ABSTRACT
Soul murder is a descriptive designation for what has happened to people who were abused or neglected as children to the extent that they have been largely deprived of their capacity to feel love for others and for themselves. Soul murder is not a diagnosis; it is a descriptive metaphor for a crime: killing the joy in life in another human being. Child deprivation and abuse can have devastating effects. Freud first felt that psychic illness was the result of children being seduced by parents. Substantial emotional neglect of children—not caring for them and not caring about them as separate human beings—has potentially even more devastating effects on psychic development than physical abuse. The child victims both expect the love to turn to hate, and yet, in their masochism, they can also be driven by a delusional false promise that the next contact will be different and end in something wonderful.
