Between cure and literature: An interview with Leonard Shengold

Abstract

This paper is an interview with Leonard Shengold, training psychoanalyst at the New York University Psychoanalytic Institute and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University Medical School, renowned for his work on the importance of early parenting as a source of health and pathology, and on the lasting effects of childhood trauma and abuse. He has written extensively about his experience with abused patients, most notably in Soul murder: The effects of childhood abuse and deprivation (1989) and, more recently, in Haunted by parents (2006), whose style combines clinical observations with reflections on literature to explore the topography and the treatment of the abused self. Dr. Shengold is both a highly regarded scholar and a keen clinician with a marked literary flare. Creative and productive since the very beginning of his career, he has also advanced psychoanalysis through his stimulating participation in analytic organizations, having served as Secretary of the Board of Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), as Director of The Psychoanalytic Institute at New York University, and as Vice-President of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He won The Mary S. Sigourney Award in 1997 for his distinguished contributions to the field of psychoanalysis.