Bettelheim, Bruno

(1903–90)

   American psychologist. Bettelheim was born in Vienna and educated at the University of Vienna. After being imprisoned by the Nazis in Dachau and Buchenwald, he emigrated to the United States where he settled in Chicago.

   His experiences in the concentration camps were pivotal in his life. While there he interviewed more than 1500 prisoners and subsequently published his researches in Individual and Mass Behaviour in Extreme Situations (1943) and The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age (1960). Later he concentrated his attention on autistic children. He maintained that autism was the result of the child’s perception that his life was totally controlled by irrational and frightening forces. His methods and progress with these children were reported in The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of Self (1967). Later he explored the communal child-rearing practices of the Israeli kibbutz which he described in his best-seller Children of the Dream (1967). Later he emphasized the value of traditional myth, legend and folklore in The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976).