ABSTRACT
In the 1850s the fate and character of the Kaspar Hauser aroused curiosity, indignation, and political controversy. Kaspar Hauser's soul murder history illustrates the devastating effects of deprivation and cruelty suffered in childhood. One sees the child's subsequent pathological reaction to feelings that were and can remain too much to bear in consciousness: murderous anger, guilt, and terror. There is an overwhelming need and craving for love and rescue. But the child has nowhere to turn but to the parents—or the parental substitutes—and if the parents are the ones responsible for the abuse and emotional deprivation, the child is left with the dilemma of wanting to murder the parents he or she cannot survive without. This organizes massive defenses: a distancing of all deep feeling and of meaningful relationships, with constant danger of the intense anger breaking through into feeling and action and of it turning inward toward great guilt and a need to be punished.
