False optimism

During the Vietnam War, Admiral James Stockdale was imprisoned and tortured for over seven years. He was eventually released in 1973. When asked who didn’t survive the war camps, he said:

The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.

Stockdale never doubted he would get out. But he refused to attach a date to it.

Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl had observed the same phenomenon in his concentration camp. The death rate spiked between Christmas 1944 and New Year’s 1945. Many prisoners had a naive hope that they would be liberated by Christmas. When it didn’t happen, they were crushed.