Bruno Bettelheim - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Biographical elements

Bruno Bettelheim made higher learning of trade in Vienna (Austria), and later of Littérature and Philosophie. It is interested then in the psychoanalysis, is formed near the psychoanalysts of the School of Vienna and itself is analyzed by Richard Sterba direct disciple of Sigmund Freud. It obtains a doctorate in esthetics (one of the disciplines of philosophy) at the university of Vienna in 1938, but is stopped by the Nazis, because of Jewish origin, and is held during more than one year in the camps of Dachau then of Buchenwald. With its release, he emigrates in the United States. Its experiment of the concentration camps will be one of the keys of its psychoanalytical theories, it will write on the psychological phenomena with work, according to him, within the camps of detention, between the prisoners and their of torture and publishes in 1943 individual Comportement and behavior of mass in the extreme situations . This study was supplemented later to do of them one of its most important books and most accessible: the Conscious Heart . He teaches at the University of Chicago, directs a school devoted to the problem childs of which some were autistic psychotics or . In the last years of its life, he is confronted with criticisms. Having all its life due to face the depression, it gives itself death to 86 years, a few years after the death of his wife. A little later a polemic develops on the real competence of the too media psychoanalyst. There remains however the founder of two major concepts: that of “empty fortress” to indicate these ramparts which around them the young autists draw up to protect itself from their feeling of nothing, and the concept of “extreme situation”, to indicate the feeling of imminent death which starts at the individual of the behaviors of defense to the measurement of the felt anguish.

Outline of its ideas

Bruno Bettelheim considers that the anguish is an important component in the psychosis of the child. He detects in the behavioral disorders of the children of the Orthogénique School of the emotional deficiencies and the anguish of death. Its therapy is based on the construction of an environment reassuring, material and emotional, stage necessary before any attempt to include/understand the causes of the psychosis. From a purely teaching point of view, Bettelheim is close to the ideas developed by A.S. Neill with the École of Summerhill. He insists on the idea that, whatever the symptoms expressed by the patients, they are the best answer than those found with their anguish.

He explains his research in many popularizing works. Two of its books had a great success the Fortress empties which at the time tackles the problems of the autism still little known and Psychanalyse of the fairy tales in which he explains why the fairy tales exert a therapeutic function on the child: they answer in a precise way the anguishes of the young child. The “king” and the “Queen” are an unconscious image of the “good” parents, like the mantle, the witch, the ogre, belong to the phantasms of the child who sees in his parents, sometimes either the “good images”, but that of parents malicious and frustrating.

A series of television programs devoted by Daniel Karlin, in 1974, to Bettelheim, and published under the title Another glance on the madness (1975), contributed to make known the large therapeutist with the French public.

Controversies

After its death, there were many controversies around the theories of Bettelheim, and on its personality even. Although as a whole his/her collaborators at the orthogenic school found shining it and admirable, two former patients, and the brother of a former patient, protested against that which they saw like a tyrant with the ideas rigid and stripped of self-criticism. Psychoanalyzed by the expert Viennese Richard Sterba, Bruno Bettelheim was posed at the same time like faithful ideas freudiennes and as a teacher what does not go without raising some problems. He was convinced, while at the same time of the elements militated against its theories, than the autism did not have organic bases. Its experiment of the camps had led it to set up a pedagogy which consisted in promoting a medium completely dedicated to the listening of the children, their anguishes and their needs. Since the camps could make insane of the normal people, a good environment could look after autistic children. The question of the real influence of the family circle about the advent of a pathology is much more dubious, in reality and its writings. It took again well the term created by Léo Kanner of mothers refrigerators but it is necessary to regard this unhappy formula as a manner of highlighting the difficulties in being acceptable parents as the title of one of its books underlines it. Other pedagogs, analysts, psychiatrists or not, reduced this point of view to a charge against the parents and the mother in particular. Favor of the assumption of an organic origin of the autism, origin not yet identified and certainly multiple, took the step on the vision - well or badly interpreted - of Bettelheim. It is probably partly the effect of a fashion and also a question about this universal feeling of guilt which the parents live when their child is badly. A fortiori if it is autistic. The theses organicists have from this point of view the advantage of evacuating this question.

It is necessary to note the fidelity of the large majority of the former patients and therapeutists of the Orthogénique School, like that of its former patients. More than thirty years after Bruno Bettelheim had taken his retirement, nearly one hundred of these former patients and therapeutists spontaneously met in Chicago, to find itself (May 21st and 22nd 2005). They in particular lengthily visited their old School, which remained a processing center for disturbed children and teenagers. They did not invite the journalists, and from all America, and even from Europe to find itself, in all serenity and far from the polemics.

Bruno Bettelheim wrote the Fortress empties . In opposition to the ideas of Bruno Bettelheim on the autism, the Dutchman Theo Peeters wrote the book the burst Fortress .

Works

Works translated into French (between bracket the date of English edition).

Experiment and education , Armand Colin ED., Paris 1968 (1965)
the Fortress empties , NRF Gallimard ED., Paris, 1969 (1967)
the Love is not enough , Fleurus ED., Paris 1970 (1950)
the Children of the dream , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1971 (1969)
the Escaped prisoners of the life , Fleurus ED., Paris 1971 (1955)
the Wounds symbolic systems , NRF Galimard ED., Paris 1971 (1954)
the Heart conscious , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1972 (1960)
Dialog with the mothers , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1973 (1962)
Youth with the abandonment , Privat ED., Paris 1973 (1965)
a place where to reappear , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1975 (1974)
Childhood and company , Delachaux and Niestlé ED., Paris 1976 (1950)
Psychoanalysis of the fairy tales , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1976 (1976) rééd 1999: ISBN 2266095781
To survive , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1979, rééd 1999: ISBN 2266095781
Reading and the child , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1983 (1982)
Freud and the human heart , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1984 (1983)
to be acceptable parents , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1988 (1987)
the Weight of a life , Robert Laffont ED., Paris, 1991 (1990)

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