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"You've hurt me!": clinical reflections on moral sadism

Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau1

  • 1Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, USA. schmidthellerau.cordelia@gmail.com

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly
|April 2, 2009
PubMed

I was boarding a shuttle from New York to Boston. Three rows in front of me, a mother seemed to be in some sort of struggle with her four or five-year-old son. "You've hurt me!" the boy exclaimed. The mother responded with a comment. "You've hurt me!" the boy insisted. More talking followed. "You've hurt me", the boy kept complaining. Eventually, the mother grew silent. "You've hurt me" the boy reiterated throughout the flight in what seemed to become an increasingly demanding tone-pausing at times, but continuing to repeat the words until we arrived in Boston an hour later. "You've hurt me"!

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