Some people find that it's funny to say that the word is a shot; it is able to cause death, exactly like the gun, the sword, and the scaffold. This is what we hear and repeat all the time. But this expression, "the word is a shot", was always considered as a mere metaphoric expression to show the greatness effect of words and its importance. Let's put the metaphors a aside and think: Does the word really have the ability to cause death, Does it have the ability to kill?

The real lexical meaning of the verb (to kill) is to murder and cause death, and this action needs some material tools to be done, which may be a gun, a dagger, or a cleave "the women's best weapon”. Also there are causes of death like, God forbid; drowning, strangling, being struck, or falling from a high place, etc. there are a lot of means have been developed because of the enormous advanced technology, which inspired a wife, in Denmark, to kill her husband by dissolution using the concentrated sulfuric acid.

Along history, the act of murder was a result of some material causes and tools that are used on purpose to cause the death of someone. According to law, there are main elements to prove the act of murder, like, for example the dead body and the tool used to kill him. And without such elements, they can't consider the crime as a murder and they can't take any action towards the murderer even if he confessed.

Again I wonder: can words really kill?

Using a material tool is to not necessary to hurt someone, also words and behaviors have the same ability of the physical hurt, as man is both soul and body. According to psychology, the science which unveils many secrets of the human nature, the physical hurt may be a direct result of a psychical spiritual hurt. And of coarse the psychical damage can't be caused by material tool, but it is a spiritual damage which is caused by a word or a behavior, it may have a direct or indirect effect, it may be an immediate or a temporary one. This damage, I mean the psychical damage, has several serious results which death is one of them.

In the time when the number of crimes increases in the different communities, the efforts exerted to prevent them also increase. But if we think deeply about this matter, we will find that the number of the psychological murder is more than the physical murder. This kind of murder, the psychological one, is committed every day, it may cause an immediate effect, or it may last for days, maybe years, it caused a slow death that is also caused by a long-term poison . But the result is always the same: death. There is a famous Arabic proverb tells that: the sword is not the only thing that hurts.

But, in spite of that, we still pay no attention to such kind of murders. And the reason is simply that the psychological murder is something hidden that we can't literally see its effect. The killer in such murder is invisible, he comes in, kills, goes out, and no one sees him. He doesn't leave behind blood or fingerprints, he leaves just a dead body and a mysterious secret. The dead body of the victim does exist and the murderer is free hanging around searching for a new victim.

With the increasing life pressures and problems all the time and the absence of the understanding for the great importance of the psychological factor, the psychological murders increased recently. According to the psychiatry medicine, there are a lot of physical diseases that are mainly the result of psychological elements; some of them are really serious like paralysis, insanity and death. All these can be a result of a hurting word, ill manners, or an offensive abuse.

In this case, the murder either is not aware of how much dangerous what he is doing, or he is a professional murderer and knows very well the means of the spiritual murder. This kind of murders was represented before in an Egyptian TV serial “The Scorpion”, when a wife killed her husband by only one word.

And there are more examples in our daily life, for example: a man who died with a heart attack when he discovered that his partner deceived him, he couldn't deal with the shock and died and another man couldn't bear being abused by his dear son and also died at once. There is also one more similar case, the tragic story of the cause of the death of the famous Egyptian poet Salah Abd-el-Sabour, he fell down dead at once when he was accused of being a betrayer when he accepted to be the headmaster of an official cultural institution. Such events happen every day, and we always say that it is the predestination and the God's will. If any one dares to refer, even by indirect way, to a spiritual crime; everyone will deny this saying that everyone will die on a definite hour.

What really matters now is how to prove the psychological crime? One day, the police will arrest someone who is accused of a psychological murder to sue and punish him for committing such crime, is that possible? When can we seek for the evidences that criminate those murders to enable us to punish them justly exactly like the punishment of the usual murder?

By the help of the latest advanced technology, that the whole world witnessed its developing second by second, and by the help of the psychiatry and the deep knowledge of the human nature, I wish we could establish the rules of a new science called “The Science of the Psychological Crimes”. Experts of psychiatry will contribute in defining its rules which will help them to draw a map, a psychological map, for everyone, so they can determine accurately the psychological damage which was practiced upon the victim. Then they will determine the physical damage which was resulted from the psychological one. So, the police can now prove the existence of the psychological crime, then seek for the criminal, and finally arrest him to be punished.

There are many moral crimes that happen every day and can't be proved by law. Can we imagine that there are murders with malice by swindling, abuse, depression, sex, etc? All these are crimes that can’t be proved. The community should develop its  abilities to prove these kinds of crimes. Then everyone will be sure that the word has the same effect of the gunshot and the cleaver.