Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst, psychologist, university teacher, and writer who worked across psychology, philosophy, and criticism.
Born in Vienna on August 28, 1903, Bettelheim was educated at the University of Vienna before emigrating to the United States, where he became an American citizen. He joined the faculty at the University of Chicago as a professor and served as director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children. After 1973 he taught at Stanford University, extending an academic career that crossed two continents.
Among his notable works is The Empty Fortress, and he was one of the early writers to address autism as a subject of psychological inquiry. Writing primarily in English, he received recognition across several fields: his honors included the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, the Goethe Medal, the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize, and a Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Bettelheim died on March 13, 1990, in Silver Spring. His standing as an early writer on autism remained a concrete and consistent point of reference in his body of work.
Quotes by Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim's insights on:
The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them.
When a world goes to pieces, when inhumanity reigns supreme, man cannot go on with business as usual.
The child, so much more insecure than an adult, needs assurance that his need to engage in fantasy, or his inability to stop doing so, is not a deficiency.
He disappears, and her endless wanderings in search of him take her to the moon, the sun, and the wind.
Therefore, even more than at the times fairy tales were invented, it is important to provide the modern child with images of heroes who have to go out into the world all by themselves and who, although originally ignorant of the ultimate things, find secure places in the world by following their right way with deep inner confidence.
Even Aristotle, master of pure reason, said: ‘The friend of wisdom is also a friend of myth.
Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one’s own childhood problems in the context of one’s relation to one’s child.
The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one’s children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them.
The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one’s life.
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.