Bettelheim, Bruno

Bettelheim, Bruno

(1903–90) psychotherapist, author; born in Vienna, Austria. He studied with Freud, whom he revered, and graduated from the University of Vienna (1938). During the Nazi regime, he was imprisoned at Dachau and Buchenwald (1938–39); his 1943 article on his experiences and insights would gain him wide recognition. Upon his release, he moved to the United States and worked at the University of Chicago (1939–42, 1944–73). As head of the university's Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a treatment center for severely disturbed children (1944–73), he developed a deinstitutionalized environment of total support. He became particularly admired for his work with autistic children—although some of his methods were controversial—and in later years he published advice in the popular media on raising normal children. He published two books on the Nazi death camps, The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age (1960) and Surviving and Other Essays (1979; reprinted in 1986 as Surviving the Holocaust). He wrote more than 20 books on psychotherapy, including Love Is Not Enough: The Treatment of Emotionally Disturbed Children (1950), The Children of the Dream (1969), and Freud and Man's Soul (1982).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.