Bruno Bettelheim (; August 28, 1903 – March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born American scholar, public intellectual and writer who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the United States. An early writer on autism, Bettelheim's work focused on the education of emotionally disturbed children, as well as Freudian psychology more generally. In the U.S., he later gained a position as professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children, and after 1973 taught at Stanford University.
Bettelheim's ideas, which grew out of those of Sigmund Freud, theorized that children with behavioral and emotional disorders were not born that way, and could be treated through extended psychoanalytic therapy, treatment that rejected the use of psychotropic drugs and shock therapy. During the 1960s and 1970s he had an international reputation in such fields as autism, child psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.
Some of his work was questioned after his death regarding academic credentials, patient abuse, and plagiarism, arising from a negligence of institutional oversight and pursuing work outside of the psychological community.
Background in Austria Bruno Bettelheim was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, on August 28, 1903. When his father died, Bettelheim left his studies at the University of Vienna to look after his family's sawmill. Having discharged his obligations to his family's business, Bettelheim returned as a mature student in his thirties to the University of Vienna. Sources disagree about his education (see Misrepresented credentials section).
Bettelheim's first wife, Gina, took care of a troubled American child, Patsy, who lived in their home in Vienna for seven years, and who may have been on the autism spectrum. "He was familiar with this disease because his first wife, Gina, had cared for an autistic child in their home for several years.
In the Austrian academic culture of Bettelheim's time, one could not study the history of art without mastering aspects of psychology. Candidates for the doctoral dissertation in the History of Art in 1938 at Vienna University had to fulfill prerequisites in the formal study of the role of Jungian archetypes in art, and in art as an expression of the unconscious.
Jewish by birth, Bettelheim grew up in a secular family. After the Anschluss (political annexation) of Austria on March 13, 1938, the National Socialist (Nazi) authorities sent Austrian Jews and political opponents to the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps where many were brutally treated, and tortured or killed. Bettelheim was arrested some two months later on May 28, 1938, and was imprisoned in both these camps for a combined total of ten and a half months before being released on April 14, 1939.Samuel Totten, Paul R. Bartrop, 2008, Dictionary of Genocide, Volume 1: A–L, "Bettelheim, Bruno (1903–1990)", with contributions by Steven Leonard Jacobs, Westport, CT, U.S. and London, UK: Greenwood. While at the Buchenwald camp, he met and befriended the social psychologist Ernst Federn. As a result of an amnesty declared for Adolf Hitler's birthday (which occurred slightly later on April 20, 1939), Bettelheim and hundreds of other prisoners were released. Bettelheim drew on the experience of the concentration camps for some of his later work.
Life and career in the United States Bettelheim arrived by ship as a refugee in New York City in late 1939 to join his wife Gina, who had already emigrated. They divorced because she had become involved with someone else during their separation. He soon moved to Chicago, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1944, and married an Austrian woman, Gertrude ('Trudi') Weinfeld, also an emigrant from Vienna.
Psychology The Rockefeller Foundation sponsored a wartime project to help resettle European scholars by circulating their resumes to American universities. Through this process, Ralph Tyler hired Bettelheim to be his research assistant at the University of Chicago from 1939 to 1941 with funding from the Progressive Education Association to evaluate how high schools taught art. Once this funding ran out, Bettelheim found a job at Rockford College, Illinois, where he taught from 1942 to 1944.John F. Ohles ed., 1978, Biographical Dictionary of American Educators, Vol. 1, London, England and Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Morris Finder, 2004, Educating America: How Ralph W. Tyler Taught America to Teach, forew. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Westport, CT, London: Praeger, p. 41.
In 1943, he published the paper "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations" about his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps, a paper which was highly regarded by General Dwight Eisenhower among others. Bettelheim claimed he had interviewed 1,500 fellow prisoners, although this was unlikely. He stated that the Viennese psychoanalyst Richard Sterba had analyzed him, as well as implying in several of his writings that he had written a PhD dissertation in the philosophy of education. His actual PhD was in art history and he had only taken three introductory courses in psychology.Ron Grossman, January 23, 1997, Genius or Fraud? Bettelheim's Biographers Can't Seem To Decide, Chicago Tribune, "…he evidently gambled that because of the war no one would be able to check on his credentials…"
Through Ralph Tyler's recommendation, the University of Chicago appointed Bettelheim as a professor of psychology, as well as director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for emotionally disturbed children. He held both positions from 1944 until his retirement in 1973. He wrote a number of books on psychology and, for a time, had an international reputation for his work on Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children.
At the Orthogenic School, Bettelheim made changes and set up an environment for milieu therapy, in which children could form strong attachments with adults within a structured but caring environment. He claimed considerable success in treating some of the emotionally disturbed children. He wrote books on both normal and abnormal child psychology, and became a major influence in the field, widely respected during his lifetime. He was noted for his study of feral children, who revert to the animal stage without experiencing the benefits of belonging to a community. He discussed this phenomenon in the book The Informed Heart. Even critics agree that, in his practice, Bettelheim was dedicated to helping these children, using methods and practices that would enable them to lead happy lives. It is based on his position that psychotherapy could change humans and that they can adapt to their environment provided they are given proper care and attention.
Bettelheim was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971. After retiring in 1973, he and his wife moved to Portola Valley, California, where he continued to write and taught at Stanford University. His wife died in 1984.
The Uses of Enchantment Bettelheim analyzed fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology in The Uses of Enchantment (1976). He discussed the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales once considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures. In the United States, Bettelheim won two major awards for The Uses of Enchantment: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism"All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists" . National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2019-05-09. and the National Book Award in the category of Contemporary Thought."National Book Awards – 1977". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2019-05-09.There was a "Contemporary" or "Current" award category from 1972 to 1980.
However, in 1991, well-supported charges of plagiarism were brought against Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, primarily that he had copied from Julius Heuscher's A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairy Tales: Their Origin, Meaning, and Usefulness (1963, revised ed. 1974).
Death At the end of his life, Bettelheim had depression. He appeared to have had difficulties with depression for much of his life.Robert Gottlieb, Feb 27, 2003, "The Strange Case of Dr. B.", The New York Review. In 1990, widowed, in failing physical health, and experiencing the effects of a stroke which impaired his mental abilities and paralyzed part of his body, he took his own life. He died on March 13, 1990, in Maryland.John W. Fountain, March 14, 1990, Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, Child Psychology Expert, Chicago Tribune.
In popular culture Bettelheim was a public intellectual, whose writing and many public appearances in popular media paralleled a growing post WWII interest in psychoanalysis. For instance, he appeared multiple times on The Dick Cavett Show in the 70s to discuss theories of autism and psychoanalysis. Richard Pollak's biography of Bettelheim argues that such popular appearances shielded his unethical behavior from scrutiny.In Print: the abominable Dr. Bettelheim, Chicago Reader, Cara Jepsen, Jan. 16, 1997.
Bettelheim appeared as himself in the 1983 Woody Allen mockumentary Zelig.
A BBC Horizon documentary about Bettelheim was televised in 1987.
Controversies and scientific fraud accusations Bettelheim's life and work have been called into question since his death, specifically in a critical biography by Richard Pollak (1997).
Misrepresented credentials Though he spent most of his life working in psychology and psychiatry, Bettelheim's educational background in those fields is murky at best. Sources disagree whether Bettelheim's PhD was in art history or in philosophy (aesthetics). When he was hired at the University of Chicago, Ralph W. Tyler assumed that he had two PhDs, one in art history and the other in psychology.Ron Grossman, November 11, 1990, "Solving The Puzzle That Was Bruno Bettelheim", Chicago Tribune. "Yet the [University of Chicago]'s official biographical sketch credits Bettelheim with only one Ph.D., and doesn't specify a field." He also believed, falsely, that Bettelheim was certified to conduct psychoanalysis though Bettelheim never received such certification. A posthumous review of his transcript showed that Bettelheim had only taken three introductory classes in psychology. Bertram Cohler and Jacquelyn Sanders at the Orthogenic School believed Bettelheim had a PhD in art history. In some of his own writings, Bettelheim implied that he had written a dissertation on the philosophy of education.
Determining Bettelheim's education is complicated by the fact that he routinely embellished or inflated aspects of his own biography. As an example, Bettelheim's first wife, Gina, took care of a troubled American child, Patsy, who lived in their home in Vienna for seven years. Although Bettelheim later claimed he himself had taken care of the child, there is general agreement that his wife actually provided most of the child care. However sources disagree on whether Patsy was autistic. Bettelheim later claimed that it was Patsy who inspired him to study autism and embellished her into two or even several autistic children in his home.