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In these litigious times in our society, there is also a tendency to 'politicize' issues that should be left to quiet and careful scientific inquiry. A case in point is the matter of the handling of possible child abuse cases, at least in Michigan. Any social worker who encounters a case of suspected child abuse must report it to the Child Protective Service, authorized but poorly funded and virtually untrained by the State. The case may be totally neglected, or excessive intervention may take place, demonstrating that the good intentions of the young legislators leaves a huge lack of preparedness for family supports.
Shengold demonstrates that the subtleties and complex interactions in the family do not lend themselves to the 'facts only' police investigatory techniques. With material derived from 30 years of psychoanalytic work, and through exploration of aspects of the lives of such well-known people as Schreber, Chekhov, Dickens, Kipling and Orwell, Shengold explores soul murder: 'the deliberate attempt to eradicate or compromise the separate identity of another person' (p. 2). Because of this stereoscopic view (the psychoanalyst's view of the subjectivity and complementarity of psychic reality and its 'reprsentational world', on the one hand, and the extreme cases of proven consistent destructiveness of famous parents and their malignant opposition to the recognition of the child as a separate person rather than just chattel), Shengold demonstrates that it is simply not possible or reasonable to approach child abuse as the police might look at a case of murder; 'did it happen or did it not happen'. Shengold states, 'Soul murder has certainly not happened to everyone, but this book is evidence of my conviction that overt substantial parental seduction and deprivation are frequent' (p. 309).
Shengold's book contains a very fascinating elaboration of fantasies and means by which his patients dealt with the most terrible abuse to which they were exposed repeat