Bettelheim, a life and a legacy

by Nina Sutton

Who was Bruno Bettelheim? The brilliant discoverer of a unique method of treating psychotic children, justly acclaimed the world over? Or the brutal and despotic bully who was denounced after his death by former students and patients? In her quest to understand this puzzling and powerful man, Nina Sutton spent five years tracing Bettelheim's footsteps from Vienna to Los Angeles, via Chicago, Basel, and Jerusalem. She interviewed students and colleagues, friends and enemies, and uncovered rare documents, including Bettelheim's letters from Buchenwald and Dachau. As the internationally famous director of the Orthogenic School in Chicago and the author of a dozen bestsellers on Nazism, child rearing, emotional disturbances, and fairy tales, Bettelheim was always surrounded by controversy. He was a Jew who rejected the inevitability of the Holocaust, a psychoanalyst who challenged the very notion of "insanity," and a man who liked to shroud his life in mystery and sometimes outright lies.