Bruno Bettelheim
Tantor media
During the 1930s Bruno and Gina took care of an autistic child who lived in their Vienna home for 7 years. After 10 years, Bettelheim returned to his education, earning a PhD in 1938, among the last Jews awarded a doctorate before the Nazis annexed Austria in the 1938 Anschluss.
In the late 1930s, Bettelheim travelled between German state hospitals during the infamous Disabled Euthanasia Programme, the start of his research in mental patients. He became an accredited therapist and returned to Austria. But Bettelheim was arrested in 1939 by the Gestapo and spent 10.5 months in Dachau and then Buchenwald concentration camps. In the camps, he supervised the prisoners' mental health. His release occurred just prior to WW2 starting in Sept 1930. But he lost everything and his wife left.
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Bettelheim married Gertrude Weinfeld in 1941 and had 3 children. After his release, Bettelheim ?moved to Australia in 1939, and then to the U.S in 1943, becoming a naturalised citizen there. He survived by teaching art history, German literature and psychology.
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His best selling book was Uses of Enchantment: Meaning & Importance of Fairy Tales (1976). There he used Freudian psychology to analyse the healthy effects of fairy tales on children’s psyches. It was awarded the 1977 National Book Award for Contemporary Thought. [NB his psychoanalytical treatise on fairy tales was said to have been plagiarised].
Bettelheim believed autism had no organic basis; rather that autic children behaved like helpless concentration camp inmates. The main reason was the negative parental interaction with infants during critical stages in their development. Such children learned to blame themselves for their families’ negative atmosphere, and withdrew into fantasy worlds. It was mainly the result of upbringing by mothers (and fathers?) who did not want their children to live with them. This in turn caused them to restrict contact with them and failed to establish an emotional connection.
Bettelheim presented a complex explanation in psychological terms, derived from the qualitative investigation of clinical cases in his book: The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self (1967).
His Refrigerator Mother Theory recognised the association between the lack of parental attachment and autism, and attributed childhood autism to unemotional, cold mothering. Bettelheim’s famous theory of autism enjoyed considerable attention and influence while Bettelheim was alive.
Bettelheim's life was an example of the very process he described, the shocking effects of inhumane treatment on psychological health. He suffered from depression late in life, especially after his wife's death in 1984. In 1987 he suffered a stroke. In 1990, he suicided in Silver Spring MD.
Post-death, some of Bettelheim's work was discredited. Controversy arose surrounding Bettelheim's psychological theories AND his personality. He was known for exploding in anger at students or patients, and that he spanked his patients, despite publicly rejecting spanking as brutal.
Some Freudian analysts followed Bettelheim's lead and created their own methodologies regarding autism. Some accused the mother for the child's autism, and others claimed that victims were to be blamed for their own bad luck. When I did 2nd year Psychology at university in 1967, I read and loved all the Bettelheim books published before 1966. So now that his theories are often disfavoured, I feel retrospectively cheated. Presumably he wasn't 100% brilliant.
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Still, Bettelheim remains widely known for his studies with autistic and emotionally disturbed children and made significant contributions to their treatment. Orthogenic School became a model for applying psychoanalytic principles in the treatment of emotionally disturbed children
In the late 1930s, Bettelheim travelled between German state hospitals during the infamous Disabled Euthanasia Programme, the start of his research in mental patients. He became an accredited therapist and returned to Austria. But Bettelheim was arrested in 1939 by the Gestapo and spent 10.5 months in Dachau and then Buchenwald concentration camps. In the camps, he supervised the prisoners' mental health. His release occurred just prior to WW2 starting in Sept 1930. But he lost everything and his wife left.
Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self, 1967
He wrote his concentration camps experiences in Individual and Mass Behaviour in Extreme Situations (1943). He analysed camp inmates’ behaviour, studying the effects of horror on the prisoners, prison guards and himself. Bettelheim used psychoanalytic principles, including Anna Freud's concept of identification with the aggressor, to explain why many prisoners took on the values of their torturers to survive. He saw many inmates falling prey to Victim Guilt.
In 1945 Gen Eisenhower asked his officers in Europe to read the article, to prepare for the shock of dealing with concentration camp survivors.
Bettelheim’s work had to be analysed in the context of great social change, from the Bolshevik Revolution and WW1, to Nazism and WW2. He was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, and studied the work of Carl Jung and Anna Freud. Bettelheim was also interested in the effect of social systems on individuals.
This Prof of Psychology taught at Chicago Uni from 1944 until retirement (1973). The most significant part of Bettelheim's career was as Director of Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a home for emotionally disturbed children. He wrote books on both normal and abnormal child psychology, and his milieu therapy was widely used at the Orthogenic School. His world famous therapy is still widely used in treating emotionally disturbed children. There he created a therapeutic environment that supported severely disturbed children, generally humanising their treatments. The rooms were clean, the children were free to move around and the staff had to accept ALL children’s behaviour. Via his lectures and books Bettelheim inspired generations of parents to apply psychological principles to their child rearing.
In 1960 Bruno published The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age, explaining the relationship between the external environment and mental disorder. He learned from his concentration camp experiences where he saw normal people going insane in the dehumanising environment. Bettelheim concluded that only a positive environment could influence one’s sanity and remedy mental disorders.
He compared his post-camp attempts to preserve a sense of autonomy, integrity and personal freedom Vs life in modern, mass society. Mass U.S or Western Europe societies were dehumanising and depersonalising. People had to struggle to maintain their sanity, much like inmates in the camp
In 1945 Gen Eisenhower asked his officers in Europe to read the article, to prepare for the shock of dealing with concentration camp survivors.
Bettelheim’s work had to be analysed in the context of great social change, from the Bolshevik Revolution and WW1, to Nazism and WW2. He was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, and studied the work of Carl Jung and Anna Freud. Bettelheim was also interested in the effect of social systems on individuals.
This Prof of Psychology taught at Chicago Uni from 1944 until retirement (1973). The most significant part of Bettelheim's career was as Director of Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a home for emotionally disturbed children. He wrote books on both normal and abnormal child psychology, and his milieu therapy was widely used at the Orthogenic School. His world famous therapy is still widely used in treating emotionally disturbed children. There he created a therapeutic environment that supported severely disturbed children, generally humanising their treatments. The rooms were clean, the children were free to move around and the staff had to accept ALL children’s behaviour. Via his lectures and books Bettelheim inspired generations of parents to apply psychological principles to their child rearing.
In 1960 Bruno published The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age, explaining the relationship between the external environment and mental disorder. He learned from his concentration camp experiences where he saw normal people going insane in the dehumanising environment. Bettelheim concluded that only a positive environment could influence one’s sanity and remedy mental disorders.
He compared his post-camp attempts to preserve a sense of autonomy, integrity and personal freedom Vs life in modern, mass society. Mass U.S or Western Europe societies were dehumanising and depersonalising. People had to struggle to maintain their sanity, much like inmates in the camp
A Good Enough Parent : A Book on Child-Rearing
1987
His best selling book was Uses of Enchantment: Meaning & Importance of Fairy Tales (1976). There he used Freudian psychology to analyse the healthy effects of fairy tales on children’s psyches. It was awarded the 1977 National Book Award for Contemporary Thought. [NB his psychoanalytical treatise on fairy tales was said to have been plagiarised].
Bettelheim believed autism had no organic basis; rather that autic children behaved like helpless concentration camp inmates. The main reason was the negative parental interaction with infants during critical stages in their development. Such children learned to blame themselves for their families’ negative atmosphere, and withdrew into fantasy worlds. It was mainly the result of upbringing by mothers (and fathers?) who did not want their children to live with them. This in turn caused them to restrict contact with them and failed to establish an emotional connection.
Bettelheim presented a complex explanation in psychological terms, derived from the qualitative investigation of clinical cases in his book: The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self (1967).
His Refrigerator Mother Theory recognised the association between the lack of parental attachment and autism, and attributed childhood autism to unemotional, cold mothering. Bettelheim’s famous theory of autism enjoyed considerable attention and influence while Bettelheim was alive.
Bettelheim's life was an example of the very process he described, the shocking effects of inhumane treatment on psychological health. He suffered from depression late in life, especially after his wife's death in 1984. In 1987 he suffered a stroke. In 1990, he suicided in Silver Spring MD.
Post-death, some of Bettelheim's work was discredited. Controversy arose surrounding Bettelheim's psychological theories AND his personality. He was known for exploding in anger at students or patients, and that he spanked his patients, despite publicly rejecting spanking as brutal.
Some Freudian analysts followed Bettelheim's lead and created their own methodologies regarding autism. Some accused the mother for the child's autism, and others claimed that victims were to be blamed for their own bad luck. When I did 2nd year Psychology at university in 1967, I read and loved all the Bettelheim books published before 1966. So now that his theories are often disfavoured, I feel retrospectively cheated. Presumably he wasn't 100% brilliant.
The Uses of Enchantment: Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
1976
1976
Still, Bettelheim remains widely known for his studies with autistic and emotionally disturbed children and made significant contributions to their treatment. Orthogenic School became a model for applying psychoanalytic principles in the treatment of emotionally disturbed children