The Handholm Syndrome In Handmaids's Tale And Prison

On August 23rd, 1973, in Stockholm, Sweden, four hostages were held captive after a botched bank robbery and kept there for six days. Throughout these six days the four hostages grew a strange bond with their captor. The captor allowed his captives to call their family, kept them warm when they were cold and even let them out of the vault they were kept in when they said they were claustrophobic. This strange relationship that grew in this short amount later became studied and was widely known as Stockholm syndrome. It has been looked at as one of the smartest survival methods for kidnappings. Stockholm syndrome can be seen in many cases around the world when it comes to kidnapping and happens to one in every four kidnappings that occur, states

In Handmaids Tale, although they are being watched and are given commands, this is their whole society that is being controlled where as in prison this is just the group of prisoners at that specific facility. The Handmaids live in a society where that is how everything is run and that is the only way of life that everyone lives by. In prison, it’s a completely different world than our society outside of the prison. Another difference is in prison, prisoners don’t tend to fall in love with the officers but sometimes grow a certain respect for them at some point. This doesn’t happen all the time though. You do get those prisoners who, once they get out of jail, will commit crimes again and end up back in jail. This ends up happening because its their way of life. But there have been cases where people will commit crimes intentionally just so that they can go back into prion. Mike P stated in an article that sometime its for another inmate in that prison, or the comfort that they may find in the

From the scale that they force control over, to the extent of comfort or trust that is put into the authority is what makes them both an intriguing part of both societies. Stockholm syndrome may be seen as a myth or not taken seriously, but with comparisons of a fictional book and real life phenomenon’s, there is doubt about it that both cases can vouch for one another as truly having a real effects on people