During the time of the attempt at soul murder (ages 6 to 12), Kipling had to face three terrible psychological dangers: the loss of his parents; the soul murder itself (the overstimulation and overwhelming rage); and castration anxiety, since Rudyard, at 6, was at the height of his oedipal development. At Lorne Lodge there was the situation (perhaps true of his first years in India too) of domination by an all-powerful woman, with the much-needed protective father at a distance.

The trauma of the desertion was made more terrible by the boy's being completely unprepared for it. Suddenly, the children were in hell. Their fate resembles that of children who were suddenly separated from their parents during the emergency evacuations from London in the blitz of World War II. Anna Freud (1939–45), who cared for and studied these children, concludes: