battered woman to access her anger at her abuser and, thus, reducing the likelihood that she will break out of Stockholm Syndrome.
Involving the battered woman and her partner in marital counseling. Counseling is successful only when people can be open and honest about their relationships. If a battered woman is honest, she risks further retaliation and abuse.

Helpful interventions for battered women in the immersion stage include the following:

Reducing the battered woman’s isolation through involvement in supportive networks, support groups, and therapy groups.
Facilitating the battered woman’s development of an overlearned escape plan. This helps break through her denial that abuse is occurring.
Providing support and helping her develop several sources of support so that nurturance and succor come from sources other than the abuser, thereby helping break down her isolation.
Affirming both the loving and abusive sides of the battered woman’s abusive partner to help reduce splitting.
Developing safety and trust in one’s relationship with the woman. This may involve going through numerous testing experiences.
Indirectly educating the woman about Stockholm Syndrome by using stories and metaphors. These indirect techniques tend to bypass cognitive defenses and help her consider different perspectives on her situation.
Helping the woman with practical concerns she has, by, for example, providing information on the availability of resources, even though she may not be ready or able to utilize them at the time.

Additional interventions which promote unbonding and healing at each of the four stages are discussed in Rawlings et al. (1994) and Allen (1997).

VI. Stockholm Syndrome in Children of Battered Women

Children sharing the woman’s Stockholm Syndrome pose additional difficult challenges for battered women. Children who have witnessed the abuse committed by their father figure are likely to be in the same untenable situation as their mothers: isolated, threatened, perceiving no way to escape, and shown at least an occasional kindness, however small. In fact, they are likely to be even less able to escape and even more dependent on the abusive father than the battered woman who is their mother. They too, therefore, are likely to develop Stockholm Syndrome. When this happens, they are put in the position of having to bond with the abuser and may even have to abuse their mother themselves, in order to win favor with their father. Any healthy love they feel toward their mother is likely to pale in intensity and salience compared with the bond they must create and maintain with their father in order to survive. The battered woman who is also a mother is therefore likely to be abused by both the abusive partner and by her children.

Even if the woman manages to leave the abuser, the children are often required by law to continue to see their father, who may have visitation rights or shared custody. In such a situation, the woman may commence unbonding with her abuser at a time when it is still unsafe for her children—who must continue to see their father—to do so. Thus, abuse by the children and/or abuse by the partner that is accomplished through the children is likely to continue long after divorce or separation has occurred for the battered woman who is also a mother.

VII. Conclusion: Why Is It Important to Be Aware of Stockholm Syndrome in Battered Women?

Stockholm Syndrome helps one understand behavior in battered women that, in the absence of an understanding of its context, appears irrational and self-destructive and encourages victim blaming. Stockholm Syndrome explains why bonding to an abuser occurs; it comes from efforts to survive chronic, inescapable trauma and abuse, and not from personality defects of victims of abuse. In the absence of this understanding, one tends to blame the victims for their own abuse.

In a classic study, Lerner and Simmons (1966) found that people have a strong tendency to blame innocent victims if these people are not able to stop the victim’s future suffering. How many people are able to successfully stop domestic violence upon learning it is occurring among their friends, family members, or neighbors? Lerner and Simmons found that victim blaming is least likely when people know that they have done something that will stop a victim’s future suffering. On the other hand, if people do something to try to stop a victim’s suffering, but they do not know whether their actions are effective, the tendency toward victim blaming remains strong. This is also the situation of most judges, prosecutors, police, doctors, psychotherapists, and even friends and family members who attempt to help battered women. It is no wonder then that Belknap (1995) and Kurz and Stark (1988) have found it commonplace for those responsible for helping battered women to rationalize their seemingly negligible assistance to this group by blaming the victims.

Unfortunately, the effects of victim blaming are likely to be cyclical and cumulative. Outsiders’ victim-blaming attitudes encourage more abuse— and by extension, encourage the development of Stockholm Syndrome—by further isolating the woman and thereby making her escape more difficult. For example, hearing an outsider make remarks such as, ‘‘If she doesn’t help herself, why should I help her?’’ ‘‘Battered women are masochistic. They seek out abusive partners,’’ or ‘‘If a woman stays with an abusive man, she must not want to leave him’’ tells a victim that she can neither confide in nor expect assistance from that person. The increased isolation and inability to escape make the woman still more dependent on her abusive partner’s kindness. Thus, outsiders’ victim-blaming attitudes promote the development of Stockholm Syndrome in battered women. This is particularly true when these beliefs are held, expressed, and acted on by police officers, judges, prosecutors, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and friends to whom the woman might turn for help. There is no better example of the fundamental attribution error—a denial of the power of the social context within which bonding occurs—than that provided by frequently heard victim-blaming attitudes expressed toward battered women.

Consider the effects on battered women of the general public blaming her for staying with her abuser, when so many factors, including the public’s own attitudes, serve to preclude her escaping her partner’s abuse. The more women appear bonded to their abusers, the more victim blaming people do, as they misperceive that love, not inability to escape, is the reason women stay with their abusers. Thus, the cycle repeats itself, each time increasing the victim blaming, the conditions conducive to Stockholm Syndrome, and the abused woman’s bonding to the abuser.

Also check the list of domestic violence research topics and all criminal justice research topics.

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