The Creation of Doctor B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim

by Richard Pollak

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.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Psychology, Biography Memoir

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Michael Connolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Author

The author, Richard Pollak, became interested in Bruno Bettelheim, because Richard’s younger brother Stephen spent five years at the Orthogenic School for emotionally disturbed children. Stephen later died in a childhood accident. When Pollak interviewed Bettelheim to learn more about his brother, Bettelheim blamed their parents for the brother’s emotional problems. Pollak decided to investigate further.

Vienna

Bruno Bettelheim was born in 1903 in Vienna. He was raised in a secular Jewish family. In later years, Bruno complained that his mother had turned him over to a wet nurse, but in general he had good relations with his mother. He inherited the family sawmill and furniture business. He obtained a doctorate in philosophical aesthetics from the University of Vienna. Bruno and his wife Gina took Patricia Lyne, a seven-year-old girl with emotional problems, into their home in Vienna for seven years. Most of the caregiving came from Gina. Patricia’s therapist was Editha Sterba. Bettelheim later used Patricia as evidence that he had experience caring for autistic children, although Patricia was never formally diagnosed with autism, autism not having being defined at the time.

Dachau and Buchenwald

After the 1938 Anschluss, Bettelheim was arrested by the Nazis and spent 11 months in Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Friends with money and connections obtained his release, and he moved to the United States. Bettelheim used his concentration camp experience to present himself an authority on the psychology of the prisoners of the camps.

Eight-Year Study (University of Chicago)

Ralph W. Tyler, chairman of the department of education at the University of Chicago, haired Bruno Bettelheim to work on a study of education called the Eight-Year Study. It compared John Dewey’s new progressive education with traditional education.

Orthogenic School (University of Chicago)

In 1944, Bettelheim became the director of the Orthogenic School, a position he held until 1973. He also taught classes at the University of Chicago. The young patients at the Orthogenic School suffered from a variety of maladies, including schizophrenia and autism. Bettelheim’s Viennese origin made him a charismatic figure. Bettelheim hired young women without previous training or experience so that he could mold them more easily. Bettelheim prohibited black children from attending the Orthogenic School, but did allow blacks to be hired for cooking and cleaning positions. The Orthogenic School suffered from a lack of privacy for the children, including the teenagers. Bettelheim also often slapped misbehaving children, although publicly he opposed corporal punishment. Bettelheim claimed that his autistic patients improved greatly with his treatment, but his claim was supported by only anecdotal evidence and the children’s paintings, which Bettelheim psychoanalyzed. Bettelheim had no formal psychoanalytic training, but he had studied Freud’s work on his own. Bettelheim’s employer, the University of Chicago, and the source of much of his research funding, the Ford Foundation, both exercised only a loose oversight over his research. Bettelheim was reluctant to share his raw data with other scientists, claiming that he was protecting patient privacy. Bettelheim discouraged visits into the Orthogenic School by parents, journalists, psychologists and other scientists.

Bettelheim on Autism

In the March 1959 Scientific American Bettelheim published an article called “Joey: A ‘Mechanical Boy’”. In 1967 Bettelheim published a book on autistic children called The Empty Fortress. Bettelheim suggested that autism was caused by mothers who neglected or rejected their children. Parents of autistic children read this book, hoping to find suggestions for helping their child, but received only blame.

Kibbutz

Even though Bettelheim did not speak Hebrew, he thought he had learned enough during a five-week visit at an Israeli kibbutz to write a book about their childrearing practices, The Children of the Dream (1969). Israeli’s familiar with Kibbutzim were not impressed by the book.

Fame

Bettelheim was a charismatic teacher, and had a talent for telling anecdotes. However, his anecdotes usually referred to individuals anonymously, which made it difficult to check the veracity of his stories. Bettelheim received a lot of positive press coverage and book reviews. He made TV appearances on Today and Dick Cavett. Bettelheim wrote a column for Ladies’ Home Journal answering questions from mothers regarding child rearing. Bettelheim was more highly regarded by the press and the public than he was by Freudian psychoanalysts, psychologists or psychiatrists.

Autism Post-Bettelheim

During the 1960s the bad-parenting explanation for autism began to be challenged. The most effective challenger, Bernard Rimland, had a doctorate in experimental psychology and an autistic son. In 1964 Rimland published Infantile Autism, which promoted a biological basis for autism. One of the main problems with the bad-parenting model was that usually all the siblings of the autistic child were normal. Leo Kanner wrote a foreword to Rimland’s book. Back in 1943, Leo Kanner had been the first person to give clear diagnostic criteria for autism. At that time, he was humble enough to admit that he did not know what the cause of autism was. In 1965 Bernard Rimland founded the Autism Society of America. In 1969 Eric Schopler published an article called “Parents of Psychotic Children as Scapegoat”. In 1971 Schopler founded Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children (TEACCH) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During the last several decades, the majority of scientific opinion has turned against the bad-parenting explanation and towards a biological basis for autism.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A devastating critique. How could this non-entity -- a lumber business owner -- pass himself off as Freud's trainee, a psychoanalyst and an expert on autism? Above and beyond Bettelheim's faked credentials, his meanness, his internalized anti-Semitism, his abuse of the children under care, his lack of any real success with his Orthogenic School, his spreading of the "refrigerator mother" myth of autism -- was Pollak's irrefutable proof that the bulk of Bettelheim's written work was either faked or plagiarized, including most sadly "The Uses of Enchantment," which Bettelheim virtually copied word for word from another text. I held that book in such high regard.

Ultimately, this was like reading "Fatal Vision." A man's charade dissolves before you.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this 10 years ago through my reading and research on Jungian archetypes and children's literature and my introduction to Bettelheim's work The Uses of Enchantment. The need to obscure and embroider the truth about his past fascinates....the need to be an expert in a field he had no qualifications in, astonishes, and his violence, apalls.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

bad book on a good man. The premise is without credentials you are no one.

[Caitlin St · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating expose of the life of Bruno Bettelheim

The author describes the life and work of his subject in great and enthralling detail. I had read only one of Bettelheim's books, The uses of enchantment, and probably won't pursue any other titles because of the level of plagiarism described by the author. The supporting footnotes convinced me of the author's veracity.

[Joseph Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Years ago when this book first came out, I saw the author being interviewed on TV. He said when he was a boy he was telling Dr. Bettelheim about the death of his brother and Bettelheim interrupted and said it was a suicide when he (the author) knew it was an accident since he saw it happen.

So I had always wanted to read this to find out more. Perhaps I had an unrealistic hope it would be a thriller. In reality Dr. B was an obnoxious con artist who faked his credentials to get an important job at the University of Chicago. The book continues through the rest of his life but it seems Bettelheim was never called to account for his faked credentials even though he courted controversy with his increasingly out of date views which were wrong to begin with.

On the other hand the drama of his career took place in an academic cloister and it is hyperbole to suggest he was violent.

[Barbara Carder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished R. Pollack's book [referral from Silberman's 'NeuroTribes.'] Despite the glaring resume problems of Bruno B., the Orthogenic School, his 'protectors' at the U of Chicago and elsewhere, the possible missed point in this book [despite it being a totally worthwhile read] is that Bruno Bettelheim's experience needs to be seen as part of the literature of life experiences [not as good but similar to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ['The Gulag Archipelago' 1978] and Eldridge Cleaver ['Soul on Ice' 1968]. Bettelheim was a fiction/non-fiction writer, not a certified psychologist. He told stories and blurred the lines everywhere he went and everything he said. It almost feels like I'm reading about Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ['Lolita' 1955] which broke all the rules also. Pollack has done a service with this book -- though I feel sad throughout. . . . especially because B.B. damaged families in some cases. Reading this book is a true insight into scholarship and the work Pollack did ... it's incredible. Read because how would we ever know if weren't for books like this.

[Deborah Gunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biography of a total scam artist whose so-called research was detrimental to those who are autistic. A cruel, evil man.