Why Does Stockholm Syndrome Exist

The psychological term of Stockholm Syndrome has always been interesting to me.    Common sense would lead you to believe that in the event of a kidnapping, you would feel despair and hate the perpetrator of your capture, but this is not always the case.   Stockholm Syndrome is a feeling of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim toward a captor.  Stockholm Syndrome is not the norm since most people will continue to be terrified during a kidnapping.  One large example of many people being held captive is the time period of slavery within America.  Millions of slaves were held against their will to work on plantations.  After the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves were free of their captivity, but the slave owners still wanted workers.  When one slave owner asked his former slave Jourdan Anderson to come back and work for him, Jourdan replied with the biggest understatement of the century by saying "I have often felt uneasy about you."  Because he disliked his captor, Jourdan did not return to work for his former owner.  However, if Jourdan had Stockholm Syndrome, he may have never left his owner in the first place, even after he was free.  Now we must wonder what would cause someone to feel any form of affection towards their captor who took them away from their normal life.  The only explanation that I could think of is that it is a coping mechanism that went too far.  If you are in a situation such as a kidnapping, you are under  great amount of duress and your mind had to find ways to cope with the terrible situation.  In these cases, the victim usually only gets to interact with their captor and the captor brings them the food and water they need to survive.  To cope, the mind probably sees that as a sign of good and starts to form a bond with the only person who is "helping" them in this time of need.  In the end, Stockholm Syndrome is probably the result of a person in a very stressful situation and trying to make the best of it.