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If You Can't Trust Your Mother, Who Can You Trust?: Soul Murder, Psychoanalysis, and Creativity

Author(s) : Leonard Shengold

Reviews and Endorsements

'In this book, Leonard Shengold’s passion to heal, his unswerving commitment to patients, his insistence that psychoanalysts pay attention and bear witness, and his capacious, omnivorous reading, thinking, and gathering of historical and biographical facts, once again shine forth. Over a lifetime, Shengold has documented those heart-breaking, life-shattering childhood experiences of intentionally inflicted trauma - soul murder, haunting by parents - that he has soldered into the psychoanalytic lexicon. Following his patients to the darkest recesses of painful experience and brutality, this eminently humane analyst manages an optimism, telling us, in conclusion, that "the analyst has the privilege of assisting in the psychological rebirth of a soul".'
- Nancy J Chodorow, author of Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, The Power of Feelings, and other works

'In If You Can’t Trust Your Mother, Who Can You Trust? Leonard Shengold extends his invaluable and groundbreaking work about the importance and complexities of soul murder. He elucidates how parents have an enduring effect on all of us throughout our lives. Shengold helps us to grapple with the compelling question of why, despite great adversity in early years, some children lead lives that show incredible adaptive ability, success and creativity. The use of literature and biographies to study these issues provides an invaluable dimension to the psychological perspectives. Once again it is immeasurably enriching and stimulating to follow Shengold in his explorations of what is closest to the human heart. This is an opportunity not to be missed.'
- Steven Luria Ablon MD, Training and Supervising Adult and Child Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Associate Clinical Professor at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University Medical School