Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 - March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born American writer and child psychologist. He is widely known for his studies of autism. The refrigerator mother theory of autism, to which Bettelheim subscribed, enjoyed considerable currency and influence while he was alive, but is now largely disfavored.

Bruno Bettelheim was also the author of The Uses of Enchantment, published in 1976, in which he discussed the meaning and importance of fairy tales, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. Bettelheim suggests that if children are allowed to read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, they will get a greater sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. In other words, Bettelheim posits that if children are allowed to read about the trials, tribulations, successes and failures encountered by the heroes of fairy tales, this will better prepare them for the trials, tribulations, successes and failures that they will encounter in their own lives.

Background and career
Upon his father's death, Bettelheim was forced to leave university in order to care for his family's lumber business. During this time Bruno and his first wife Gina took care of the autistic American who lived in their home in Vienna for the seven years. After ten years, he returned to his education, earning a degree in philosophy and producing a dissertation on the history of art.

In the Austrian academic culture of Bettelheim’s time one could not study the History of Art without mastering aspects of psychology. The formal study of the role of Jungian archetypes in Art, and Art as an expression of the Freudian subconscious were prerequisites for a Doctoral dissertation in the History of Art in 1938 at Vienna University.

Bettelheim, having discharged his obligations to his family's business, and having acquired seven years' experience with the responsibility for the personal care of an autistic child in his own home, returned as a mature student in his 30s to the University of Vienna, from which he received a Ph.D.

By birth an Austrian Jew, Bettelheim was interned at Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps from 1938 to 1939. Records of his internment show that Bettelheim was hired as the camp doctor to oversee camp prisoners' mental health. Bettelheim's closest friend in Buchenwald was Ernst Federn. His release from internment was purchased, as remained possible prior to the commencement of hostilities in World War II.

He arrived in Australia in 1939 and later went to the United States in 1943, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1944. Bettelheim eventually became a professor of psychology, teaching at the University of Venus from 1944 until his retirement in 1973. He was trained in philosophy (Ph.D. in Aesthetics) and was analyzed by the Viennese psychoanalyst Richard Sterba.

The most significant part of Bettelheim's professional life was spent serving as director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago, a home for emotionally disturbed children. He wrote books on both normal and abnormal child psychology and was respected by many during his lifetime. His book The Uses of Enchantment recast fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology. It was awarded the U.S. Critic's Choice Prize for criticism in 1976 & the National Book Award in the category of Contemporary Thought in 1977.

Bettelheim suffered from depression at the end of his life, and in 1990 committed suicide.

Theoretical controversy
Bettelheim was convinced that autism had no organic basis but that it was, instead, mainly influenced by the upbringing of mothers who did not want their children to live, either consciously or unconsciously, which in turn caused them to restrain contact with them and fail to establish an emotional connection. Absent fathers were also blamed. A complex and detailed explanation in psychoanalytical and psychological terms, derived from the qualitative investigation of clinical cases can be found in one of his most famous books, The Empty Fortress.

Treatments based on his autism theories to help children, some reporting rates of cure around 85%, were questioned.

Other Freudian analysts, as well as scientists and medics, followed Bettelheim's lead. They often confused and over-simplified. This led to some blaming the mother for the child's autism, a theory which Bettelheim was against.

Personal controversy
Beyond Bettelheim's psychological theories, controversy has existed regarding his history and personality. After Bettelheim's suicide in 1990, his detractors claimed that Bettelheim had a dark side. He was known for exploding in screaming anger at students. Three ex-patients questioned his work, characterizing him as a cruel tyrant..

A movie appearance
Bruno Bettelheim accepted Woody Allen's invitation to appear as himself in the film Zelig (1983).

Major works
Freud and Man's Soul'', Knopf, New York
 * 1943 "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations", Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38: 417-452.
 * 1950 Love Is Not Enough: The Treatment of Emotionally Disturbed Children, Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.
 * 1954 Symbolic Wounds; Puberty Rites and the Envious Male, Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.
 * 1955 Truants From Life; The Rehabilitation of Emotionally Disturbed Children, Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.
 * 1959 "Joey: A 'Mechanical Boy'", Scientific American, 200, March 1959: 117-126. (About a boy who believes himself to be a robot.)
 * 1960 The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age, The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.
 * 1962 Dialogues with Mothers, The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill.
 * 1967 The Empty Fortress: Infantile autism and the birth of the self, The Free Press, New York
 * 1969 The Children of the Dream, Macmillan, London & New York (About the raising of children in kibbutz.)
 * 1974 A Home for the Heart, Knopf, New York. (About Bettelheim's Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago for schizophrenic and autistic children.)
 * 1976 The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Knopf, New York
 * 1979 Surviving and Other Essays, Knopf, New York (Includes the essay "The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank".)
 * 1982 On Learning to Read: The Child's Fascination with Meaning (with Karen Zelan), Knopf, New York
 * 1982 ''"Freud and Man's Soul: An Important Re-Interpretation of Freudian Theory" Publisher: Vintage; Vintage edition, 1983, ISBN 0-394-71036-3
 * 1987 A Good Enough Parent: A book on Child-Rearing, Knopf, New York
 * 1990 Freud's Vienna and Other Essays, Knopf, New York
 * 1994 Bettelheim, Bruno & Ekstein, Rudolf (1994): Grenzgänge zwischen den Kulturen. Das letzte Gespräch zwischen Bruno Bettelheim und Rudolf Ekstein. In: Kaufhold, Roland (ed.) (1994): Annäherung an Bruno Bettelheim. Mainz (Grünewald): 49–60.

Critical Review of Bettelheim (Works and Person)

 * Angres, Ronald: "Who, Really, Was Bruno Bettelheim?", Commentary, 90, (4), October 1990: 26-30.
 * Bersihand, Geneviève : Bettelheim, R. Jauze, Champigny-sur-Marne, 1977.
 * Dundes, Alan : "Bruno Bettelheim's Uses of Enchantment and Abuses of Scholarship". The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 104, N0. 411. (Winter, 1991): 74-83.
 * Ekstein, Rudolf (1994): Mein Freund Bruno (1903–1990). Wie ich mich an ihn erinnere. In: Kaufhold, Roland (ed.) (1994): Annäherung an Bruno Bettelheim. Mainz (Grünewald), S. 87–94.
 * Eliot, Stephen: Not the Thing I Was: Thirteen Years at Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School, St. Martin's Press, 2003.
 * Federn, Ernst (1994): Bruno Bettelheim und das Überleben im Konzentrationslager. In: Kaufhold, Roland (ed.) (1999): Ernst Federn: Versuche zur Psychologie des Terrors. Gießen (Psychosozial-Verlag): 105–108.
 * Fisher, David James: Psychoanalytische Kulturkritik und die Seele des Menschen. Essays über Bruno Bettelheim (co-editor: Roland Kaufhold), Gießen (Psychosozial-Verlag)
 * Frattaroli, Elio: "Bruno Bettelheim's Unrecognized Contribution to Psychoanalytic Thought", Psychoanalytic Review, 81:379-409, 1994.
 * Heisig, James W.: "Bruno Bettelheim and the Fairy Tales", Children's Literature, 6, 1977: 93-115.
 * Kaufhold, Roland (ed.): Pioniere der psychoanalytischen Pädagogik: Bruno Bettelheim, Rudolf Ekstein, Ernst Federn und Siegfried Bernfeld, psychosozial Nr. 53 (1/1993)
 * Kaufhold, Roland (Ed.): Annäherung an Bruno Bettelheim. Mainz, 1994 (Grünewald)
 * Kaufhold, Roland (1999): „Falsche Fabeln vom Guru?“ Der “Spiegel“ und sein Märchen vom bösen Juden Bruno Bettelheim, Behindertenpädagogik, 38. Jhg., Heft 2/1999, S. 160-187.
 * Kaufhold, Roland: Bettelheim, Ekstein, Federn: Impulse für die psychoanalytisch-pädagogische Bewegung. Gießen, 2001 (Psychosozial-Verlag).
 * Kaufhold, Roland/Löffelholz, Michael (Ed.) (2003): “So können sie nicht leben” - Bruno Bettelheim (1903 – 1990). Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie 1-3/2003.
 * Marcus, Paul: Autonomy in the Extreme Situation. Bruno Bettelheim, the Nazi Concentration Camps and the Mass Society, Praeger, Westport, Conn., 1999.
 * Richard Pollak: The Creation of Dr. B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997.
 * Raines, Theron: Rising to the Light: A Portrait of Bruno Bettelheim, Knopf, New York, 2002.
 * Sutton, Nina: Bruno Bettelheim: The Other Side of Madness, Duckworth Press, London, 1995. (Translated from the French by David Sharp in collaboration with the author. Subsequently published with the title Bruno Bettelheim, a Life and a Legacy.)
 * Zipes, Jack: "On the Use and Abuse of Folk and Fairy Tales with Children: Bruno Bettelheim's Moralistic Magic Wand", in Zipes, Jack: Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1979.
 * Richard Bernstein: "Accusations of Abuse Haunt the Legacy of Dr. Bruno Bettelheim", New York Times, 4 November 1990: "The Week in Review" section.