Scientific Meetings

There are numerous ways in which dehumanization manifests itself, from nuclear war, the Holocaust or ethnic cleansing through murder, torture, abuse, political and economic exploitation, race and class prejudice, to infliction of personal harm on others or oneself. Whenever I believe my feelings of contempt for someone, including myself, I dehumanize myself and the other. Dehumanization is a widespread activity, but it is primarily a state of mind. In this lecture I want to focus on a form of dehumanization that is more prevalent than tends to be recognized, in part because it is not obvious, and because its effects render the sufferer profoundly withdrawn and frequently unaware of what has happened to them. This is the phenomenon of Soul Murder.

Paul Williams is a psychoanalyst and writer who trained with the British Psychoanalytic Society, where he was a Training Analyst. He was awarded the Rosenfeld Clinical Essay Prize for work with severe disturbance, and between 2001 and 2007 was Joint Editor-in-Chief, with Glen Gabbard, of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He worked in clinical practice in London and in the British National Health Service in Belfast, Northern Ireland, before moving to California in 2016. He has published many psychoanalytic books and articles, but has turned to writing about how experiences, dreams and fantasies shape our view of reality from the inside, especially when our minds do not work. A trilogy (‘The Fifth Principle’, ‘Scum’ and ‘The Authority of Tenderness’) received widespread acclaim. His latest book, ‘Nothing Happened’, follows a soul-murdered man who, through catastrophe and attempts to connect slivers of his remaining humanity to people he never knew existed or could fathom, is confronted  by an unimaginable redemption.