(Diaz, 2017, p.42 )
This essay demonstrates just how strong the need for a “good object” parent is, and how it motivates children to hold on to illusions, despite the overwhelming crush of reality. A "Good Object" is a parent or parent-like figure who fulfills the parenting role, including being interested in, and respectful of, the childs developmental needs. When the writers first elaborate fantasy was disproved, he did not give up fantasizing, because his need for a parent continued to be great, so he assumed that there was a second America where his good father resided. For a full description of the libidinal ego and the exciting object see Celani, 2010, pp. 58–115. Intense relationships between the ego structures
The relationship between the two split off part-selves and their respective part-objects is intense because they were created out of enormous need, pain and desire. The intense need of the child for a good, loving object cannot be described in a more powerful way that the preceding quote by Diaz. He notes that his desperation was fueled because he was lost, he needed help learning English and needed an escape from his violent father. He was seeking a new father that would right all the wrongs that he had suffered. On the other side of the split is the childs antilibidinal ego, which is intensely motivated to force the rejecting object parent to become a good object, and own up to the mistakes they have made by rejecting their child.
Abuse and subsequent submission and appeasement by the victim have been observed among chimpanzees, leading to the theory that the Stockholm syndrome may have its roots in evolutionary needs.Life in the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" (EEA) is thought by researchers such as Israeli military historian Azar Gat to be similar to that of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies. Gat asserts that war and abductions were typical of human pre-history. Being captured by neighbouring tribes was a relatively common event for women. In some of those tribes (the Yanomamo, for instance), practically everyone in the tribe is descended from a captive within the last three generations. As high as one in ten of females were abducted and incorporated into the tribe that captured them. Being captured and having their children killed may have been common; women who resisted capture risked being killed. When selection is intense and persistent, adaptive traits (such as capture-bonding) become universal to the population or species. Loving to survive
First published in 1994, author Dee Graham uses the Stockholm syndrome label to describe group or collective responses to trauma, rather than individual reactions. Graham focuses specifically on the impact of Stockholm syndrome on battered and abused women as a community. She claimed that in both the psychological and societal senses, these women are defined by their sense of fear surrounding the threat of male violence.