There is no doubt in any sane person’s mind that pop-star wack-job Britney Spears is mentally unfit and unwell. Her “adviser” is a former (or current) drug-dealer named Osama “Sam” Lufti and her boyfriend is a paparazzi photographer named Adnan Ghalib.

All this and her two sons from ex-husband Kevin Federline are not in her custody. Add to it a British accent and a penchant for Fanta (I personally prefer Diet Sunkist) and you’ve got yourself a Louisiana swamp full of mental issues that the shrink from HBO’s “In Treatment” would have a field day trying to diagnose.

In the March issue of ‘Blender Magazine’ the publication claims that Britney Spears has a “self-created” relationship with the paparazzi which she has been chased by for so long and by so many that she has not only come to accept them as a part of her life but feels that she needs them in her life. “She seems to be basking [in the attention], and she seems to be trapped,” Blender writer Michael Joseph Gross observed. “She plays the role they expect her to play.”

The magazine describes how Spears ‘adviser’ Lufti rides along behind Britney with paparazzi and sends text messages on the singer’s whereabouts to the team captain for celebrity photo agency X17. The magazine also talks about Spears’ new English accent which shows that boyfriend Ghalib has rubbed off on her in more ways than one. Responding to “Entertainment Tonight” Ghalib said that Britney has “never mentioned Princess Diana. The only thing the two women have in common is dating an Arab.”

A former friend of Lutfi’s, Danny Haines has gone public about his experience with the de-facto manager to Spears. Saying Lutfi is alternately supportive and vicious, resulting in emotional blackmail, extortion and humiliation. Haines says:

“If Sam’s not doing anything wrong with Britney, if he’s not worried about being exposed, why would his sister [tell me], ‘Don’t talk about my brother and his past?’ “

This all looks like a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome -which is a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger (or at least risk) in which the hostage has been placed. Stockholm syndrome is also sometimes discussed in reference to other situations with similar tensions, such as battered person syndrome, rape cases, child abuse cases and bride kidnapping. The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28 in 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal. The term Stockholm Syndrome was coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery, and referred to the syndrome in a news broadcast (another famous case of Stockholm Syndrome is that of Patty Hearst who although kidnapped was loyal to her captors)

Although it seems that Spears has befriended her captors (the paparazzi), it seems that with no handlers or managers left to trust she is isolated and alone. Spears former manager Johnny Wright tells Blender:

“I’m not pointing fingers, but I can’t believe that she woke up one morning and said, ‘I don’t want my family, or anyone else I knew, to be in touch with me anymore,’ ….. People say she needs to go to rehab. I think she just needs a friend — somebody not caught up in Hollywood, not looking for a paycheck. Somebody she trusts has to step up and break it down for her.”

Interestingly, today it has come out that Osama “Sam” Lufti (the manager and companion of Britney Spears) is revealing that the singer suffers from “mental issues” and has seen a psychiatrist. These revelations about Britney were made on today’s episode of “The View” via a phone call to talk show host Barbara Walters. She says that:

“He [Lufti] said that Britney is suffering from what he describes as mental issues which are treatable…. He [Lufti] said that she has been to a psychiatrist and that she, I assume, is starting some kind of treatment.”

Lufti also assured Barbara Walters that he has been staying with the singer “constantly” and that Spears has been sufferring from severe “mood swings” and has been having “trouble sleeping.”

Walters said she did not know whether Lufti was indeed telling the truth.

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