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PARTISAN REVIEW
The Day oj theJackal,
one of the best-known thriller novels by
Frederick Forsyth, became an international best-seller and was
made into a motion picture. Whether Carlos acquired the name "the
Jackal" after the main character in that book by his own instigation
or because of British journalists, followed by the world press , is not
clear ; but the instinct to see this man through yet one more fictive
screen was perfectly sound: Lenin, Carlos Marighella, Forsyth–
each contributed a fragment to the identity of this man .
The emphasis upon theatricality in terrorist activity has several
consequences for hostages as well . Placed in a position of depen–
dence and usually convinced that death will soon occur, the hostage
naturally begins to see the terrorist as powerful and hopes, uncon–
sciously, to find in him evidences of kindness, idealism, and good in–
tentions . Thus, subtly, but very quickly, the hostage begins to con–
struct a fiction in which the terrorist and his cause have merit, while
the authorities , opponents of the terrorist, begin to seem ill-inten–
tioned, weak, even malicious . During the OPEC takeover, Carlos
took Sheikh Yamani separately into an office, and "in a polite and
quiet manner ... assured me of his esteem... I was listening
[with gratitude] to his words, which were so incredible to me . But
soon afterwards, I was to be confronted with the bitter reality of
truth when he said, 'Despite our respect for you we are compelled to
kill you.'" Fear, followed by gratitude, furthered by feelings of im–
potence accompanied by anger at the authorities who may not ac–
cede to the terrorist's demands are all present here. Then , to top it
gff, the terrorist made his appeal: "Carlos continued by saying that it
was his desire that I should not harbor any hatred or bitterness
against them for their intentions to kill me, and that, indeed, he ex–
pected a man of my intelligence to understand their noble aims and
purposes."
What Carlos had done was to place Yamani in a vulnerable
state in which the authorities seemed the enemies, and then he urged
him to identify with the terrorists. In brief, this is the psychological
formula lying behind what FBI agent Conrad Hansel and psychia–
trist Frank M. Ochberg have named the "Stockholm Syndrome,"
after the place where its dynamics were first discerned. During a
bank robbery in Stockholm in 1974, a bank employee named Kristen
declared herself in love with the robber and publicly castigated the
Swedish prime minister for his failure to understand her captor's
point of view. Even after the ordeal Kristen professed to feel endur–
ing affection for him .
