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Leonard Shengold (December 5, 1925 – February 4, 2020) was an American psychiatrist known for his studies on child abuse.

Biography

Shengold was born on December 5, 1925, in Syracuse, New York. Both his parents were Jewish, and his father was a watchmaker originating from Minsk and his mother a homemaker from Vilnius. During his youth, he noted that his father was prone to having severe angina attacks and died when he was 12 years old. He attended Syracuse University for one semester before transferring to Columbia College, where he studied under Lionel Trilling, who sparked his interest in Freud and psychoanalysis.

He joined the United States Army during World War II and served in India as a radio operator and then as a clerk in North Africa and Saudi Arabia. He then returned to Columbia after the war, graduating in 1947, and received his medical degree from Long Island College of Medicine, now known as SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University. He was also trained at what is now known as the Psychoanalytic Association of New York, affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine.

He started career as a training analyst at the institute, as well as its director from 1975 to 1978, and taught psychiatry at New York University. He received a Sigourney Award for advancing work in psychoanalysis in 1997.

Shengold was known for his studies of child abuse, observing the damage of childhood on numerous adult patients and equated the long-term physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and neglect of children by their adult parents as “soul murder.” Drawing from clinical cases and literary works of Rudyard Kipling, Anton Chekhov and Charles Dickens, he argued that helpless children easily fall prey to their tormentors because of their physical and emotional dependence on them, and grew up identifying with the abuser and repeating the experiences of abuse. In addition to treating adult victims of childhood, he also treated writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks for nearly a half-century.

Michiko Kakutani credited Shengold for having formulated "a modern psychiatric definition of soul murder" in reviewing his 1989 book Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation (1989). Harold F. Blum said that Shengold's work had been valuable in fathoming the psychological depth of childhood abuse and identifying the key role of unconscious fantasies in understanding traumatic experiences.

Shengold died of leukemia on February 4, 2020, at the age of 94.

References

1. ^ Sandomir, Richard (2020-02-04). "Dr. Leonard Shengold, 94, Psychoanalyst Who Studied Child Abuse, Dies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
2. Shengold, Leonard L. (June 1979). "Child Abuse and Deprivation: Soul Murder". Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 27 (3): 533–559. doi:10.1177/000306517902700302. ISSN 0003-0651. PMID 512287. S2CID 9782870.
3. Sacks, Oliver, 'The longest running psychoanalysis on record', retrieved 2022-06-10
4. "Review: Awakening to the joy of 'Oliver Sacks: His Own Life,' a documentary for odd ducks". Los Angeles Times. 2020-09-25. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
5. Kakutani, Michiko (1989-11-21). "Books of The Times; Destruction of Young Minds And Some Who Overcame". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
6. "Obituaries". Columbia College Today. 2020-07-08. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
7. Blum, Harold P. (2020-05-03). "Leonard Shengold, M. D." The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 101 (3): 595–596. doi:10.1080/00207578.2020.1739528. ISSN 0020-7578.

• 1925 births
• 2020 deaths
• Columbia College (New York) alumni
• Syracuse University alumni
• American psychiatrists
• 20th-century American psychologists
• New York University faculty
• SUNY Downstate Medical Center alumni
• People from Syracuse, New York
• 21st-century American psychologists
• American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
• American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent