Hostages: Motives, Solution, Coping, and Effects – A Review of Alexander and Klein's Article

Although hostage-taking is an ancient practice, only recently have attempts begun to fully understand the implications of this phenomenon for hostages and their families. This article reviews the key concepts related to the subject, how people who have been taken hostage cope, the effects of kidnapping, and areas where further research is needed.

First, the authors seek to define the phenomenon of hostage-taking as the practice of detaining a person, against their will and without legal authority, for a specific motive. The motive can be instrumental (i.e., to gain some kind of gain, such as political gain, financial gain, etc.), or it can be expressive (i.e., to express anger, revenge, etc.).

The resolution of a hostage situation can vary, among other things, depending on the location where the hostage is being held. If the hostage is being held in a known location with access, this will be an advantage in rescue efforts. On the other hand, if the hostage is being held in an unknown location, or in a location where the local population is hostile to the hostage or to his or her country of origin, rescue efforts will be more complex. Rescue efforts can involve forcible rescue or negotiation. Forcible rescue will usually require a complex and dangerous military operation, and there is ample evidence of such operations ending in disaster. Negotiation is currently, at least in Western countries, the first line of action to be taken in a hostage situation. Among the advantages inherent in negotiation is the fact that negotiation takes time and therefore allows for intelligence gathering and reduces the arousal levels of the captors.

The psychological effects of a kidnapping vary depending on the characteristics of the incident – how long the kidnapping lasted, the level of violence used against the hostage, the danger to the hostage’s life, whether he or she was held alone or with others, and the motives of the captors. In general, the psychological reactions of people who have returned from captivity appear to be similar to those of people who have experienced other severe traumas, and include denial, fear, helplessness, hopelessness, anger, guilt, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, confusion, avoidance, and social withdrawal. A minority of people who have been held hostage will develop psychopathology after return from captivity, with the more common psychopathologies being post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

The effects on children who have been held hostage have not been sufficiently studied, although children appear to be at increased risk of experiencing post-traumatic symptoms, along with shame, pessimism, and nightmares. In children who have been held hostage for a long time, these effects can also be exacerbated by their absence from educational settings.

Coping during captivity has been studied only on the basis of a few famous cases of people who returned from captivity, and therefore this is a limited study, the representativeness of which cannot be determined. Among the examples studied, it appears that coping strategies included attempts to generate employment (e.g., solving mental arithmetic exercises, physical exercise) or attempts to find some positive value in the situation (e.g., a person who wrote his autobiography while in captivity).

In conclusion, the researchers emphasize that despite the enormous importance of research in this field, there are significant difficulties in studying the effects of holding hostages, both ethically and practically. The development of new methods for studying the effects of kidnapping and captivity, and the identification of factors that can promote resilience and recovery, are needed.