Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cities with their own psychological disorders

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 123 posts

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#41

Post by pessimizer »

jbandela1 wrote: post #21
praptak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this article seems to classify it as pure bullshit: https://www.stadafa.com/2020/12/stockholm-syndrome-discredit... "The psychiatrist who invented it, Nils Bejerot, never spoke to the woman he based it on, never bothered to ask her why she trusted her captors more than the authorities. More to the point, during the Swedish bank heist that inspired the syndrome, Bejerot was the psychiatrist leading the police res…

Maybe we should have a Bejerot Syndrome. This is where an “expert” impugns the intellect or morality of the people who disagree with them instead of trying to understand the very real reasons why.

Or more precisely, the mental health of the people who disagree with them.

Knowing that the person who came up with Stockholm Syndrome was the very same person who the hostages sided with the bank robbers against makes it look a lot like drapetomania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania).

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#42

Post by 3cats-in-a-coat »

escapedmoose wrote: post #26
3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockholm syndrome is an example of a phenomenon that is pervasive in society and nature in general and a basic consequence of trying to adapt to your environment. We can nitpick forever the specific Stockholm events, but they're just a noisy example of a pattern, not an ideal MODEL of the pattern.

But the distinction between the apparent pattern and its underlying cause is important. If the cause of this method of “trying to adapt to your environment” isn’t actually some bizarre psychological paradox after all, that fact has important implications for how we treat people in these scenarios.

In general anything we call "paradox" is something we don't understand. A paradox is apparent contradiction of facts and their logical, rational relationship. But contradictions don't exist out there.

Reportedly the syndrome "occurs in 8% of kidnap victims", by FBI stats. Not sure how they measure that, but seems plausible. Of course when forced to act against your will, you're defiant. Fight or flight. That's what happens most of the time. Except it's not so simple.

There's a fuller description of the strategies known as "Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn" (I guess it was super important to to keep the F-s, hehe).

We see the Freeze response in nature, deer stuck in headlights, animals pretending to be dead when attacked, and so on. We can see this response in children with violent parents. They can't run and hide, nor fight. They freeze.

Fawn is basically the "Stockholm syndrome":

- Over-agreement

- Trying to be overly helpful

- Primary concern with making the abuser happy

This 8% figure with kidnapping seems to be low because the "Fawn" adaptation takes time to develop. A kidnapping is sudden and unexpected. No time to adapt. But there are abusive situations when there is plenty of time to adapt.

We can see this in cults, in abusive families, autocratic companies, it's pervasive in fascist regimes, i.e. Jews policing, hating and attacking Jews, etc.

Fawn is the default adaptation when an abuser is abusive over a long period of time, gradually going from non-abusive to abusive, like in an abusive marriage, from honeymoon to everyday scandals. The victims seek to align to an increasingly lopsided point of balance by changing themselves. And over time, it can become absurd.

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#43

Post by cguess »

tokai wrote: post #24
marginalia_nu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these supposed syndromes seem fairly questionable.

Almost all of them just seems like first psycotic episode brought about by a novel stressful environment.

"feelings of dizziness and being lightheaded" sounds much more like a tourist was walking around Italy in the summer with a heavy backpack and not drinking enough water after getting off an airplane and probably impinging too much wine at dinner the night before.

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#45

Post by arethuza »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #8

They also missed the Glasgow effect - residents have a significantly lower life expectancy that the rest of the UK and, from memory so could be wrong, it affects people who's first line ancestry is from Glasgow but who themselves have never lived there.

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation is fascinating and rather grim:

https://simd.scot/

e.g. Select the most deprived 5% from the key - they are mostly in Glasgow :-(

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#46

Post by boudin »

Doches wrote: post #39
ethbr0 wrote: post #35

> (on Paris Syndrome uniquely afflicting Japanese tourists) Or it could be the jarring confrontation of the a priori ideal of Paris as exotic and friendly with the rather more abrasive nature of the city’s inhabitants. Having visited Tokyo (which I assume is the most Paris-like Japan gets?) and Paris (just got back from most recent trip), this rings true. Average "mild annoyance" from a Parisian would equal "severe d…

It's hard to pick up on as an American, but "French Tacos" actually don't have any genealogy in common with Tex-Mex tacos. They're essentially north African shwarma (lamb kebab, fries, cheese sauce, lettuce shoved in a wrap) re-marketed in a way that doesn't invoke knee-jerk racism from the French mainstream. Calling them "tacos" lets them get away with being exotic, and since the average Français doesn't really have…

It's just a variant of kebab and shwarma that gained popularity. Nothing to do with the need to rebrand it because of racism. Shwarma (or kebabs as most people call those) shops fed generations of french studients and party-goers and have been everywhere for decades.

It's kind of funny though, french tacos really took over France in the last decade, I guess because of fast food chain like o'taco. When I left France in 2015 it was unheard of where I was living, now it's everywhere.

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#47

Post by eastof »

piuantiderp wrote: post #40
ethbr0 wrote: post #35

> (on Paris Syndrome uniquely afflicting Japanese tourists) Or it could be the jarring confrontation of the a priori ideal of Paris as exotic and friendly with the rather more abrasive nature of the city’s inhabitants. Having visited Tokyo (which I assume is the most Paris-like Japan gets?) and Paris (just got back from most recent trip), this rings true. Average "mild annoyance" from a Parisian would equal "severe d…

Bro, no one with a clue goes to Texas for tacos. Maybe Cali, but I don't bother for the most part in the US. Am Mexican

Just curious, have you had tacos in El Paso? As a non-expert, strikes me as a place that would have good tacos since half the city is in Mexico.

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#48

Post by Swizec »

ethbr0 wrote: post #35

> (on Paris Syndrome uniquely afflicting Japanese tourists) Or it could be the jarring confrontation of the a priori ideal of Paris as exotic and friendly with the rather more abrasive nature of the city’s inhabitants. Having visited Tokyo (which I assume is the most Paris-like Japan gets?) and Paris (just got back from most recent trip), this rings true. Average "mild annoyance" from a Parisian would equal "severe d…

> but even as an American with extremely bad and limited French, most people were very nice

The trick to Paris, I’ve found, is to start with broken French and then suddenly everyone speaks fluent English. But if you start with English you’re screwed.

Even saying “Bonjour” with a decent accent (you can learn it like a song almost) will make them significantly nicer to you.

But yeah don’t expect a big city person to actually verbalize anything if they bump into you in a crowded place. That’s just expected and normal. Not worth aknowledging.

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#49

Post by neilv »

> Detroit Syndrome is a form of age discrimination in which workers of a certain age are replaced by those who are younger, faster, and stronger, not to mention endowed with new skills better suited for the modern workplace.

Does a certain 20yo junior writer for a Web site resent the senior writers?

Re: Cities with their own psychological disorders

#50

Post by portmanteur »

jbandela1 wrote: post #21
praptak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this article seems to classify it as pure bullshit: https://www.stadafa.com/2020/12/stockholm-syndrome-discredit... "The psychiatrist who invented it, Nils Bejerot, never spoke to the woman he based it on, never bothered to ask her why she trusted her captors more than the authorities. More to the point, during the Swedish bank heist that inspired the syndrome, Bejerot was the psychiatrist leading the police res…

Maybe we should have a Bejerot Syndrome. This is where an “expert” impugns the intellect or morality of the people who disagree with them instead of trying to understand the very real reasons why.

I can think of a few examples over the past 3-8 years where this would be a useful syndrome to have named and in the popular memory.

Oh well, Stockholm Syndrome is catchier.

Post reply on HN