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April 18, 1977. THE PROBLEM OF SOUL MURDER. Leonard Shengold, M.D.
Soul murder is the deliberate act of depriving an individual of his/her individuality, capacity to feel, and basic reason to live. It involves the confrontation between the all-powerful, hostile, cruel, psychotic, or psychopathic parent or authorities and the helpless in their charge. The victim is subjected to such brutalities as torture, hatred, seduction, and rape, or even indifference or lack of
love and care. Primarily imposed from the world outside the mind, the afflictions are chronic and repetitive and are so overwhelming that the mental apparatus is flooded with terrifying states of overstimulation that require massive and mind-distorting defensive operations for the survival of the individual.
The child who is tormented by a parent must frequently call on that very parent for help and rescue, since the other parent is often weak, unavailable, or an unconscious abettor of the tormentor. The parent who is experienced as bad must be turned to and then must be seen as good by the child, who must identify with such parents and view them as good in order to deal with the intensity of the rage felt. The alternative of complete abandonment means annihilation. The bad registered as good is a mind-splitting, mind-fragmenting operation. Contradictory images of self and of the parents are never permitted to coalesce. Thinking is compromised, registration of past and present is compartmentalized and therefore inadequate (as in Orwellian "doublethink"). What is happening is so terrible that it may not be registered, and hypnotic living-deadness may result. The distortion of the ego's power to remember and to test reality results in children's feeling that they must indeed be bad and perhaps in their taking on guilt for what the parents do.
Dr. Shengold offered several clinical examples to illustrate the degree to which delusional maneuvers were needed by an extremely abused child to cope with