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Leonard Shengold occupies a unique position in contemporary American psychoanalysis. At a time when analytic discourse was underemphasizing the possibility of incest and childhood sexual abuse, he raised an articulate and compelling voice. His early writings about the powerfully evocative concept of soul murder helped alert us to the fact and consequences of severe childhood trauma and neglect (Shengold 1979). Ten years later, he presented many clinical experiences
with, thoughts about, and recommendations for the treatment of severely abused and neglected patients in Soul Murder: The Effect of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation (Shengold 1989). The present volume, which appears after the passage of ten more years and the publication of four subsequent books and innumerable papers, offers readers the benefits of the author's further thoughts on and experiences with this very important subject.
Given the polemics and reductionism to which the subject of child abuse and its consequences is often subjected, it is most gratifying to note that this author can maintain a deep appreciation of the complexity of the issues involved. From the outset, Shengold cautions that “the problem of differentiating fantasy from memory remains formidable for therapist and patient alike” (p. 7). Thus, he proposes that the possibility of adult and parental seduction “should neither be assumed nor denied” (p. 7). This need for caution arises in part from the nature of memory. “We can no longer believe in memory as the simple registration of what has actually happened in the past” (p. 10). Quoting Oliver Sacks (1997), Shengold suggests that memory “is not a recording but an active process of recategorization—of reconstruction, of imagination, determined by our own values and perspectives” (pp. x-xii), and, he adds, “by our psychological conflicts and complexes” (p. 10), as well.
For Shengold, the fact of a patient's having undergone real trauma does matter: “Having had to live through overwhel