Negotiation Theory and Hostage Negotiations

Every person, at one time in their life, has had to negotiate with someone: an employer, a parent, a child, a friend, etc. As a counselor, one will most likely have to negotiate daily with one's clients. Some clients are not going to want to be at the counseling session, perhaps because they were ordered by the courts to be there. On the rare occasion, a client may decide to take the extreme measure of becoming a barricaded subject or hostage taker. Understanding the concepts behind the negotiation theory will enable counselors and hostage negotiators to better deal with the dynamics involved when and if they are in a negotiation situation.

Theory Overview

Like the feminist theory, negotiation theory has no original founder. Negotiations are rarely as straightforward as the economic perspective makes it out to be, and they do not always end up as the rational choice models claim they should. According to Neale and Fragale (2006), there is a growing interest in the social cognition approach to negotiations, which focuses on the psychological influences on the negotiation process and outcome.

Disorder Overview

For the purpose of this paper, the disorder used will be the Major Depressive Disorder. The reason this disorder was chosen is because although hostage negotiators do deal with people with other disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder or Paranoid Personality Disorder, severe depression seems to be a common link in most barricaded persons incidents where suicide or murder/suicide is threatened.

296.22 Major Depressive Disorder, Single Episode, Moderate

A. Five (or more) of the following symptoms have been present during the same 2 week period and represent a change from previous functioning; at least one of the symptoms is either (1) depressed mood, or (2) loss of interest or pleasure (single episode).

Note: Do not include symptoms that are clearly due to a general medical condition, or mood-incongruent delusions or hallucinations.