Kaspar Hauser and Soul Murder: A Study of Deprivation

In the 1830s the fate and character of the foundling, Kaspar Hauser, aroused fascination, indignation and political controversy. His name was as well known to European newspaper readers as that of Dreyfus at the turn of the century. Kaspar was one of the most famous people in Europe. During the few years between the discovery of the unfortunate boy tottering down a street in Nuremberg and his murder, a visit to Kaspar Hauser was considered part of the Grand Tour for distinguished visitors to the kingdom of Bavaria. Despite the many books and thousands of publications about Kaspar Hauser, his story has not, as far as I know, been the subject of psychoanalytic investigation. The case of Kaspar Hauser can teach us much about child development under conditions of deprivation, and is of especial interest to those concerned with that crime for which Ibsen (1896) declared there is no forgiveness: soul murder (p. 246). The term soul murder was probably coined by the compassionate jurist, Anselm von Feuerbach, who wrote a widely read (and widely translated) pamphlet on Kaspar Hauser in 1832. Von Feuerbach was a distinguished judge. He was a reformer of penal laws who had drawn up a new penal code for the kingdom of Bavaria which was used as a model by many of the other German states. It is likely that his book on Kaspar was read by the judge Daniel Paul Schreber whose use of the phrase soul murder in his Memoirs(1903) caused it to become well known in psychiatric circles. (Freud's famous study of paranoia based on Schreber's book appeared in 1911.) Soul murder refers to killing the joy in life and interfering with the sense of identity of another human being. It is primarily a crime committed against children (see Shengold, 1975a), (1975 b).

Part of the explanation for the neglect by psychoanalysts may be that the facts of the Kaspar Hauser case have never been definitively established. Those critics who have declared that Kaspar Hauser was an impostor and a simu