Stockholm syndrome is called that because the pattern was first described after a 1973 bank‑robbery hostage crisis in Stockholm, Sweden, where captives appeared to emotionally side with their captors.

The 1973 Stockholm robbery

  • In August 1973, armed robbers seized Sveriges Kreditbank in Stockholm and held four employees hostage in the bank vault for six days.
  • During and after the standoff, some hostages expressed fear of the police, defended the robbers, and later refused to testify against them, which seemed strikingly at odds with what they had endured.

How the name was coined

  • A Swedish criminologist, Nils Bejerot, commented on the case in the media and described the hostages’ behavior as a specific pattern linked to the Norrmalmstorg Square incident, initially calling it “Norrmalmstorg syndrome.”
  • As the story spread internationally, the label shifted to Stockholm syndrome, using the city name as a shorthand for this type of hostage–captor bonding.

What the term describes

  • The term refers to a proposed psychological response in which hostages or abuse victims develop positive feelings or loyalty toward their captors, sometimes coupled with mistrust or hostility toward authorities trying to help them.
  • Many clinicians treat it as a descriptive pattern rather than a formal diagnosis, since it does not appear as a distinct disorder in major diagnostic manuals like the DSM.

Bottom line: it is called “Stockholm syndrome” simply because the best‑known early case unfolded in Stockholm, and that city name stuck as the label for the phenomenon.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.