wikipedia

• Hostages who develop Stockholm syndrome often view the perpetrator as giving life by simply not taking it. In this sense, the captor becomes the person in control of the captive’s basic needs for survival and the victim’s life itself.

• The hostage endures isolation from other people and has only the captor’s perspective available. Perpetrators routinely keep information about the outside world’s response to their actions from captives to keep them totally dependent.

• The hostage taker threatens to kill the victim and gives the perception of having the capability to do so. The captive judges it safer to align with the perpetrator, endure the hardship of captivity, and comply with the captor than to resist and face murder.

• The captive sees the perpetrator as showing some degree of kindness. Kindness serves as the cornerstone of Stockholm syndrome; the condition will not develop unless the captor exhibits it in some form toward the hostage. However, captives often misinterpret a lack of abuse as kindness and may develop feelings of appreciation for this perceived benevolence. If the captor is purely evil and abusive, the hostage will respond with hatred. But, if perpetrators show some kindness, victims will submerge the anger they feel in response to the terror and concentrate on the captors’ “good side” to protect themselves.

this explains everything ...

 

... This is the single dumbest thing I've heard all day.

 

You need to flesh that idea out a bit more. Defining what stockholm syndrom is and then pointing at house-elves isn't much in the way of defending your argument.

 

Wikipedia is pretty much the greatest thing ever, because anyone, anywhere can put whatever they want up about anything - so you know you're always getting the best possible information.

 

I'd explain how not every house-elf is Dobby and not everyone who owns a house-elf is Malfoy, but I've got the distinct feeling that my words will be very much wasted on this guy...

 

I can't agree to that, I just read that there is a Chihuahua Jedi Master but this is pretty close.

 

Seriously, stop posting. Your last thread failed hard, so why would you think your next one wouldn't be awful as well?

You are not creative, you are not original, you are not interesting, and you are not amusing. Go away.

 

Fail or not to fail, it's spot on.

Perhaps not the greatest analysis to grace these forums, but you can see where JKR got the idea. You see many instances in the books where house-elves seem to worship their masters, even if they're "bad".

@Vash: Today I went to a restaurant and I heard a girl laugh at the waiter because he said "bon appetit" after delivering her food. She claimed that didn't exist, and that the correct expression was "buen apetito", which is Spanish for "bon appetit". So no, not the dumbest thing I've seen all day.

 

... I hope you held her down on the ground and suffocated her with a dick in the mouth. :/ Not even fucking RoyalDuke or MKnote are that bad...

Its unfortunate, that. Spending a few minutes to write up a good, eloquent, logical arguments, and they go ignored with some craptastically lame dodge like "WELL IF I WROTE THE BOOK THIS IS HOW IT WOULD BE" or similarly irrelevant garble.

 

No. Not really. It assumes that, at one point, house elves were a free roaming creature that had its own sort of society and traditions. Granted, we're never told they didn't or weren't, but I highly suspect not.

Drawing on some old folklore shits, I'd be more apt to say they were an artificial creation, more than likely a homunculus, made by some alchemist fuckall ages ago. The lack of a human likeness is conceivably a bi-product of being less cost-intensive creation. It could also be that it was to deal with the anti-slavery minds, being a non-human form would make it a different thought process or something.

Or its entirely possible that its this:

Heinzelmännchen/Brownies/Tomte/Domovoi... Pick your culture, and they've got a counterpart.

But yeah... House Elves seem to be modified to Rowling's twisted themes... Brownies ditch you if you ever see them, and were easily offended if I recall right...

 

So reading the first post enflamed a familiar feeling inside me and it took me a moment to identify it. Then as if from the soul bonds of dlpers across the world it came to me what that need was:



^Op, I give you the gift of 100* face-palm hopefuls^

 

How did I end up defending this premise?

Anyway, I'm not saying this is the shit. I'm just saying JKR could have picked a few specifics from Stockholm syndrome and applied them to house-elves. Some characteristics are similar, and whether it's intentional or not is for JKR to expose.

And no, I'm not saying house-elves suffered from Stockholm either, just that the symptoms are similar, in some cases. By "it's spot on" I meant the similarities, not the poor (or non-existant) analysis, nor the process by which house-elves became what they are today. Granted, the OP could've expanded a bit on what he meant, but I interpreted this way.

Anyway, this thread was beyond pointless before I posted. As aaltwal puts it, I just have post-whore tendencies, and the urge to share my opinion was just too much for me to ignore.

Just close this shit already, or I'm afraid I'll just keep posting. =/

 

Yes because all of us apparently thought that the OP meant house-elves actually DO have Stockholm and not that there are similarities between them and THAT's why this thread fails

Apparently not

 

Hey, dhulli, go cry over your introduction. The grown-ups are having a conversation, one you do not seem to be able to follow.

 

I bet you went through the trouble of going through all of my previous posts just to find something completely off-topic and coupled it with a childish retort to respond.

In addition to your complete lack of understanding of the topic that I pointed out in my previous post, here's what I know about you from this thread:

Join Date: Jun 2010

Why exactly would the thread be pointless if it's spot on?

Clearly, you are the voice of the grown ups here and I just don't seem to...follow?

 

Just remember reading your introduction.

And so you know I'm familiar with the thumbs-up system.

Just because, IMO, the premise has it's merits doesn't mean it's worth discussing. It's remarkably uninteresting, yet possible as far as I'm concerned, but an argument for the sake of arguing is, and I quote, "beyond pointless."

Yes, clearly.

 

In the interest of remaining on topic here, let me just defeat those premises for you. And in your words not mine these are that house-elves have similarities to those traits of Stockholm posted by the OP and not that house-elves actually do have Stockholm or that they "became what they are today" from such.

Let's look at these so called similarities that you 'thumbs-up'ed and said were spot on:

False. House-elves of the Black family preferred beheading or the taking of their lives to freedom or actually letting them live.

False. There is no evidence of isolation of house-elves. As far as cannon suggests, their dependence on their masters stems from a magical bond and not isolation. In fact, it can be assumed that house-elves are sent outside to do the menial wizard tasks like grocery shopping. Also as witnessed by Crouch Jr.'s elf, the house-elves actively help in keeping secrets (without losing any of the dependence upon their masters) rather than secrets being kept from them.

False. The hostage taker in this case, the master rarely threatens to kill. As evidenced by most house-elves (Dobby being the exception) the house-elves would prefer death to freedom, Wizards just find it beneath themselves to kill house-elves. The "captive" does not care for it's safety or hardship.

I don't even need to go into this. Almost all canonical instances of house-elf treatment clearly portray the die-hard loyalty of house-elves in the face of harshness from their masters. Even rogue ones like Dobby found it hard to betray their masters who had never shown it kindness. So tell me, is kindness the cornerstone of house-elf wizard relations?

How can you be that stupid?