The CREATION OF DR B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim [Hardcover]

Richard Pollak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 1997

A candid portrait of Bruno Bettelheim charges that most of the influential psychotherapist's life was marked by deception, faked credentials, exaggerated data, abuse of the children in his care, plagiarism, and a success rate with patients lower than the therapist reported. 25,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

While certainly a biography, Richard Pollak's book is much more than a simple account of the life of the renowned psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. Pollak's book is both more personal and more damning than would be possible for any other writer to draft. Pollak's younger brother Stephen was a patient of Bettelheim's and a student at the Orthogenic School in Chicago. At age nine, while playing hide-and-seek with his brother in an old dairy barn, Richard witnessed his six-year-old brother accidentally fall to his death. Pollak's parents attempted to deal with this tragedy by sweeping it under the rug, a solution that only delayed the author's desire to know more about his brother, his parents, and the full dimensions of this tragedy within his family life. A visit to Bettelheim to inquire into his brother's psychological records, led to a remarkable encounter in which Bettelheim inexplicably insisted that Stephen had committed suicide and laid the blame for his death with Pollak's mother, whom he described as a jealous and uncaring woman. This incredible experience led Pollak to begin to question what type of man Bettelheim truly was, and what basis he had for his diagnosis. What Pollak has uncovered is simply incredible. A twisted path of deception, self-invention, and plagiarism is disclosed in damning detail, stripping the famed author of The Uses of Enchantment of any justifiable claim to his esteemed reputation as a child psychologist, and throwing into doubt many of the basic details of the life the late Bettelheim had claimed to have lived. Pollak takes down Bettelheim, pins him to the mat, and pursues him to the end, in a fascinating work that stretches the boundaries of biography.

From Publishers Weekly

In this shocking, demythologizing biography, Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990), world-famous Vienna-born psychoanalyst, bestselling author and authority on troubled children, is portrayed as a dogmatic, arrogant, exploitative tyrant who manipulated and abused patients, a compulsive liar who fabricated stories about patients and embellished his own past. Pollak, the Nation's former executive editor and literary editor, charges that Bettelheim sadistically punished and emotionally abused children at the University of Chicago's Orthogenic School, the residential treatment center he directed for three decades. The renowned healer tyrannized the staff, insulted and denigrated his students and was a stern, self-preoccupied, indifferent parent, according to Pollak, who bases his allegations on interviews with more than 200 people including former patients, colleagues and Bettelheim's son and daughter. Bettelheim, who grew up traumatized by his father's syphilis, spent more than 10 months in Dachau and Buchenwald, from which camps he was released in 1939. His own helplessness when the Nazis arrested him and his ordeal in the concentration camps was the basis, argues Pollak, for his proclamations that Jewish Holocaust victims cooperated in their own destruction because centuries of "ghetto thinking" had conditioned them to passivity. A professed atheist uncomfortable with his Jewishness, Bettelheim forbade children at the Orthogenic School to celebrate Jewish holidays and repeatedly urged Jews to assimilate. He enforced a racist, all-white admission policy at the school, Pollak maintains. Bettelheim's claimed rates of therapeutic success were greatly exaggerated, according to a systematic follow-up study cited here. Media celebrity made the prolific psychoanalyst a pundit, yet Pollak notes that Bettelheim's belief that autism is caused by bad parenting was demolished by thorough research as early as 1964, and he labels as specious Bettelheim's thesis that autistic and schizophrenic children behave much like helpless concentration camp inmates. Pollak's brother, who became a patient at the Orthogenic School at the age of six in 1943, died five years later in an accidental fall, which Bettelheim, in a 1969 meeting with the author, categorically insisted was a contrived accident, a suicide. That episode led Pollak to write this sure-to-be controversial biography, a significant, meticulously documented book that should force a reevaluation of Bettelheim's writings. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition (January 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684809389
• ISBN-13: 978-0684809380
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,061,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last, the truth, The real story of Dr. Bettelheim, February 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Creation of Doctor B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim (Paperback)

As a former student at Bettelheim's Orthogenic School, I would like to commend Mr. Pollack for a well written and truthful account of Dr. B. He was NOT the "saint" as people would like to have him be. Mr. Pollack's description of Dr. B is totally accurate in every detail. We, the students, as Mr. Pollack did point out, were very intimidated by Dr. B and were often slapped and beaten by him. The Orthogenic School staff, never came to our aid, themselves, as well, being intimadated by this man. I am glad Mr. Pollak wrote this book and only wish others would also expose the fake Dr.B.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Irrefutable and damning, October 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The CREATION OF DR B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim (Hardcover)

A book that obviously comes out of deep passion and painstaking scholarship, written with a cold and disciplined fury. The evidence Pollak uncovers is so shocking as to be practically grotesque. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. Bettelheim blighted the lives of a generation of autistic children (as well as their parents), as well as those of any other children who were unfortunate to fall into his care. Pollak's harshness is never less than scrupulously fair, and is clearly richly merited.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wake up and smell the child abuse, July 30, 2004

By 

Monica Shouts (Santa Fe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Creation of Doctor B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim (Paperback)

Pollak does a brilliant job of tearing away the deceptions and rationalizations that made Bettelheim's Orthogenic School seem like an outstanding, cutting edge School for emotionally troubled, mentally ill and autistic children.

The chapter on Bettelheim's brutality against the children really made me wonder how did the staff working with him rationalize his behavior for so many years? I guess some staff were intimidated by him. And some were awestruck by his prestige.

I think indirectly Pollak's book is an indictment against the University of Chicago for so carelessly supporting Bettelheim for so many years - 30 years. Pollak shows how Bettelheim was allowed to surround himself with whatever staff he pleased. And frequently, he chose impressionable, young people who had good reason to believe that Bettelheim's method's were rational since the U of C backed the school. I guess the U of C was so content with Bettelheim's national prestige and with the money he brought to the University that they weren't concerned about his cruel, sadistic side. And I'm sure that U of C officials must have known something about this side of Betttelheim, since he said outrageous things in public.

Also, I guess Pollak's book shows how easy it can be for the ordinary person to witness terrible acts of brutality against a vulnerable population (and troubled children, some as young as 4, living away from their parents for several years is probably one of the more vulnerable populations in the world) yet do and say nothing.

In the book, Bettelheim supporters seem to rationalize that because Bettelheim was so brilliant that he could somehow abuse children in an effective, therapeutic way. They decided that his role of the Big Bad Wolf would help sick children overcome the terror of their inner aggression. Now, unless you think mentally ill children are an alien species, what child is going to feel safer knowing that at any moment they might be beaten in the head, slapped repeatedly in the face or have their pants pulled down and be beaten on their behinds with a belt? What child is going to feel safer knowing that all this abuse would be dealt out entirely according to the discretion of one man. And that the staff would either ignore what he did or tell you to overlook the welts he created on your body and just listen to the wisdom of what he said to you. This type of thinking, which Pollak describes in his book, seems like a rationalization of the worst kind. It is extraordinarily simplistic to assume that Bettelheim can help children by beating and shaming them. And Pollak makes it clear that Bettelheim's cruelty towards the children was not an infrequent aberration, but an integral and consistant part of this therapeutic milieu. And, because he is dealing with children, often young children, they cannot stand up to his abuse. They need someone to depend on so much, that they can't resist his tyranny.

And the person Bettelheim picked to be his successor, Jacqui Sanders, never reported his abuse to any authority. And she continued his legacy of hitting children for many years after her directorship. She even wrote a book rationalizing her behavior that was published by the U of C press.

Many who worked at the Orthogenic School, including Jacqui, still rationalize their abusive behavior as superior to restraints or drugs. First of all, I think it's a horrid twist of logic to suggest that beating children is superior to these other methods. Also, at some point in her directorship Jacqui did stop hitting children...I think it's when she finally got licensed as a clinical psychologist. So I guess even she thought of other ways to contain a child who is acting chaotically, possibly when she actually studied the ideas of someone other than Bettelheim. Here's a suggestion for helping a child from me: try finding the child a compassionate therapist. Not a person who witnesses abuse of children and says nothing or a person who is trained to tell a child that getting beaten is okay. But a person who will listen to the child and who will try to help them understand their feelings and behavior.

The sad legacy of the Orthogenic School is that for many years it forced children to accept that getting beaten and shamed was an acceptable form of "care". I personally think that's sick. And I appreciate Pollak for exposing the sadistic underbelly of Bettelheim's School. Many of the students who went there are still alive. Some have families. And some appreciate having a bit of truth exposed to try and understand how the cruelty might have affected us.