the “Stockholm syndrome” [O Pacto de silêncio]

...representando, mudos e inapeláveis, a dura luta que diariamente se enceta contra a grandeza, a nossa grandeza mortal, representando a luta que diariamente com coragem se enceta contra a nossa bondade, porque a bondade real é uma violência; representando a luta diária que encetamos contra a nossa própria liberdade, que é grande demais e que, com minucioso esforço, diminuímos; nós, que somos tão objectivos que terminamos sendo nós mesmos apenas naquilo que tem uso: com aplicação, fazemos de nós o homem que um outro homem possa reconhecer e usar; e por discrição, ignoramos a ferocidade do nosso amor, e por delicadeza, passamos ao largo do santo e do criminoso; e quando alguém fala em bondade e sofrimento, baixamos os nossos olhos ignorantes, sem dizer uma palavra em nosso favor; aplicamo-nos em dar de nós o que não espante, e quando se fala em heroísmo não entendemos
[...]

o que ele não entendera é que havia um pacto de silêncio.*

Identification with the aggressor is our response when when we have lost our sense that the world will protect us,
What we do is make ourselves disappear.
This response goes beyond dissociation from present experience: like
chameleons, we blend into the world around us, into the very thing
that threatens us, in order to protect ourselves. We stop being ourselves
and transform ourselves into someone else’s image of us.

habitual identification with the aggressor also frequently occurs in people who have not suffered severe trauma, which raises the possibility that certain events not generally considered to constitute trauma are often experienced as traumatic. Following Ferenczi, I suggest that emotional abandonment or isolation, and being subject to a greater power, are such events. In addition, identification with the aggressor is a tactic typical of people in a weak position; as such, it plays an important role in social interaction in general.

children who are terrified by adults who are out of control will “subordinate themselves like automata to the will of the aggressor to divine each one of his desires and to gratify these; completely oblivious of themselves they identify themselves with the aggressor.

First, we mentally subordinate ourselves to the attacker. Second, this subordination lets us divine the aggressor’s desires—getinto the attacker’s mind to know just what he is thinking and feeling, so we can anticipate exactly what he is about to do and know how to maximize our own survival. And, third, we do the thing that we feel will save us: usually we make ourselves vanish through submission and a precisely attuned compliance [...].

All this happens
in a flash.

Ferenczi (1932) observed that a traumatized child may “become so sensitive to the emotional impulses of the person it fears that it feels the passion of the aggressor as its own. Thus, fear
. . . can turn into . . . adoration”

A similar phenomenon, in which people who are powerless in the face of threat comply not only in their behavior but in their emotions, is the “Stockholm syndrome,” in which prisoners develop feelings of sympathy, protectiveness, attraction, even love toward their captors. Feeling the part, I think, allows us to play the required role flawlessly. Yet there is always some piece of one’s own perception that remains and resists giving itself up to identification, however lost it may appear to be **








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Fotos: Misha Gordin
Textos:
* C. Lispector. " A Maçã no escuro".
**Jay Frankel. "Exploring Ferenczi’s Concept of Identification with the Aggressor. Its Role inTrauma, Everyday Life, and the Therapeutic Relationship"