Customer Reviews

Soul murder: persecution in the family

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is amazing. Beyond being an intellectual and psychological mystery story, the book provides deep insight into the nature of the mind's responses to childhood trauma. Schatzman develops a simple, even elegant, approach and terminology ("transforms") for thinking about the symbolic distortions, including frank delusions, that can occur as a result of trauma. Perhaps I should put "delusions" in quotation marks because (in opposition to the widespread psychiatric notion that such delusions do not correspond to reality) Schatzman shows how they can reflect painful childhood realities in distorted but still highly accurate and meaningful ways. The book also has important implications for understanding religion and even certain philosophical ideas, which can reflect cultural patterns of childhood mistreatment, and Schatzman discusses some of these subjects, at the end of the book, in an extremely interesting and readable way. Until this book returns to print, therapists and students of trauma and also of religion should either obtain the book used or take a copy out of the library (and photocopy and bind it for reference!). It is essential reading on trauma, and psychology, and therapy, and the mind's capacity to symbolize, and religion. A masterpiece. [In this 2010 revision of an earlier review, I will add that I think the 3-star review posted here is entirely off base. Though Schatzman develops his ideas in the context of a specific historical moment, his ideas remain entirely valid and are useful for understanding a wide range of psychological phenomena.]

The book compares the written teachings of Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber (father) with the written record of Daniel Paul Schreber (son) of his (the son's) "explanation" of his mental illness in the 19th century. Evidently no previous comparison of the two men's writings has been done in any effort to understand the son's breakdown. The younger Schreber was a famous mental patient (because he had written about it) but even Freud neglected to investigate the effect that the father's teachings had on the son.

The father wrote extensively about his theories of how to raise children so that they would be under the total control of the parents (which he thought would lead to improved children), but would not realize it. He evidently applied his teachings to his own children. One of the sons committed suicide, the other broke down mentally, but this fact had no apparent effect on the father's reputation as a leader in how to raise children. Hitler thought he was an authority for the German people to follow.

The term "soul murder" is not a term invented by the author; it was actually used by the son in writing about his experience. He attributed the attempts to murder his soul to God (apparently being unable to attribute it to his own father).

The father's methods were widely admired among many of the intellectual classes of Europe, and were imported in many respect into America and other countries, where their effects remain unto this day. I should know.

Excellent book, not completely for American child abuse related problems.
An extreme case of "well intentioned" child abuse. Gives an insight to many questio about European child rearing. The methods described here are of limited aplicability towards understanding child abuse because it describes gadgets not used in this country where parents are more likely to be blamed for over indulgence and children are more often neglected than disciplined.
This is a book about abuse through over-discipline, which is still prevalent in some circles in northen Europe, mainly Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, Flemish Belgium, and German Switzerland.
However, it gives a clear idea of what happens when a child is deprived of his/her own personality and not allowed to express him/herself, whatever the method used to get complete control over his spirit. It is a case of extreme autoritarian parenting. Discipline taken to the extreme

The brilliant Morton Schatzman's "Soul Murder" will rivet you to your chair more surely than the metal and strap concoctions that Daniel Paul Schreber's, Victorian-age "Dr. Spock" father, Moritz Schreber, invented for the "training" of children. That both father and son were mad is not to be doubted. Nevertheless, the son's madness was informed by the demented twists and turns of his father's techniques, which involved such niceties as tying the tips of a child's hair to a neck brace so that the child was unable to lean his head in an "unhealthy and unbalanced" manner or turn away from his studies. He undoubtedly practiced his techniques upon his son. Both father and son surely were in part the inspiration for the horror movie "Peeping Tom" by Michael Powell. Mr. Schreber's obsessional ideas about balanced growth and control of the body would be best applied in the masochist's private parlor. Yet, his notions and devices were used religiously in Germany on the little boys and girls who grew up to become...Nazis. It is obscene that the book is out of print. The author is, quite simply, a genius, and his subject the victim of those who worship at Freud's altar.