Capture-bonding

Capture-bonding is a bond that in some instances develops between captor and captive, or terrorist and hostage, and is sometimes referred to as Stockholm syndrome. The term originated in the 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 he former captor while he served time in prison.

Overview
The concept of captor/captive pair-bonding has since been extrapolated into evolutionary psychology circles, human relationship discussions, and parent/abused-child relationships. For example, in the case of paraphilic sadism, 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.

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. (source: Leda Cosmides.) In 1986 psychologist John Money used the concept to explain abnormal developent of lovemaps.

Evolutionary psychology
From Keith Henson’s Sex, Drugs, and Cults, we find an evolutionary psychology explanation regarding why such a trait would have been developed in relation to the facilitative reproductive success 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 lots 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.