63 Quotes by Bruno Bettelheim

What cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest. And if it is not, the wounds will fester from generation to generation.

With the very disturbed child, understanding is essential, since we all know sadly that love is not enough.

The question for the child is not "Do I want to be good?" but "Whom do I want to be like?

You can’t teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.

The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue...

Whoever influences the child’s life ought to try to give him a positive view of himself and of his world. The child’s future happiness and his ability to cope with life and relate to others will depend on it.

From a child’s play, we can gain understanding of how he sees and construes the world – what he would like it to be, what his concerns are, what problems are besetting him.

As the creative adult needs to toy with ideas, the child, to form his ideas, needs toys – and plenty of leisure and scope to play with them as he likes, and not just the way adults think proper. This is why he must be given this freedom for his play to be successful and truly serve him well.

The parent must not give in to his desire to try to create the child he would like to have, but rather help the child to develop – in his own good time – to the fullest, into what he wishes to be and can be, in line with his natural endowment and as the consequence of his unique life in history.