Customer Reviews

Rising to the Light: A Portrait of Bruno Bettelheim

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That Theron Raines was Bettelheim's friend and literary agent makes one understand that this will not be a critical biography. And Raines is an elderly man who cannot be expected to overturn his longheld beliefs. But I was still deeply shocked and offended that Raines scarcely addressed the major issue of Bettelheim's life.

Bettelheim's entire career was based on his "expertise" in autism. But in fact, Bettelheim lied all the way through his career about his experience and his results. His "success" with autistic children blew away like dust the second anyone from the outside world took a good hard look at it. His Refrigerator Mother theory of autism has harmed and is still harming countless families around the globe-- because even though scientifically discredited, Bettelheim's writings were so widely promoted that they are still in print around the world. Mothers in France are still being told today, in 2007! that they caused their child's autism-- why? because the brilliant Dr. Bettelheim said so. But Raines never mentions the harm Bettelheim did and is still doing. It looks like deliberate blindness.

Raines mentions autism only a few times in the book and obviously knows nothing whatever about it; he even calls people with autism "autists"-- that says it all. His feeble attempt at defending Bettelheim's lack of happy results at the Orthogenic School amounts to quoting Karen Zelan, a psychoanalyst who worked with Bettelheim there and who still believes mothers cause autism, as saying that providing any kind of follow-up results would go against Bettelheim's therapy for the children. (How convenient.) But then Freudian thinking cannot be disproven, as it is faith-based.

For a true look at Bettelheim, read Richard Pollak's thoroughly well-researched book instead.

As a former student of the O.S., I feel entitled to interrupt Raines' eulogizing about Bettelheim with a few questions:
1) Why is it so easy for this Raines guy to downplay, whitewash, sugarcoat etc., the repeated beating of emotionally disturbed children and teens? I mean if he was being beaten by Bettelheim in the name of a very distorted theory (namely that beating and shaming children will help them overcome their fear of inner aggression), would he so easily rationalize that abuse was good for him?

2) Why is this guy so impressed by how beautiful the Orthogenic School looks? Why does this prove that Bettelheim has the best interests of children at heart? I sure didn't care about fine china or pretty tiles while someone was repeatedly pounding on my body to get me to eat...and by the way depriving me of seeing anyone privately in sessions for the first 4 years of my stay there.

I think Theron Raines needs a course in how to relate compassionately to children.

Also, I want to offer an alternative explanation for why Bettelheim created the Orthogenic School. Raines includes Bettelheim's explanation at face value. First a look at Bettelheim's explanation. Bettelheim says he based his idea for the O.S. on his stay in a Nazi concentration camp. When Bettelheim saw how this sadistic milieu so completely destroyed personalities of sane people, he realized that he could rebuild destroyed personalities by creating a nurturing, understanding milieu. Well, this explanation sounds so nice at face value. However my sense of the underlying truth is that Bettelheim hid his deeper motives possibly from himself and certainly from others. He actually created an environment with certain rather horrific similarities to the concentration camps. Of course, not nearly as horrific. But, remember, the population that came to the O.S. already had weakened or damaged or destroyed personalities, plus they were children...so the Orthogenic School's cruel, sadistic side didn't have to be so blatant to wreak havoc on these emotionally fragile people. I think Bettelheim was enraged when he saw weakness or vulnerability in children. In fact, I think he was drawn to autistic children because he admired how disconnected they were from their feelings. But, for those children who actually still showed some vulnerability, well they got the smacks and the whacks and the beltings and the nasty cracks. I think Bettleheim created the O.S. as an outlet for his own rage at being made to feel powerless and abused at the camps. He used his brilliance to hide his true intentions. And I guess for many reasons, no one ever said boo to him about his thirty years of abusing children. Maybe some staff just assumed he must be right because the University of Chicago supported his work. Maybe some staff were too intimidated by him to question what he said or to report his terrible abuse of children. Maybe some staff got off on being cruel to children themselves. Maybe some staff were dumb.

Now, Raines tries to prop up his idealized picture of Bettelheim with reports of children with "Good Leavings". And he focuses on one "success story" in particular. But, from reading this "success story's" own version of events (in a book entitled The Thing I Was), it appears that one of the MOST successful graduates was practically overcome with ambivalence about what Bettelheim did to him. Even this person describes Bettelheim as capable of terrible physical cruelty and shaming. And even this person clarifies that the main reason he was able to feel better about himself was because of a compassionate counselor who did her best to protect him from Bettelheim.

But, somehow, in Theron Raines' heart of hearts, the abuse seems to mean nothing to him. He doesn't seem to care about all the children who suffered terribly during Bettelheim's reign. So, please read this book with a grain of salt.

After all the angry attacks that followed Bettelheim's death and after the unmerited smearing of his reputation as a thinker, it is a relief to read his balanced biography. Raines wrote book worthy of its subject, a book that does justice to Bettelheim as an educator and therapist. The book does not delve into many details of Bettelheim's private life and because of that is very cogent. On the other hand, none of the important events are omitted, none of the difficulties and contradictions glossed over. The portrait that emerges is of a man who, like Maria Montessori and Janusz Korczak, transformed his own personal tragedy into a life-restituting effort for those who are most vulnerable: children. A most helpful book to read for anyone who would like to understand Bettelheim's attitude to children is "A Good Enough Parent."