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Prime Time Transcript/Stockholm Syndrome
Noel,
My therapist says I shouldn’t make a secret out of my condition (Stockholm Syndrome, see resources) vis-à-vis you, since important developments for Ireland could be at stake.
My therapist watched my interview on the Prime Time programme about broadband. He gave me these comments for consideration, which I am sharing with you here.
For your convenience find a transcript of the Prime Time Broadband programme in the resources. As well a short explanation of Stockholm Syndrome.
My therapist’s comments to my responses in the interview are in red:
Homework for our next session.
Try to be as honest as possible.
Watch the video clips again and look at your own facial expression when you defend your captors.
What do you feel when you watch yourself defending your captors? Denial, self-pity or anger?
John Doherty: The products and services that we need to develop and sell in the future, you know, will need broadband provisioning, they are not likely to be the historic manufactured products and services, because they are knowledge-based, most of our competitors are going to have them that's the critical element to this, it's no longer a luxury, it's a must have.
Sigmund: Here you express very rationally and clearly: broadband is a must have. Full stop.
John Doherty: I don't think we make any secret, that we and others are very unhappy about how far and how late we are getting into the process.
You are “unhappy”. Even though this is a very trivial expression for such a detrimental development, watch how you seem to have to go out of your way immediately to try and withdraw the possible accusation in that statement against your captors:
I do think recognition needs to be given now that literally we have almost a hundred thousand broadband connections as against three thousand at the beginning of the year.
As a professional you know that 100 000 is a dismal figure that puts us at second last place of EU countries; as a professional you also know that the correct figure is actually only 80 000. You know that with those 80 000 users your office is nowhere near the goal of 320 to 350 000 users your Minister has set as the goal for you to achieve by mid 2005. As a successful career civil servant you know that you are in contempt of the minister's March 2004 directive and that this could have serious consequences.
We have the fastest growing trajectory in Europe and the challenge is more about keeping it going. As a professional you know that the fastest growing curve marks the worst country; as a professional you know that Greece, the worst country for bb development in the EU, has a faster trajectory than Ireland. You also know that our growth is a blip, caused by pent-up demand and cannot be sustained, as your captors are denying full broadband availability and have hindered the build up of a big enough base of Internet users in Ireland.
John Doherty: The incumbent did not have a commercial threat which drove them into broadband and candidly I suppose I think they took their eye off the ball at that particular time and you know really broadband is possibly the key future product area for fixed line operators. And you know Eircom are late into that market. But credit where credit is due, they have done a very good job this year.
John, read your last answer carefully and try to work out for yourself which of the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome come to bear in your answer?
• Emotional bonding with the captor/abuser.
• Seeking favor and approval from the perpetrator.
• Depending on the perpetrator for security and purpose of existence.
• Befriending and caring for the captor.
• Resenting proper authorities for their rescue attempts.
• Losing one's own identity in order to identify with the captor/abuser.
• Seeing things from the perspective of the perpetrator.
• Valuing every small gesture of kindness.
• Refusing to seek freedom even given the opportunity
P.S.:
Noel, by the way, Sigmund deemed your answers to Miriam Callaghan’s questions to be “very interesting”. You tried desperately hard to convey the factually false message, that the government financed MAN backbone network is an alternative to Eircom’s last mile infrastructure.
Noel Dempsey: “What I can say is that the government has provided an alternative and the MANs' network, the network that we have in place and are putting in place, we are rolling it out to 120 towns around the country, offers a real alternative”.
Sigmund and I had a little chat about whether you:
a) were simply misinformed, [find out who misinformed you and why]
b) had made yourself believe this factual misinformation against all rational evidence,
c) just tried to make the viewers believe the misinformation [didn’t your party say, this was no longer their way of doing things?]
If the answer is b) you might be interested in contacting Sigmund yourself.
Regards
John
resources:
1. Transcript of the Prime Time programme on Broadband
Link to the RTE video file. (The broadband report starts at exactly19:47)
Miriam O'Callaghan: Well, we like to think of ourselves as fairly high-tech and to be fair, there has been good success to attract high-tech industries here in Ireland. But for thousands of businesses and self-employed right across the country there is a serious problem at the moment. It is the absence in many parts of high-speed access, known as broadband. We are at the bottom of the league, bar Greece.
In a moment Minister Noel Dempsey, on why we are in the situation and what the government is going to do about it.
First this report from Donogh Diamond:
Prime Time: The rhythm of the economy is sounding healthy again. Even if talk of a Celtic Tiger mark 2 may be premature. But if the engine of economic trade keeps running steadily, there is agreement that traditional industry will be unlikely the main force driving it. The new industries will produce real profits. But for them it is the quality of an entirely invisible infrastructure, that is central to their success. The story of this super-highway is the story of what can happen when the state can no longer control the vital strategic assets.
Its a solitary lesson for the state when selling off any other company which may control a similary vital aspect.
The words privatization of Telecom Eireann and fiasco are often used together. And it's usually the steep decline of the share price that is been referred to, but would seem a much fairer description for the tale of broadband. So what exactly is broadband?
Martin Harran (Irelandoffline): It’s a system of accessing the Internet. And the three most important features are:
First of all the speed. Basic speed, the low speed for broadband is what's known as 512 k. Basically that's ten times as fast as an ordinary modem dialing in.
And the second feature of it that it is always on. You don't have to dial in, its always there. You go on and off when you want. And you are not occurring any extra charges. On dial-up you are paying by the minute.
And the third feature is, it runs over the telephone line, but it does not interfere with the telephone line.
John Doherty (Comreg): It is a little like driving down a country road and then suddenly meeting this great 8-lane motor-way. And it sort of gives you that extra dimension, particularly of speed and access. And until you've tried it it’s difficult to actually fully understand it. So I suppose that is what a lot of companies are trying to do, they want to tease people to try bb and once people have experienced it, the view is they will never go back.
Prime Time: But why does it matter so much, for the companies that are likely to form much of the basis of our virtual future, the virtual world is their world. There are no containers carrying their products no trucks pulling away from the goods outwards gate.
Hugh Carroll (Head of marketing, Vordel Ltd., security software co.): we use the internet as the medium for delivery of our products to our costumers, consequently it's very important for us to be able to upload our software to our website where our costumers can consequently download the product, and similarly when we are upgrading a product or release a new version, we release it over the internet to our costumers directly. So we have removed the need for the physical logistics transporter. The internet is now replacing that and is vital to our servicing of our costumers.
John Doherty: The products and services that we need to develop and sell in the future, you know, will need broadband provisioning, they are not likely to be the historic manufactured products and services, because they are knowledge-based, most of our competitors are going to have them that's the critical element to this, it's no longer a luxury, it's a must have.
Prime Time: Time scale is also critical in the construction of this particular highway and Ireland is way behind in building this super highway. Behind every established EU-nation except Greece according to a study earlier this month. We are racing to keep up with countries like Slovenia and Estonia, which a few years ago didn't even exist as nation states. Broadband campaigners see this as a serious blemish on our image.
Martin Harran: One of the great prides, that I have taken and for sure many people have taken in this last 10 - 15 years is how Ireland has rightfully taken its place at the world level at all sorts of areas, like entertainment , sport, all sorts of things... the Irish people today are very very proud of where we are and to be honest it disgusts me when I pick up a table and see Ireland at the bottom of the league or second from the bottom.
John Doherty: I don't think we make any secret, that we and others are very unhappy about how far and how late we are getting into the process. I do think recognition needs to be given now that literally we have almost a hundred thousand broadband connections as against threethousand at the beginning of the year. We have the fastest growing trajectory in Europe and the challenge is more about keeping it going.
Prime Time: But the report into broadband at the Oireachtas Committee on Communications published in March still saw it as a problem
"Ireland has now fallen behind our main competitor nations in the area of broad band" it said "And as a direct result, Irish businesses have been placed at a competitive disadvantage."
Hugh Carroll: Well, historically before we went with our recent broadband provider, we were using more antiquated technologies, which resulted in us having to spend hours uploading our software and consequently the kind of impression it created was not as positive as we would have liked. However, now with broadband we are able to very quickly deliver the product in minutes to our costumers on site.
Prime Time: Broadband is now being aggressively rolled out, but what went wrong. After privatization the national telecommunications infrastructure was controlled by a private company. Unbundling the local loop that is allowing Eircom's competitors access to exchanges for a reasonable price was meant to change all that. Unsurprisingly perhaps Eircom didn't fling open the doors of its exchanges to its competitors instead fighting the regulator on the issue of price all the way to the steps of the high court. Meanwhile the bursting of the telecoms bubble led to potential competition melting away, while Eircom's fight with the regulator dragged on.
David McRedmond: It was a different time, it was a different management, it was a different regulator
Prime Time: And it was this company...
David McRedmond: And it was this company, and of course we have to move forward, that's the nature of being a regulated company. The interesting thing is, that huge amount of broadband penetration in Europe is driven by cable. There is virtually no cable broadband in Ireland and again, you have to ask them .... a lot of that issue is around the regulatory environment. Now that has changed, we have found ways to move forward and consequently we've got all the momentum now.
John Doherty: The incumbent did not have a commercial threat which drove them into broadband and candidly I suppose I think they took their eye off the ball at that particular time and you know really broadband is possibly the key future product area for fixed line operators. And you know Eircom are late into that market. But credit where credit is due, they have done a very good job this year.
Prime Time: Eircom has been accused of sweating its assets, that is collecting on its traditional business rather than investing in its network. That major asset does seem to have deteriorated. An internal Eircom report, the Pittsburgh Report, was savage in its criticisms of the network. It represented a critical weakness, it said, was of poor quality and that work practices were ineffective.
David McRedmond: That was a report that actually went back, I think it was about 2 or 3 years ago, and that report was a bit like when you buy a house you do a house survey and anybody who has done a house survey knows that a house survey isn't there to tell you what a good house you have, it is there to tell you where the faults are in the house. And that's what Pittsburgh was about.
Prime Time: This question is key to the future of broadband. Not only do exchanges need to be upgraded to accommodate it, much of the ageing copper wire that is adequate for voice calls alone cannot carry broadband.
David McRedmond: 70% of the lines in the country are covered by broadband. And in those areas where broadband is available 8 out of 10 people can get broadband today. So, and that is a huge advance from three years ago, when there was no broadband available, even two years ago there wasn’t a commercially scaleable product. It's now widely available, but we are continuing to roll it out.
Prime Time: But the government was clearly not as sanguine about the speed and effectiveness of Eircom's rollout. It has funded rural schemes and only five years after selling one telecoms network has built another, known as MANs, connecting major towns and to be run by a body called the Managed Service Entity.
John Doherty: The government sold Eircom or TelecomEirean I think it was at that time a number of years ago. The managed service entity now is a company which is working to bring together the MANs and I think this is an initiative the government have taken in terms of providing infrastructural competition in the market place.
Prime Time: The threat of State intervention and the emergence of wireless broadband may have helped inspire Eircom's current campaign. It is often been cast as the villain of the broadband story. But Eircom is a private company and as such would seem to be entirely free to decide whether and when it invests in broadband.
David McRedmond: We are a commercial company and we are a publicly limited company. We exist for our customers and for our shareholders and our job is to make broadband available to our customers, which is what we are doing, and, but also to provide a return for our shareholders, which we are also doing. It's not our job to meet all the needs of the State and we are not solely responsible for the infrastructure of this country.
Prime Time: The invisibility of this vital piece of infrastructure may have helped ensure its poor relation status. But it does show what can happen when the market fails and when the interests of a private company do not mesh neatly with the strategic interests of a small island nation.
Interview with Noel Dempsey, Minister for Communications
Miriam O'Callaghan: D. Diamond reporting there. The minister the point was made there in D. Diamonds film, that we sold off the telecommunications network five years ago and are now building a whole new one. It was a mistake to sell it off in the first place, wasn't it.
Noel Dempsey: Well, I think it is true to say that if we had known then what we know now, we probably wouldn't have made the same decision, but that is the benefit of hindsight. When the government realised that Eircom were not going to roll out broadband at the speed it was necessary, necessary for individuals but necessary for the economy as well, they took action in relation to that and I think that the MANs he is talking about there and the rural broadband schemes is proof that the government is serious about rolling out broadband.
Miriam: What it show also is that a total failure in the sense of the regulation. If you don't have a tough regulator then a company like Eircom, like McRedmond said, they exist for their customers and shareholders. There are there to make profits, so they are not going to bother about rolling out broadband if they don't want to.
Noel: When you haven't got competition in the market you have to introduce regulation and I think in our case here and indeed I think you could say its true throughout Europe, there has been a difficulty in relation to regulation. And as the competition has increased, as the alternatives have been put in place by government, we have seen the benefits of that. The cost of our International Broadband is cheaper than anywhere else in Europe. Our regional broadband is on a par cost wise.
Miriam: If you even look at the unbundling of the local loop, it’s the jargon basically for Eircom's local network being given over to other operators. I mean they haven't bothered to sell that at a reasonable price and at the moment they are talking about 14 € 67 cent and is that what the price will be at the end ?
Noel: I can’t say, that is obviously a matter for the regulator, but what I can say is that the government has provided an alternative and the MANs' network, the network that we have in place and are putting in place, we are rolling it out to 120 towns around the country, offers a real alternative. And once that’s in place I have no doubt that Eircom will respond to that. I think once the alternative is in place, the competition is there, and that means that Eircom knows that into the future of the business they must compete for the business.
Miriam: We have suffered incredibly badly as a nation. We see ourselves as a high-tech country, but as pointed out there we are second last in Europe, which is embarrassing in terms of our industry and small business, but the point is, it shows that privatisation doesn't work, if you don't keep control over something. And by not being able to control Eircom about rolling out broadband we failed.
Noel: It shows that initially that was the difficulty, it shows that government can respond and respond very fast and this government has responded very fast to that. But I think rather than seeing this into the future. Looking at the historic side of it, looking into the future I believe that the message has got through that if private industry is not going to provide services of basic infrastructure the government can and will step in there. Now we can look at ourselves as rivals, but I think in a whole range of different areas in this we are working in partnership with the private sector and I think that that is the way forward and I expect that there will be much much more coop-ration
Miriam: But even at this stage, and I accept what David McRedmond says, they are a commercial company, right, but if its agreed at about € 14.67 cent to sell off their unlooping of the loops then, that's just still incredible expensive. The second most expensive in Europe. That is not a good deal for Irish people.
Noel: As I say, I don't want to get involved in the price or anything else, but I can say and as I've said before, the provision of the alternative will I believe and has already shown benefits to the consumer, that prices will come down. As I've said, our cost even on the regional level is on par with Europe itself. So I think where the government is going with this and where we are anxious to ensure is the most rapid roll-out of broadband that we possibly can have.
Miriam: But is it a lesson for the future? Selling something as basic as the telecommunication network it’s like selling off our road network, but if you have no control over it we end up in a situation today where we are so far behind in something like broadband.
Noel: Yes, I mean, as I say, with the benefit of hindsight, I think there is a case to be made for ensuring that the same kind of mistakes aren't made with the electricity sector for instance
Miriam: With AerLingus... landing slots..
Noel: AerLingus is not quite the same. I think a better example or comparison would be electricity and the ESB network. If the ESB were to be privatised, I think the government would think long and hard in relation to the transmission lines and so on.
Miriam: I mean critics would say, and I know you would not say what the price is agreed, but Eircom seem to have in a sense great influence over the regulation in terms of deciding what they want to do with broadband and how much they want to set it out. That is the future we are talking about.
Noel: I mean the regulator is independent, independent of us and independent of the industry and has to listen to both sides, that is part of the reason
Miriam: Do they have enough power to do the job?
Noel: Comreg, yes, I think if anything what the complaints, particularly from the industry is, that they had too much power, that is not a view that I'd agree with. The best regulation that you can have is competition. And the more competition that you have in the market, the better that will be for the consumers and as I say again, rolling out the broadband the way the government is rolling out the broadband will ensure competition, will ensure that there i
s alternatives there, there are about 45 different companies now providing broadband access in this country. Doing that will ensure that the price comes down.
Miriam: OK minister, thanks very much for joining us tonight.
A brief description of Stockholm syndrome
What is Stockholm syndrome?
The term "Stockholm syndrome" was first coined by Professor Nils Bejerot to explain the phenomenon of hostages bonding with their captors. In Stockholm, Sweden in 1973, two bank robbers held four people hostages for six days. The Norrmalmstorg Bank robbery received wide publicity because the hostages came to care about their captors and perceive them as protecting them against the police.
There is no precise, universally accepted definition of Stockholm syndrome. It generally refers to a cluster of symptoms often observed in hostages.
These symptoms include:
• Emotional bonding with the captor/abuser
• Seeking favor and approval from the perpetrator
• Depending on the perpetrator for security and purpose of existence
• Befriending and caring for the captor
• Resenting proper authorities for their rescue attempts
• Losing one's own identity in order to identify with the captor/abuser
• Seeing things from the perspective of the perpetrator
• Valuing every small gesture of kindness
• Refusing to seek freedom even given the opportunity
Is Stockholm syndrome a survival strategy?
Many psychologists and psychiatrists have considered the Stockholm syndrome a survival strategy in extreme conditions, where there is:
• The constant threat to physical and psychological survival
• A condition of helplessness and hopelessness
• Isolation and loss of support systems from the outside world
• A context of trauma and terror that shatters previously held assumptions
• The perception that survival depends on total surrender and compliance
What are the psychological processes underlying Stockholm syndrome?
There are five powerful motivations working together to contribute to the development of the Stockholm syndrome:
1. The motivation to survive physically and psychologically
2. The motivation to avoid pain and fear
3. The motivation to find hope and meaning
4. The motivation to find significance and security
5. The motivation to seek acceptance and relationship
Although these are primary motivations operating in all sorts of situations, most of the time only one or two motivations may predominate.
However, in a hostage or abuse situation, all these motivations are operating and contributing to the bonding between the victim and the abuser. Such a relationship is strengthened both by the negative reinforcement of relief from pain and fear, and the positive reinforcement of approval and recognition.
Who are vulnerable to Stockholm syndrome?
It is obvious that not everyone in a hostage situation will fall victim to Stockholm syndrome. Individuals with any combination of the following characteristics are most vulnerable:
• Lacking a clear set of core values that define one's identify
• Lacking a clear sense of meaning and purpose for one's life
• Lacking a track record of overcoming difficulties
• Feeling that one's life has always been controlled by powerful others
• Feeling unhappy with one's life circumstances
• Having a strong need for approval by authority figures
• Wishing to be somebody else
Generally speaking, those with courage, character and faith will adopt a different sort of survival strategy in a hostage situation. They will comply without compromising their integrity; they will always maintain their hope, waiting for their chance to escape.
How can we help those with Stockholm syndrome?
In most cases, individuals with Stockholm syndrome can benefit from psychotherapy, because they need professional support in order to confront and work through past trauma. They also need professional help to gain a better understanding of their distorted thinking and confusing feelings towards their captor/abuser. Finally, healing will take place, when they are able to integrate the kidnapping and abuse with their present reality and create a more meaningful future.
Lay people can also help them repair shattered assumptions and restore their lives. Here are some suggestions:
• Allow them sufficient time and space to recover
• Encourage them to seek support groups
• Walk with them and show understanding and empathy
• Provide them with a strong and consistent support system
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