Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

The English renditions of Freud's writings distort much of the essential humanism that permeates the originals."" So says psychoanalyst Bettelheim in this short, rather disorganized essay--and though there's considerable overstatement and iffiness in his attempts to link those distortions to the supposed state of US psychoanalysis, his examination of the Freud translations is often fascinating, provocative reading. Throughout, Bettelheim stresses Freud's own move away from the natural sciences, his feeling of kinship for history, archaeology, philosophy; the emphasis is on analysis as a study of the ""soul""--direct, involved, unclinical. But, in translation, Freud's plain, resonant terms--the ""I,"" the ""It""--became Latinized, jargonized: the ego and id. His modest titles became more dogmatic-sounding. His references to myth (Oedipus, Psyche) were crudely taken over by uncultured folk who missed the nuances. (Bettelheim is more than a bit patronizing about Americans.) His references to ""soul"" were often deleted. His carefully coined wordings were often transformed ""into gobbledygook English."" (Parapraxis, cathexis.) And while some of Bettelheim's criticisms of Freud-in-English seem inconsequential, most are convincingly shown to involve a basic misunderstanding or distortion--often stemming from ""a deliberate wish to perceive Freud strictly within the framework of medicine,"" to distance the reader from Freud, to soften Freud's tragic view of life. Unfortunately, however, instead of going on to document and demonstrate the effect of such mistranslations on US Freudians, Bettelheim merely makes offhand, vague, exaggerated comments which undermine the authority of his argument. ""American psychology has become all analysis--to the complete neglect of the psyche, or soul,"" says Bettelheim; and he attacks those who mistakenly celebrate promiscuity, narcissism, and ""pragmatic meliorism"" in Freud's name. (Exactly who isn't made clear.) Weak, then, as a cause-and-effect study of Freud's fate in America--but the word-by-word explorations are illuminating, and the way has been opened for further, fuller historical approaches to psychoanalysis. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Bruno Bettelheim had remarkable success in treating deeply emotionally disturbed children. A pupil of Sigmund Freud, he was a vehement opponent of the operant conditioning methods of B. F. Skinner and other behaviorists. Austrian-born, Bettelheim came to the United States in 1939. Profoundly influenced by the year he spent in a German concentration camp during World War II, he reflects in his writings his sensitivity and knowledge of the fear and anxiety induced under such conditions. His famous Individual and Mass Behavior (1943), first published in a scientific periodical and then in pamphlet form, is a study of the human personality under the stress of totalitarian terror and concentration-camp living. Bettelheim sees a relationship between the disturbances of the concentration camp survivors and those of the autistic, or rigidly withdrawn, children whom he describes in The Empty Fortress (1967), because both have lived through extreme situations.

The Children of the Dream (1969) describes with considerable enthusiasm the absence of neurosis in children brought up on kibbutzim in Israel in groups of other children and cared for by adults who are not their parents. Bettelheim believes that American ghetto children would benefit from this kind of experience in preference to the at best partial help of present programs designed to accelerate educational progress for the deprived.

From 1944 to 1973, Bettelheim served as the principal of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a residential laboratory for the treatment of disturbed children at the University of Chicago. Up until his death in 1990, Bettelheim remained active in his scholarly pursuits, continuing to write about the nurturing of healthy children and devoting himself to improving the human condition.

(Bowker Author Biography)