BusinessInsider writes in Stockholm Syndrome could be a Myth:
The New Yorker's new profile of kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart makes an intriguing point about Stockholm Syndrome: It isn't a recognized psychiatric disorder.
[...]
"There is very little evidence to sort of validate that Stockholm Syndrome exists," Emory University clinical psychologist Nadine Kaslow told Business Insider. She added, "It is mostly talked about in the media."
Sniggle.net writes on the Stockholm Syndrome:
The Stockholm Syndrome comes into play when a captive cannot escape and is isolated and threatened with death, but is shown token acts of kindness by the captor. It typically takes about three or four days for the psychological shift to take hold.
A strategy of trying to keep your captor happy in order to stay alive becomes an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes of the captor which has the result of warping your own psyche in such a way that you come to sympathize with your tormenter!
Of course sometimes women fall in love with captors. But does that happen more often than the base rates of falling in love with strangers with whom they spend a similar amount of time but where the stranger doesn't hold them in captivity?
Is there scientific evidence that the Stockholm Syndrome is a real effect?