Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 – March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born psychologist, scholar, public intellectual and writer who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the United States.
[4][5] Some of his work was discredited after his death due to fraudulent academic credentials, allegations of patient abuse, accusations of plagiarism, and lack of oversight by institutions and the psychological community.
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.
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.
[13] 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 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.
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.
[19] However, in 1991, well-supported charges of plagiarism were brought against Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, primarily that he had copied from Julian Herscher's 1963 A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales (revised ed.
[23] 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.
When he applied at the University of Chicago for a professorship and as director of the Orthogenic School, he further claimed that he had training in psychology, experience raising autistic children, and personal encouragement from Sigmund Freud.
"[33] In a 1997 Weekly Standard article Peter Kramer, clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University, summarized: "There were snatches of truth in the tall tale, but not many.
"[8] In his 1997 review of Pollak's book in the Baltimore Sun, Paul R. McHugh, then director of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins, stated "Bettelheim—with boldness, energy and luck—exploited American deference to Freudo-Nietzschean mind-sets and interpretation, especially when intoned in accents Viennese.
Gottlieb goes on to say that Bettelheim arrived in the United States as a Holocaust survivor and refugee without a job nor even a profession, and writes: "I suspect he said what he thought it was necessary to say, and was then stuck with these claims later on, when he could neither confirm them (since they were false) nor, given his pride, acknowledge that he had lied.
[4][33][41] As a review in the Baltimore Sun states, "The stance of infallibility over matters Pollak knew to be untrue prompted him to wonder about the foundation of Bettelheim's commanding reputation.
[42] Pollak's biography also states that two women reported that Bettelheim had fondled their breasts and those of other female students at the school while he was ostensibly apologizing to each for beating her.
[20] He argued that Bettelheim had copied from a variety of sources, including Dundes' own 1967 paper on Cinderella, but most of all from Julius E. Heuscher's 1963 book A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales (revised edition 1974).
[4][21][22][43][44] On the other hand, Jacquelyn Sanders, who worked with Bettelheim and later became director of the Orthogenic School, stated that she had read Dundes' article but disagreed with its conclusions: "I would not call that plagiarism.
[53][54][55] A November 1990 Chicago Tribune article states: "Of the 19 alumni of the Orthogenic School interviewed for this story, some are still bitterly angry at Bettelheim, 20 or 30 years after leaving the institution due to the trauma they had suffered under him.
She wrote an initially anonymous April 1990 letter to the Chicago Reader in which she stated that she "lived in fear of Bettelheim's unpredictable temper tantrums, public beatings, hair pulling, wild accusations and threats and abuse in front of classmates and staff.
"[5] Conversely, some staff who worked at the Orthogenic School have stated that they saw Bettelheim's behavior as being corporal punishment, in line with the standards of the time, and not abuse.
For Bettelheim, the idea that outside forces cause individual behavior issues can be traced back to his earliest prominent article on the psychology of imprisoned persons.
[63] Currently, many of Bettelheim's theories in which he attributes autism spectrum conditions to parenting style are considered to be discredited, aside from the controversies relating to his academic and professional qualifications.
[64][65][66] Autism spectrum conditions are currently regarded as perhaps having multiple forms with a variety of genetic, epigenetic, and brain development causes influenced by such environmental factors as complications during pregnancy, viral infections, and perhaps even air pollution.
[7][68][4] Bettelheim's theories on the causes of autism have been largely discredited, and his reporting rates of cure have been questioned, with critics stating that his patients were not actually autistic.
[33][7][70] In a favorable review of Pollak's biography, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times wrote, "What scanty evidence remains suggests that his patients were not even autistic in the first place.
"[8] Bettelheim believed that autism did not have an organic basis, but resulted when mothers withheld appropriate affection from their children and failed to make a good connection with them.
[69][74] A 2002 book on autism spectrum stated, "At the time, few people knew that Bettelheim had faked his credentials and was using fictional data to support his research.
'"[7] Although Bettelheim foreshadowed the modern interest in the causal influence of genetics in the section Parental Background, he consistently emphasised nurture over nature.
For example: "When at last the once totally frozen affects begin to emerge, and a much richer human personality to evolve, then convictions about the psychogenic nature of the disturbance become stronger still.
[80]Jordynn Jack writes that Bettelheim's ideas gained currency and became popular in large part because society already tended to blame a mother first and foremost for her child's difficulties.
