Capture bonding

In evolutionary psychology and abnormal psychology, capture bonding is a term used to define the bonding that in some instances develops between the captor and captive, or terrorist and hostage. The term stems from the 1974 case of a Swedish woman who became so attached to one of the bank robbers who held her hostage that she broke her engagement to her former lover and remained bonded, or in bondage, to her former captor while he served time in prison. In this traumatic situation, the victims became emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal. This behavior came to be called Stockholm syndrome a term coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery, and referred to the syndrome in a news broadcast. In the 1980s and 90s, the psychological concepts behind this abnormal behavior began to find analogies in the fields of abnormal psychology and evolutionary psychology, wherein the term "capture bond" developed.

Capture-bonding theories are used to explain various relationships, such as kidnapping or tribe takeover, in which a person seems to be “caught” unhealthily or abnormally in a bond, even when given many chances to escape. The general explanation is that a sort of reverse-psychological mechanism or perspective develops in which, after a traumatic event, the captive person willing desires or stays in the bond. Battered women syndrome, in which a woman stays bonded to a man who beats her, is an example of activating capture-bonding. Capture-bonding is understood in evolutionary psychology as an evolved response to inter-tribe "capture" and takeover, which has been a prominent feature of human existence during the last few million years, such as infanticide, which occurs frequently in the animal kingdom.

Overview

The concept of captor/captive pair-bonding has since been extrapolated into evolutionary psychology circles, human relationship discussions, and parent/abused-child relationships. In the case of paraphilic sadism, for example, the bond that develops between a lover or spouse and the paraphilic partner clearly resembles the bond between a captor and captive. Hence, the phenomenon of Stockholm syndrome, or more broadly capture-bonding, may be regarded as applying across the board to all of the paraphilias, i.e. abnormal love relationships, in which one partner exercises paraphilic power and the other becomes collusionally-bonded to the paraphile as a accomplice. In the 2006 book From Princess to Prisoner by Linda McJunckins, for example, the theory of capture bonding is used to explain the behavior of a daughter who suddenly relinquished her freedoms as a college student to an arduous life as a slave among strangers.

Origins of use

In about 1980, graduate student John Tooby discussed the concept of capture-bonding with various other students, reportedly reaching the same conclusion Keith Henson did 15 years later about its evolutionary origin and widespread effects on humans and human societies. In 1986 psychologist John Money used the concept to explain abnormal development of lovemaps. In his 1986 book Lovemaps, for example, Money stated:

A kidnapped sexual partner who foregoes opportunity for escape remains in a strong bond of attachment to the kidnapper. Until the bond is broken by outside intervention, it persists with all the defiant resistance of the phylism of infatuation and the limerent love affair.

Abnormal psychology

Main article: Abnormal psychology

In 1986, psychologist John Money applied the concept of lovemaps, i.e. neurological bonding predispositions accumulated during youth though association, to the capture-bonding phenomenon. According to Money, "For the average person it is an enigma that a wife would stay married for 25 years to a husband whose paraphilic sadism was always injuriously abusive; or that an abducted ten year old boy would pass up many opportunities for escape for this pedophilic abductor and stay with him after witnessing the lust murder of another boy his own age … this is referred to as Stockholm syndrome, defined as the bond that in some instances develops between captor and captive, or terrorist and hostage …this syndrome, more broadly defined, may be regarded as applying across the board to all of the paraphilias in which one partner exercises paraphilic power and the other becomes collusionally-bonded to the paraphile as an accomplice.”

Money uses the 1976 Baltimore pedophilic lust murder Arthur Goode, who at the age of twenty abducted a newsboy from a professional family and co-opted him as his boy lover. The child had opportunities to escape, even after he was witness to the lust murder of another boy his own age. It was only after the police were notified, that he could disengage himself from the mysterious bond with his abductor. Hence, according to Money, “A kidnapped sexual partner who foregoes opportunity for escape remains in a strong bond of attachment to the kidnapper. Until the bond is broken by outside intervention, it persists with all the defiant resistance of the phylism of infatuation and the limerent love affair.”

Essentially, the lovemap theory entails that during early childhood development people develop neurological “maps” as they associate to their surroundings. Resultantly, as adults, those who have experienced abnormal development in youth will have the tendency to “bond” stronger in similar abnormal situations. Hence, if one was made to feel predisposed towards the “captive” lifestyle in youth by their “captor” surrogates, friends, or parents then later in life he or she will have a greater tendency to sink into the captive-bond.

Evolutionary psychology

Main article: Evolutionary psychology

In 2001, electrical engineer Keith Henson, in his Sex, Drugs, and Cults, presented an evolutionary psychology explanation as to why such a trait as capture-bonding would have evolved in relations to the reproductive success of evolving people during the last 3.5 million years in which social primates lived in bands or tribes. One commonality that stands out from records of the historical North American tribes, the South American tribes such as the Yanomamo, and some African tribes is that being captured was a relatively common event.

Going back a few generations, almost everyone in such tribes has at least one ancestor, typically a woman, who was violently captured from another tribe. Hence, the hypothesis has been put forward that natural selection has left us with psychological response to the capture process as seen with Stockholm syndrome and as in the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Subsequently, capture-bonding, or social reorientation when captured from one warring tribe to another, developed as an essential survival tool. Those who reoriented often survived to reproduce.

Thus, the evolutionary psychology explanation stresses the fact that humans have a lot of ancestors who gave up and joined tribes that captured them. This selection process, as is posited, accounts for the extreme forms of capture-bonding exemplified by Patty Hearst and the Stockholm syndrome. If humans have this trait, it accounts for the "why" behind everything from basic military training and sex-bondage to fraternity hazing. That is, people may have a wired-in "knowledge" of how to induce bonding in captives. Captive-bonding thus accounts for battered wife syndrome, where beatings and abuse are observed to strengthen the bond between the victim and the abuser, at least up to a point.

In animal psychology, the theory of capture bonding is used to explain various situations of infanticide, such as in lion or gorilla social systems, where a new alpha male takes over the troop and in doing so kills off all of the offspring. The females then, invariably bond to the new male and reproduce a new litter with him. Evolutionary psychologist Matt Ridley, in his 2003 book The Agile Gene - How Nature Turns On Nurture, explains that infanticide is common among gorillas, as it is among primates. A bachelor male, according to Ridley, will infiltrate a harem, grab a baby, and kill it. This has two affects on the baby's mother, apart from causing her great, though transient, distress. First, according to Ridley, "by halting her lactation it brings her back into estrus; second, it persuades her that she needs a new harem master who is better at protecting her babies. And how better to choose than the raider? So she leaves her mate and marries the baby's killer." This is a form of pair-bonding resulting from a tribe or troop takeover in which the females are, so to say, “captured” and converted into new reproducing brides.

Summary

Capture-bonding is a descriptive evolutionary psychology term for the evolved psychological mechanism behind Stockholm syndrome. John Tooby (then a graduate student) originated the concept and its ramifications in the early 1980s, though he did not publish. Keith Henson reached the same conclusions independently 15 years later about the evolutionary origin and widespread effects of this psychological mechanism on humans and human societies. In the view of evolutionary psychology "the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors."

One of the "adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors," particularly our female ancestors, was being abducted by another band. If life in those times was similar to that of some of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies, then being captured and having their dependent children killed might have been fairly common.

There are strong biological reasons to expect that war and abductions (capture) were typical of human pre history at least back to the time our ancestors escaped predation (at least to the taming of fire and perhaps as far back as chipped rocks). An extreme selective genetic filter was applied to a significant fraction of each generation. If this is correct, then the psychological traits behind capture bonding should be expected to be nearly universal.

In 2002, Keith Henson used capture-bonding as an illustrative example of selected-in-the-stone age psychological traits in "Sex, Drugs, and Cults." Henson has proposed that the partial activation of this psychological trait accounts for other mysterious human traits such as Basic training "a mildly traumatic experience intended to produce a bond" and fraternity hazing (perhaps also other similar initiation rites). The difficulty colleges have had in stamping out injurious hazing may stem from instinctual knowledge of how to induce bonding in captives. He also makes a case that the intense reward from sexual practices such as BDSM derives from activation of the capture-bonding psychological mechanisms.

See also

• Bride kidnapping
• Human bonding
• Stockholm syndrome