De Grote Boze Wolf

Abstract

This article is the first installment in a four-part series on the Austrian-American, Jewish psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990) and the emancipation of American parents of autistic children. This part describes the life and work of Bettelheim, who emigrated to the United States after being interned in the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. In the US he managed to work his way up to the directorship of the Orthogenic School in Chicago on the basis of a concocted CV and became one of the best-known public intellectuals in the country. At the Orthogenic School he learned about autism, which according to him was caused by a cold, distant parenting style. With his statements, Bettelheim angered parents of autistic children, who began to unite in the early 1960s in opposition to the psychoanalytically oriented medical establishment.