Speaker 1: Also media Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 1: about bad people and problematic people, and we've got both
Speaker 1: this week with the story of Bruno Bettelheim, a man who.
Speaker 2: Is really really testing my previous conclusion that like there's
Speaker 2: no there's no what wrong way to react to having
Speaker 2: been in a concentration camp. Maybe this way Bruno might
Speaker 2: have might have been the guy to figure out the
Speaker 2: wrong way.
Speaker 3: Had to lose all sympathy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my guest with me again as in part one,
Speaker 2: Alison Rask and Alison, how are you doing? It's the
Speaker 2: same day, but we pretend it's a separate one.
Speaker 3: I'm good. What I didn't reveal it episode one, which
Speaker 3: I feel like will be more relevant for this part
Speaker 3: of what of his life story is that I actually
Speaker 3: have had and OCD since I was four years old.
Speaker 3: So I was someone who was treated for pretty severe
Speaker 3: mental illness as a young child and was put on
Speaker 3: prozac when I was four, and was actually incredibly thankful
Speaker 3: for my parents being proactive in that way and getting
Speaker 3: me the help that I needed. So I'm like, not
Speaker 3: so that it is at all against taking children's mental
Speaker 3: health seriously, and it's like kind of a lot of
Speaker 3: the activism I do, but I think we're about to
Speaker 3: explore a scenario where that goes.
Speaker 2: Wrong, horribly horribly wrong.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: Well, it's also you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's interesting because a big part of Bruno's story
Speaker 2: and a big part of like where people go wrong
Speaker 2: because like, as you said, it's good to be involved
Speaker 2: and care about your children's mental health and the mental
Speaker 2: health of children in general. Bruno as a young man
Speaker 2: takes this kid in who is like neurodivergent and her
Speaker 2: mom just like I don't want to raise a kid, right,
Speaker 2: find someone else to do it for me. And Bruno's
Speaker 2: whole business as an adult is not just I'm helping
Speaker 2: kids who are having problems. It's I am taking these
Speaker 2: kids away from their rich parents who do not want
Speaker 2: to deal with them and handling them, you know, which
Speaker 2: is very different from the healthy version of this where
Speaker 2: you're just because I have a lot of empathy even
Speaker 2: in this time right where we talk about like he's
Speaker 2: diagnosing kids as things that we would not today because
Speaker 2: they just don't. I'm not judgmental of someone who legitimately
Speaker 2: is trying to help kids, and its just like we
Speaker 2: called things by different names then we didn't know as
Speaker 2: much as we know now. It's one thing to make errors,
Speaker 2: it's another thing to have your whole goal be what
Speaker 2: if a concentration camp but nice for children, which is
Speaker 2: again part of the motivating factor here.
Speaker 3: And also like we're still getting stuff wrong now. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: absolutely then it was, but it's still a flawed system.
Speaker 3: And yes, there's also a lot of debate about the
Speaker 3: merits of diagnosing at all. Yeah, someone that has found
Speaker 3: comfort and and sort of clarity in being diagnosed and
Speaker 3: have had my diagnosis my pretty much my whole life.
Speaker 3: But a lot of people don't feel that way, and
Speaker 3: so it's it's an interesting debate.
Speaker 2: And that they feel totally totally different about it than
Speaker 2: in the forties. Like one thing they do constantly is
Speaker 2: diagnosed kids as psychotic, right, which you cannot today. That
Speaker 2: is not something that happens because like like like you,
Speaker 2: the idea that like you would diagnose a child as
Speaker 2: being a psychopath, right, is very normal then, right, And.
Speaker 3: Well now they'll do oppositional defiance a sort right, right,
Speaker 3: which is which is like a pathway or whatever towards
Speaker 3: that eventual diagnosis. But there are certain restraints around what
Speaker 3: age you can call people certain what age, you can
Speaker 3: give them certain things.
Speaker 2: And and that just like it's the wild West in
Speaker 2: Bruno's era. Now Bruno has at the time, we've you know,
Speaker 2: we're starting up here. He has just gotten over to
Speaker 2: the US. He has escaped the Holocaust, and he has
Speaker 2: gotten a job. He's started out as an academic. He had,
Speaker 2: you know, lost his family business. At this point, he
Speaker 2: has no money. But this lady who you know, he
Speaker 2: had helped raise her daughter, is kind of taking care
Speaker 2: of them, right, And the understanding is that they need
Speaker 2: to figure out something, but like they're not immediate, they're
Speaker 2: not like on the streets or whatever. Right, and Bruno
Speaker 2: very quickly is able to get work for himself, although
Speaker 2: there's also some problematic aspects because his initial gig he
Speaker 2: gets hired to be an English teacher in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and then World War Two starts and suddenly the idea
Speaker 2: of having an Austrian man teaching English is like, we're
Speaker 2: not really bullish on the Austrians right now, even though
Speaker 2: you were a victim of the Nazis, we don't actually
Speaker 2: have a teaching position for you.
Speaker 3: It just feed yeah, yeah, the persecution and everything that's
Speaker 3: happened to him until then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although it's also there's a degree to which this
Speaker 2: works out well for Bruno because he doesn't really want
Speaker 2: to be an English teacher and he doesn't want to
Speaker 2: be an organ he is. He falls in love with
Speaker 2: the idea of the city of Chicago, in part because
Speaker 2: it has a more European layout, so he finds it
Speaker 2: kind of more similar to where he'd come up. He
Speaker 2: is very interested in child development and educational reform. These
Speaker 2: are like academic interests. He's not a professional in these yet,
Speaker 2: but this is what he wants for himself. So he
Speaker 2: kind of works as an academic for a few years
Speaker 2: until in nineteen forty four he receives his US citizenship.
Speaker 2: That same year, he gets the job that will be
Speaker 2: responsible for most of his fame and for most of
Speaker 2: the problematic things he's going to do in his life,
Speaker 2: which is directing the Orthogenic School. Now, I know what
Speaker 2: you got you're saying, Robert, Orthogenic School sounds a dystopian
Speaker 2: as fuck. That is a scary name for a school.
Speaker 2: It is a scary name. The word orthogenic comes from
Speaker 2: Greek and it literally means straightening out. So the school
Speaker 2: for straightening out kids. That's a scary thing to call
Speaker 2: us school. It had been established in nineteen fifteen, and
Speaker 2: it was a residential facility where kids were interned until
Speaker 2: their behavior was deemed to be fixed. Right, Like, that's
Speaker 2: the like where it is. So this is a When
Speaker 2: you talk about a residential facility, some of them have
Speaker 2: elements and this is certainly the case at the time
Speaker 2: of like a prison. Right now, this is not one
Speaker 2: of those. This is for kids with resources.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: These are for kids with whose parents have money. So
Speaker 2: this is not like the the This is not like
Speaker 2: the worst versions of these facilities, right And in fact,
Speaker 2: from the beginning, this is kind of viewed as a
Speaker 2: response to those facilities which are a lot uglier. It
Speaker 2: was a unique place geared not just for emotionally disturbed kids,
Speaker 2: but for and these are the terms they use at
Speaker 2: the time, but specifically for emotionally disturbed children of quote
Speaker 2: above average intelligence. Right now, this means rich white kids,
Speaker 2: right ah, yes, yes, that's when we say above average intellect.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: These are kids whose parents have money, and thus we're
Speaker 2: our goal is to make sure they have a future.
Speaker 3: Right It would be fun to go through history and
Speaker 3: find all the different euphemisms for rich white kids.
Speaker 2: And it's in when the school is found in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 2: they do they use these. They don't say this is
Speaker 2: a school for rich white kids. They say like, this
Speaker 2: is emostly disturbed but above average intelligence kids. Right as
Speaker 2: soon as Bruno takes over, he's like, no, no Ah,
Speaker 2: let's just say it's a school for rich white kids.
Speaker 2: That's what we're doing, right, that's what we want to
Speaker 2: do here, you know. And as soon as he takes over,
Speaker 2: his first job as director is to turn this into policy.
Speaker 2: Prior to him taking the director job, the school had
Speaker 2: not had a white's only policy on paper. Bruno Institute's one.
Speaker 2: He's like, look, let's call a we're racist as fuck.
Speaker 2: We're racist as fuck. It's just say it's white and
Speaker 2: again school in nineteen fifteen, is it willing to say that?
Speaker 2: In forty four Brutos like, oh, obviously, we're whites only.
Speaker 3: Like you go right from a concentration camp to like
Speaker 3: a white's only instituting a white's only policy. I mean
Speaker 3: it feels so like directly a I need to align myself.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the people in power, yes, Like I can
Speaker 3: no longer be viewed as other. And so it's like
Speaker 3: this right, because I mean some people at that time
Speaker 3: probably didn't definitely didn't view Jews as white. Like then
Speaker 3: it would be like you're not allowed to be at.
Speaker 2: This school, especially not at this time.
Speaker 3: No, it's his way of like making sure that he's
Speaker 3: in with the with the people in power.
Speaker 2: And he is.
Speaker 3: He has.
Speaker 2: He does a lot of writing about his attitudes that, like,
Speaker 2: he doesn't like Christianity either because he's not a religious guy,
Speaker 2: but he thinks it's better than Judaism. And so the
Speaker 2: school will be specifically a Christian school, even when it
Speaker 2: sort of is educating kids who don't come from Christian families,
Speaker 2: he tries to acculturate them. The only holiday they celebrate
Speaker 2: at the school is Christmas, So his attitude is very
Speaker 2: much even when the students are, you know, not from
Speaker 2: a Christian background, I want to acculturate them as white Christians, right, and.
Speaker 3: That is be a Jewish man would love to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know exactly how to celebrate Christmas now. Bruno
Speaker 2: justifies his white's only policy by arguing that racialized children
Speaker 2: that means non white kids, would confuse the white kids
Speaker 2: and harm their recovery. The term racialized to describe kids
Speaker 2: that just start white. No, these kids, they can't handle
Speaker 2: the shock of seeing somewhere explicit white. That'll fuck up
Speaker 2: their recovery.
Speaker 3: That person doesn't look exactly like me. I have to
Speaker 3: commit a cross.
Speaker 2: I can't handle it. I can't handle it. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go rob a bank now. Bruno also wrote that he
Speaker 2: was only interested in white students from quote good high
Speaker 2: class stock. That meant kids who's families could afford to
Speaker 2: send them to college. He instituted a tuition of eight
Speaker 2: to twelve thousand dollars a year to ensure that no
Speaker 2: poor children were educated at the Orthogenic school. If you're
Speaker 2: carrying the forties, that's in the forties. Wow, that is
Speaker 2: this is like really really like high grade university education.
Speaker 2: Is what this costs per year. And the expectation is
Speaker 2: that you will put them in there at least for
Speaker 2: two years, and many of them for like something like
Speaker 2: ten to twelve. Right, he really wants you to give
Speaker 2: your kid to him for that kid's entire childhood. Otherwise
Speaker 2: he can't fix them, right, that's his motivation.
Speaker 3: But then if you do, they come out great.
Speaker 2: But then they come out.
Speaker 3: But if they see a person with different colored skin,
Speaker 3: they will start screaming.
Speaker 2: No, you got to give you gotta let me have
Speaker 2: them until they're like twenty, you know, make sure you
Speaker 2: don't see anybody else.
Speaker 3: They can't see anyone else or they will lose it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like forty to sixty kids at this institution
Speaker 2: at a given time. Now, the Bruto also has another
Speaker 2: issue with the school as soon as he takes over.
Speaker 2: You know, first job, make it expensive as shit, only
Speaker 2: white kids. Second job, he has a real issue with
Speaker 2: the fact that the orthogenic school there, you know the
Speaker 2: motto is a place to go grow straight and tall,
Speaker 2: allows disabled kids to be educated there. And he doesn't
Speaker 2: like that because somebody with a physical disability can never
Speaker 2: go grow straight and tall. And Bruno's eyes right. So again,
Speaker 2: what the first things the Nazis do is go after
Speaker 2: people with specifically children with disabilities. This is how they
Speaker 2: test the the like the the the gas chambers right like,
Speaker 2: which are initially like mobile execution vans for disabled people.
Speaker 2: What is one of the first things Bruno does when
Speaker 2: he starts this school, No more, get those disabled kids
Speaker 2: out of here, none of them.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's really telling on himself, right that he
Speaker 3: wrote that paper that people's reaction to being in a
Speaker 3: concentration camp is to become a Nazi. Kind of your reaction, brun,
Speaker 3: Just like, no, I've just become a Nazi. Therefore everyone
Speaker 3: else must have as well, okay.
Speaker 2: In an article for Disability Studies Quarterly, Gryffin Epstein writes
Speaker 2: whereas prior to his tenure, the school offered a residential
Speaker 2: program for children with epilepsy and cerebral palsy, Betteleim was
Speaker 2: certain that public institutions could handle such cases. This was
Speaker 2: a bold claim, given that public schools weren't mainstreamed in
Speaker 2: the United States until the Education for All Handicapped Children
Speaker 2: Act of nineteen seventy five in the forties. Thus, those
Speaker 2: public institutions handling children with epilepsy and CP were abusive
Speaker 2: state institutions, group homes, and hospitals. So he just kind
Speaker 2: of lies and says, ah, the schools can handle, and
Speaker 2: then the schools are like, oh, no, we just locked
Speaker 2: those kids up. We don't know what to do with them.
Speaker 3: You know, in his opinion, that's handling them right.
Speaker 2: That's handling them right. It can't be fixed. You know
Speaker 2: in his attitude, right. Bruno's second act as director of
Speaker 2: the Orthogenic School was to recruit a new population of students,
Speaker 2: and he focuses mostly on children with autism and others
Speaker 2: who he calls quote young victims of extreme psychosis. And
Speaker 2: the reason he picks these kids and again, we would
Speaker 2: not diagnose them the same way today, but these are
Speaker 2: all kids that he sees as not having visible physical disabilities. Right,
Speaker 2: That is the key point, right, That's what he means
Speaker 2: by autism, right, is something is not neurotypical about this kid,
Speaker 2: But they are not, in my eyes, physically disabled. That
Speaker 2: is what he means by this, right.
Speaker 3: Not like developmentally delayed in a physical way.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, and that's certainly how he sees it.
Speaker 2: To continue with that article and constructing a dialectical opposition
Speaker 2: between epilepsy, cerebral palsy and palsy and autism, Bettelheim helped
Speaker 2: to tack to tacitly promote an eugenic logic of unreformable
Speaker 2: versus reformable bodies. You know, and yes that is some
Speaker 2: very very Nazi adjacent shit.
Speaker 3: The whole time he was in that camp, he was like,
Speaker 3: these are good ideas.
Speaker 4: These are good.
Speaker 2: If it wasn't the Nazis doing them, I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: a Yeah, he's taking some wild things from his experience.
Speaker 2: The medical logic behind all of this is also rooted
Speaker 2: in Bruno's writing about concentration camps. In a letter to
Speaker 2: the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,
Speaker 2: Bruno's friend Alvin Rosenfeld explained of Bruno's beliefs quote, Bettelheim
Speaker 2: showed the world how extreme abuse such as concentration camp
Speaker 2: incarceration could severely distort personalities. That formed the basis of
Speaker 2: his treatment model and laid the foundation for much of
Speaker 2: our thinking about child abuse and post traumatic stress disorder.
Speaker 2: And there is an aspects of this that are positive
Speaker 2: and that are undeniably accurate. One of Bettelheim's legitimate achievements
Speaker 2: is that he is an early proponent of the idea
Speaker 2: that if you are working with emotionally disturbed or mentally
Speaker 2: ill children and they are engaging in behavior that you
Speaker 2: don't want them to engage in, your first task is
Speaker 2: to understand the internal logic of the child. Why do
Speaker 2: they think this is a good idea?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Why? Why are they choosing to act in this way, right,
Speaker 2: that you should seek to figure out why they want
Speaker 2: to do things. Right, In other words, what's going on
Speaker 2: in the kid's head is important. You know. That is
Speaker 2: a fairly unique idea at the time, right, And that's
Speaker 2: that's a legitimate, you know, positive step.
Speaker 3: And also I imagine what are they getting out of it,
Speaker 3: right that, like, what is reinforcing this behavior?
Speaker 2: Right? Yes, I think that that's a big part of it,
Speaker 2: and that's overall like a good direction to be going. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Bettelheim has another belief, and it's one that he will
Speaker 2: talk openly about. This idea that like, you need to
Speaker 2: understand why the child is making that is doing the
Speaker 2: things that they're doing, their internal logic. He will also
Speaker 2: say the whole time, you should never use physical punishment
Speaker 2: on kids. That you don't do it, there's no cause
Speaker 2: for it. The entire time he is working at this,
Speaker 2: he is running this school, He is physically punishing these kids.
Speaker 2: He just lies about it to parents and to academics
Speaker 2: by saying, don't do this, we never do this. The
Speaker 2: whole time he is using physical and mentally abuse, to
Speaker 2: be very clear, right, And it's interesting to me that
Speaker 2: he knows he has to deny it, right, cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, because because it's one thing to believe,
Speaker 3: like I think physical you know, punishment gets good results,
Speaker 3: but to know that to like also know enough to
Speaker 3: be like, no one will like that, or that's actually
Speaker 3: not true, but that's what I want to do to
Speaker 3: get the quickest results, or yeah, it's horrifying. I mean
Speaker 3: it is very interesting. Like all research shows that any storm,
Speaker 3: any form of physical punishment is not helpful, right, even
Speaker 3: spanking has been like proven that it is not good.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me that if he were to have
Speaker 2: said at this time, obviously you spank kids, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes you slap them a little bit, that would not
Speaker 2: have been controversial. That would have been in the forties,
Speaker 2: well within the standards of like normal childhood education. Right.
Speaker 2: The fact that he's like, no, no, no, you should
Speaker 2: never do this, but is still doing it is so
Speaker 2: interesting to me.
Speaker 3: He's a deeply troubled man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This guy. Alvin Rosenfeld, who was Bruno's colleague and friend,
Speaker 2: defends the fact that kind partly defends the fact that
Speaker 2: Bettelheim uses physical violence. He argues that unlike most institutions
Speaker 2: at the time. The Orthogenic school didn't use shock therapy,
Speaker 2: it didn't have restraints or any other violent tools, but
Speaker 2: sometimes the kids were so out of control that they
Speaker 2: needed physical intervention, and Bruno courageously handled that unpleasant task
Speaker 2: for his subordinates, assuring that quote they were free to
Speaker 2: be far more nurturing. He admits that Bettelheim sometimes meted
Speaker 2: out punishment that included slaps, but he frames this as
Speaker 2: minor for the era. Now, I won't say that like
Speaker 2: what he did was extreme for the era, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't mild, right, And we have a lot of reports
Speaker 2: from kids who were with him during this period of time,
Speaker 2: and they do not report a mild experience. And I
Speaker 2: don't talk about this a lot on the show because
Speaker 2: I'm not an ex or an educator. But i did
Speaker 2: work in special let as a paraprofessional for the better
Speaker 2: part of two years, and I'm unwilling to give detailed
Speaker 2: stories on the air for reasons that should be obvious
Speaker 2: and relate primarily to the privacy rights of those children.
Speaker 2: But I will say that I dealt with primarily kids
Speaker 2: who were frequently violent and who were about my size. Right,
Speaker 2: These are seventeen, eighteen, nineteen twenty year olds, and many
Speaker 2: of them are non The term we would use at
Speaker 2: the time was nonverbal. And because of my size, I
Speaker 2: worked with these kids very closely because I could take
Speaker 2: a hit, and I was hit every day on that job. Right,
Speaker 2: one of my colleagues suffered a near fatal injury a TBI.
Speaker 2: Another had a broken jaw. So this was a I
Speaker 2: understand sometimes you have to use restraints to protect yourself
Speaker 2: and others. Right with kids who and some of the
Speaker 2: kids were what we would call emotionally disturbed, there were
Speaker 2: a variety of diagnoses that you had there. I'm aware
Speaker 2: of the needs sometimes to restrain kids, and so I
Speaker 2: want to emphasize that's not what's going on with Bruno.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: For one thing, restraining is sometimes there's force involved in
Speaker 2: restraining a kid. It's not violent. Your job is not
Speaker 2: to harm them physically. Your job is to stop them
Speaker 2: from causing harm to themselves and others, and sometimes the
Speaker 2: only way to do that is to like physically hold
Speaker 2: them so that they can't hit somebody or whatever. Right,
Speaker 2: this is like a very difficult thing to do and
Speaker 2: to talk about. I really don't know how to get
Speaker 2: across like, I'm very empathetic to the people who are
Speaker 2: good at this job, and I want to emphasize I
Speaker 2: had no training in it. We simply don't get training
Speaker 2: like that's another a major, massive problem. Or if it's
Speaker 2: very like I had a four hour class on like
Speaker 2: physical restraint and none of it, none of it was
Speaker 2: functional stuff.
Speaker 3: And there's also different types of restraints and some are
Speaker 3: more harmful than others.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and you know, as it was fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: I think it was very primitive and not we were
Speaker 2: not adequately trained to do the job. I can only
Speaker 2: imagine how bad it was in the forties. But again,
Speaker 2: what Bruno is doing here, None of the stories that
Speaker 2: I have from other kids are he had to make
Speaker 2: difficult choices because a kid was violent and presented a
Speaker 2: danger to others. They are all he was annoyed a
Speaker 2: behavior and so he hit a child, you know, that
Speaker 2: is what Bruno and I really want to emphasize. I'm
Speaker 2: not naive about like the complex choices that have to
Speaker 2: be made sometimes here, That's not what's going on with Bruno.
Speaker 2: What he is doing to these kids a sadistic physical
Speaker 2: abuse on a level that I have trouble comprehending. One
Speaker 2: of Bruno's students is a kid named Ronald Angres. He
Speaker 2: spent twelve years at the Orthogenic School, during which he
Speaker 2: rarely saw his family. Bruno believed it was bad for
Speaker 2: students to have regular contact with loved ones, and he
Speaker 2: pushed heavily for parents to keep their kids enrolled there
Speaker 2: for the entirety of their childhood. Right, you are abusing
Speaker 2: your kid if you try to take them back and
Speaker 2: raise them in your home, that's bad for them. I
Speaker 2: have to have total control over them for the whole time.
Speaker 2: Their children. Not a great sign there.
Speaker 3: Anytime, anytime there's an encouragement for a child not to
Speaker 3: have direct communication with their parents, something bad has happening.
Speaker 2: So that's that's such a good point that like anytime
Speaker 2: someone is being like no, no, no, you really shouldn't
Speaker 2: see your kid, they're doing something fucked up, right, That's
Speaker 2: just that's just yeah, very probably a very durable truth.
Speaker 2: Speaking of durable truths, here's some ads.
Speaker 3: We're back, So.
Speaker 2: We're talking about this this an article written by one
Speaker 2: of Bruno's students, Ronald Onngres. Angres was diagnosed by Bettelheim
Speaker 2: as autistic. We almost I will say, certainly, I think
Speaker 2: would not apply that diagnosis to Angress today, because his
Speaker 2: primary symptoms were that, like, he was bad at sports,
Speaker 2: he was a little slow learning how to read, and
Speaker 2: he like fidgeted sometimes, he had a thing for daydreaming.
Speaker 2: Everything that he describes is what I would call like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: you're just a kid. Some kids take longer to learn
Speaker 2: to read than others. Some kids aren't good at sports.
Speaker 2: I wasn't good at some kids fidget, you know. None
Speaker 2: of that is what I would call like or what
Speaker 2: I think any expert would say, like diagnostic criteria for anything,
Speaker 2: really right, Like they're not saying like he was not
Speaker 2: incapable of like learning how to read or anything. He's
Speaker 2: just a little slower than others. Fairly normal kid, right.
Speaker 2: But Agra's father was a psychoanalyst himself, and a rich
Speaker 2: one at that, and he'd diagnosed his child as disturbed
Speaker 2: for a variety of utterly anodyne reasons. Quote, sometimes I
Speaker 2: skipped while I paced. I had other unacceptable mannerisms too.
Speaker 2: I sometimes talk to myself, lips moving when lost in thought. Again,
Speaker 2: these just sounds like things people do, like such an.
Speaker 3: Urge to overpathologize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, your kids like just talking to himself like
Speaker 2: children do.
Speaker 3: Like. I also feel like there's sometimes what happens is
Speaker 3: like the expectations people have for how children should behave
Speaker 3: is not realistic, so that it's like, oh, your kid
Speaker 3: didn't sit through a four hour movie without like wanting
Speaker 3: to get up and fidgeting. Something's wrong with them. It's like, no, developmentally,
Speaker 3: they're not going to be able to do that. That's
Speaker 3: a normal reaction.
Speaker 2: Totutely normal for it, and that so much of what's
Speaker 2: going on here is that these are rich parents and
Speaker 2: they are annoyed that their kids maybe need a little
Speaker 2: bit of extra help, maybe aren't immediately ready to go
Speaker 2: to fancy dinner parties or the met or something right.
Speaker 2: And so they're like, well, I'm just gonna have you.
Speaker 2: I'm going to lock you up with this guy, this weirdo.
Speaker 2: That seems like they they're.
Speaker 3: Children and they're only interested in adults. They just want
Speaker 3: their kids to act like an adult. I look cute.
Speaker 2: I am a rich professional in the nineteen forties. I
Speaker 2: have highballs to drink, in binzos to eat. You know,
Speaker 2: I have no time to raise my own children. So
Speaker 2: Ronald's father's sense of professional ethics meant that he couldn't
Speaker 2: treat his own son. The Orthogenic School has a reputa
Speaker 2: had a reputation, has a reputation. It's still around for
Speaker 2: feeding children very well. This is a again, this is
Speaker 2: a high dollar institution. They have excellent food. It is
Speaker 2: an excellent space. It is a very immaculately clean There
Speaker 2: is every kind of like piece of educational equipment is
Speaker 2: all state of the art, right, very nice furniture. This
Speaker 2: is a nice place. Right. I really need to emphasize
Speaker 2: that if you look at it as a rich guy,
Speaker 2: you will be impressed at the quality of the facility itself. Now,
Speaker 2: Bruno would claim all his life that no child was
Speaker 2: ever admitted to the Orthogenic School without having a chance
Speaker 2: to visit and decide for themselves to consent to come.
Speaker 2: Ronald says, bullshit. He was interviewed, but yeah, he says,
Speaker 2: I was interviewed by Bruno, But I would never have
Speaker 2: consented to go to that school, because from the moment
Speaker 2: we met, he was cruel and belittled me. Quote. I
Speaker 2: drew for him a picture of a man I don't
Speaker 2: remember now if he asked me to. But all the
Speaker 2: psychologists seem to rave such pictures, and I may have
Speaker 2: tried in this fashion to break the ice. What a
Speaker 2: stupid and ugly picture, he snapped. I did not yet know.
Speaker 2: He fancied himself an art connoisseur. You did not draw
Speaker 2: his hands there behind his back, I explained, You just
Speaker 2: did that because you can't draw hands. Do you know
Speaker 2: what it means when a boy can't draw hands? I
Speaker 2: did not. I still don't.
Speaker 3: What the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2: What does it mean?
Speaker 3: Bruno? Hands like hard, it's really difficult to draw hands.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, so much anger, just like he's such a
Speaker 5: such a angry view of the world, like such a
Speaker 5: It's so funny these people that like their whole goal
Speaker 5: is to like get people to act correctly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, are so emotionally unregulated themselves. Yes, yes, like he
Speaker 3: got so outraged that this little boy didn't draw him.
Speaker 3: You need to go do some deep breathing. Yeah, Bruno,
Speaker 3: not appropriate reactions that you're happening.
Speaker 2: What doesn't mean when a child can't draw? And I
Speaker 2: want to continue that write up to appease him. I
Speaker 2: redrew the picture and added some hands, carefully showing all
Speaker 2: five fingers. Preposterous. You drew the hands entirely out of proportion.
Speaker 2: They're bigger than his head. Once more, he scowled darkly,
Speaker 2: as if I were expected to know the sinister significance
Speaker 2: of such a reversal of normal proportions. He asked, what
Speaker 2: I hope to become when I grew up a scientist?
Speaker 2: I replied, ridiculous. He's spat you want to be a scientist?
Speaker 2: You can't even read again? This is a child, Holy fuck.
Speaker 3: Villain out of a Bond movie?
Speaker 2: Is what is going on here? Bruno? From the standards
Speaker 2: of a period of time in which parenting was shall
Speaker 2: we say rough, like that is bad child rearing.
Speaker 3: It's also very funny to like, like imply that the
Speaker 3: children were allowed to give consent and had to give consent,
Speaker 3: Given that at that time period, I think the idea
Speaker 3: that children could give consent or should was like not
Speaker 3: a normal concept.
Speaker 2: Like the idea that adults could give consent wasn't really
Speaker 2: a normal concept.
Speaker 3: But like, I feel like very few families like view
Speaker 3: children at that time as as autonomous individuals who were
Speaker 3: worthy of giving consent, you know, so like, no way
Speaker 3: was that happening, And.
Speaker 2: It's such a weird thing that he would insist on
Speaker 2: like telling. The lies he chooses to tell are always
Speaker 2: very strange to.
Speaker 3: Me, but they also they also are revealing of how
Speaker 3: much he actually knows of what he's doing is wrong.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's a very good point that he does
Speaker 2: understand that this should be a thing the child consents to.
Speaker 2: He just doesn't give a fuck.
Speaker 3: So or maybe it's some guilt that he is has
Speaker 3: and so his lies are around the things he feels
Speaker 3: shame regret around, and so he's lying to himself. Who knows.
Speaker 2: If I tell the lie, I can normalize the behavior
Speaker 2: I know is good, even if I fall in short. Right,
Speaker 2: maybe it's something like that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like maybe I well, I'm not doing it,
Speaker 3: but I'm but I'm putting that out in the world. Right,
Speaker 3: But I actually think this guy might think he is
Speaker 3: doing it. I mean, I think there might be just
Speaker 3: such a disconnect between Hi, Yeah, his actions and who
Speaker 3: he thinks he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that might that may in fact be
Speaker 2: the case. Onngres calls him rude after this point. Fair
Speaker 2: point to the kid, and he later wrote that he
Speaker 2: would have been utterly shattered if he'd known then that
Speaker 2: he was about to spend the remainder of his childhood
Speaker 2: in Bruno's care, so his parents send him to the school.
Speaker 2: When he starts at the Orthogenic school, he's allowed to
Speaker 2: bring his favorite toys and the like with him. His
Speaker 2: prized possessions are his comic books, and as soon as
Speaker 2: Bruno sees them, he announces a new rule, no comic books.
Speaker 2: He also takes issue with one of Ronald's toys, a
Speaker 2: wooden train, which he called stupid man, it's a train.
Speaker 2: What the fund?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: This is all pretty abusive, but by far the worst thing. Well, honestly,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's all pretty bad, but he
Speaker 2: also uses physical violence against little kids. Here's how Angres
Speaker 2: later described his treatment at Bruno's hands. I lived for
Speaker 2: years in terror of his beatings and abject animal terror.
Speaker 2: I never knew when he would hit me, or for
Speaker 2: what or how savagely. Bettelheim prized his unpredictability no less
Speaker 2: than his unconventionality as someone who saw the secret depths
Speaker 2: of men's souls. He glorified in defying ordinary notions of
Speaker 2: which offenses were important, or even what constituted an offense,
Speaker 2: what hostile character, he would say of me and countless
Speaker 2: other boys as he beat us publicly. These beatings, which
Speaker 2: made the greatest impression on me of anything that I
Speaker 2: have known in life, stick in my memory as a
Speaker 2: grand performance of exultant rage. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I think we're learning that that going
Speaker 3: through the amount of trauma that that Bruno went through,
Speaker 3: when you don't like treat.
Speaker 2: It or in any way deal with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when you then kind of claim psychology as
Speaker 3: something that you have ownership over when you actually haven't
Speaker 3: done any work on yourself can be a really a
Speaker 3: really nasty outcome.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's it's interesting to me. It is probably
Speaker 2: worth really re emphasizing that he is not this way
Speaker 2: with that first kid. Now, he doesn't really spend much
Speaker 2: time parenting her, right, he's working, But that kid that
Speaker 2: he helps to raise in Austria, he's not hitting, at
Speaker 2: least she doesn't. She does not recall him being anything
Speaker 2: like this, right.
Speaker 3: Well, he hadn't been in the camp yet.
Speaker 2: He hadn't been in the camp yet, Yeah, he hadn't.
Speaker 2: I wonder how much of it is the camp and
Speaker 2: how much of it is like he hadn't made himself
Speaker 2: remade himself as a psychoanalytic expert yet right, and I
Speaker 2: don't think you'll ever you can ever like know you
Speaker 2: know which of these did more. But he's obviously he's
Speaker 2: a very different guy in terms of how he treats
Speaker 2: children after the camps, and that's something that really deserves
Speaker 2: to be kind of reemphasized. To continue with Onngres's story,
Speaker 2: once some all school games were organized, we played musical chairs.
Speaker 2: A boy I shall call Seymour jumped into a seat
Speaker 2: before I could, and from then on until the end
Speaker 2: of the game, which I had to watch from the sidelines,
Speaker 2: he silently taunted me, smirking and wiggling his behind in
Speaker 2: time to the music, which bumps in my direction. After
Speaker 2: the game finished, Seymour approached me with that gloating smirk
Speaker 2: still on his face. I said, I wish I could
Speaker 2: chop your head off the councilor promptly told Bettelheim, who
Speaker 2: just as promptly beat me, adding neck chops to his
Speaker 2: standard slaps and a denunciatory monologue in case I missed
Speaker 2: the poetic justice of it all. And again, you see,
Speaker 2: like pretty normal kid to say something like that, not
Speaker 2: a weird thing. For a kid to say, this is
Speaker 2: a thing where you need to sit both of those
Speaker 2: kids down and dock to them. He like mock cuts
Speaker 2: his head off by hitting him in the neck, which
Speaker 2: also you just, I mean, you shouldn't hit kids at all,
Speaker 2: but you certainly shouldn't hit children in the neck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my dog likes to like walk on me in
Speaker 3: the morning, and yeah, when he puts his paw on
Speaker 3: my neck, I'm like, ow, that's such a sensitive Luckily,
Speaker 3: until I got this dog, I didn't understand how much
Speaker 3: neck pressure hurts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like the fucking uh. I mean, we can
Speaker 2: talk about choke chains and the like, which are also
Speaker 2: common at the time, but like the kind of immediate
Speaker 2: willingness where he's like, this kid talked about cutting other
Speaker 2: kid's head off, Obviously the right thing to do is
Speaker 2: hit him in the neck, you know. Like that's a
Speaker 2: very telling logical leap that he makes there. Now, these
Speaker 2: stories that Augres tells are very consistent with the stories
Speaker 2: multiple other former students give of their time under Bruno's tutelage,
Speaker 2: and they are also they also comport with the stories
Speaker 2: of employees who work as teachers and staff members at
Speaker 2: the Orthogenic schooling this time. One of those former staff
Speaker 2: members was a guy who wrote about his experiences for
Speaker 2: The Chicago Reader under the pseudonym WB. I find his
Speaker 2: account valuable in part because Bruno's friend and defender, Alvin Rosenfeld,
Speaker 2: acknowledges that Bruno used physical violence, but also insists that
Speaker 2: most of the complaints from students, which he views is unfair,
Speaker 2: came from later in Bruno's career, and so he's like, well,
Speaker 2: they were angry because like he was, you know, he
Speaker 2: kind of died before their education could finish. And so
Speaker 2: they they, you know, they're they're transmitting feeling their feelings
Speaker 2: of abandonment to like claiming he was abusive. And this
Speaker 2: guy's account puts the light of that. For one thing.
Speaker 2: WB comes to work at the school early on in
Speaker 2: Bruno's tutelage there, and he is a World War II
Speaker 2: combat veteran. So this is not a guy who is
Speaker 2: inclined to be shocked by violence, right, Like, if this
Speaker 2: guy reacts to your violence, you're really out of fucking pocket, right. Quote.
Speaker 2: A number of us wereveterans who had probably seen more
Speaker 2: of life by age twenty one than Bettelheim had seen
Speaker 2: at age forty. I do disagree with that because he
Speaker 2: was in the camps man, but this guy's got definitely
Speaker 2: has like a bit of an axe to grind with Bettelheim.
Speaker 2: That fact never seemed to penetrate Bettelheim's low threshold of
Speaker 2: awareness of the true nature of the world around him.
Speaker 2: He tried to bully the counselors as much as he
Speaker 2: did the defenseless children.
Speaker 3: In the school.
Speaker 2: He was just a bit more circumspect with US veterans. Now.
Speaker 2: He notes this guy that most orthogenic school employees were women,
Speaker 2: and that is a real thing Bruno does. He likes
Speaker 2: to be surrounded by women, and these folks are very
Speaker 2: loyal to Bruno. WB describes the female employees at the
Speaker 2: school as like his Roman cohorts, So these are like
Speaker 2: his power base, these female counselors, who Rosenfeld is like.
Speaker 2: That's why Bruno had to do all the physical violence
Speaker 2: was so that these women could be free to be
Speaker 2: more nurturing, which is a very odd vibe, but that's
Speaker 2: the way people describe it. Quote and this is from
Speaker 2: w B. The understanding that most of the men had
Speaker 2: was that Bettelheim tried to seduce everyone and too relating
Speaker 2: to him as their therapist. This was a condition of
Speaker 2: job tenure. Our general feeling was that most of the
Speaker 2: women accepted this relationship, but we never knew for sure.
Speaker 2: Their job tenure was certainly longer than most of the men's.
Speaker 2: I would characterize the atmosphere at the Orthogenic School at
Speaker 2: that time as the beginnings of a cult, with doctor
Speaker 2: b as the cult leader. And I find that interesting
Speaker 2: because he notes accurately, this guy that part of cult
Speaker 2: dynamics is the creation of new vocabulary and the redefinition
Speaker 2: of existing vocabulary to create a new reality in which
Speaker 2: cult members live under. And this is how WB explains
Speaker 2: Bruno's use of terms like emotionally disturbed, autistic, and schizophrenic.
Speaker 2: These are not real medical diagnoses, but these are terms
Speaker 2: reinvented by Bruno to create a reality that's convenient to him, right.
Speaker 2: And he will say he has an eighty five percent
Speaker 2: success rate in treating schizophrenia and autism, and that eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of the kids that came into his school
Speaker 2: left it without these diagnoses. He's not curing these people.
Speaker 2: He is desclaring them to have a thing and then
Speaker 2: declaring them cured when they behave in a way that
Speaker 2: he describes as idealized, right, And that's kind of key
Speaker 2: to it, is that he gets described as brilliant for
Speaker 2: a while because of this big eighty five percent success rate.
Speaker 2: He is the only person judging these kids.
Speaker 3: Well, it's I mean, this is like a thing that
Speaker 3: happens in society, these like the troubled teen industry, like that.
Speaker 3: This is not like an isolated incident of this kind
Speaker 3: of group where these kids are declared as so problematic
Speaker 3: and then taken into this extreme environment and then you
Speaker 3: sort of have a cult like figure at the helm
Speaker 3: and all of these employees sort of just like go
Speaker 3: along with this, even though it's like it is like
Speaker 3: this dynamic that sort of has that continues to sort
Speaker 3: of out and so there are definitely like, I'm someone
Speaker 3: who finds, like, I don't think it's so wild to
Speaker 3: describe things as cults or as they like if they
Speaker 3: follow certain you know, uh, descriptors. This this definitely feels
Speaker 3: feels rather culty to me.
Speaker 2: If the kool aid bowl fits right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the difference is that these kids are
Speaker 3: not are not members of the cult the way you
Speaker 3: would see in other situations. They're they're sort of the
Speaker 3: prisoners of the cult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think WB is trying to describe a
Speaker 2: lot of the employees.
Speaker 3: Employees are the members.
Speaker 2: Although the financial relationship again and he's like, it's I
Speaker 2: don't really know how much did they buy it? Did
Speaker 2: they just need the job?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Like it was unclear to him and it will be
Speaker 2: forever to us. But I do find it noteworthy that
Speaker 2: he says this, Bettelheim was a professional success. Why simple
Speaker 2: He defined a child's problem without any meaningful critical peer
Speaker 2: review and then proceeded to solve the problem again without
Speaker 2: critical review. A generally compliant and emotionally dependent staff then
Speaker 2: put their im premature on his self declared and widely
Speaker 2: proclaimed success. And yeah, and it's it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's creating the rules of the world.
Speaker 2: He gets and the world is a lot, it's a
Speaker 2: lot easier. Life is much easier when you get to
Speaker 2: do that. Now. While when Bruno directs the Orthogenic School,
Speaker 2: he's also kind of the doctor phil of like the
Speaker 2: forties through the fifties, sixties, you know, to some extent
Speaker 2: in like the seventies, and that he's he's a constant
Speaker 2: presence on TV and he is brought in as an
Speaker 2: expert on disturbed children when there's a horrible crime, you know,
Speaker 2: when there's He's also brought in to talk about concentration
Speaker 2: camps anti Semitism, and this is deeply unfortunate because Bruno
Speaker 2: is not really an expert on disturbed children, and he's
Speaker 2: increasingly identifies himself as white and identifies his old Jewish
Speaker 2: identity as problematic, and so the fact that he is
Speaker 2: a major public figure on all of these things is
Speaker 2: a real issue. Near the end of the nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: he's asked to speak at hellel House on modern anti Semitism,
Speaker 2: and he told the assembled almost entirely Jewish audience, anti Semitism.
Speaker 2: Whose fault is it yours? Because you don't assimilate. It's
Speaker 2: your fault. If you assimilated, there would be no anti Semitism.
Speaker 2: Why don't you assimilate? Now, people don't take this lying down.
Speaker 2: This is offensive to the audience.
Speaker 3: This is like satire, Like holy shit, man, what.
Speaker 2: And one member of the audience, Eric Schopter, is like,
Speaker 2: wait a second. If you're saying the solution to anti
Speaker 2: Semitism is to Jewishness, what makes you different from an
Speaker 2: anti Semite? And Bruno responds, I'm only a doctor prescribing
Speaker 2: the cure, not an answer. Well, he is, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's that's I mean problematic.
Speaker 3: I had this great professor in grad school, who's you know,
Speaker 3: because psychology is a tricky field, like we are alluding to,
Speaker 3: like there can really be an unequal level of power,
Speaker 3: and these people that claim to like know everything. And
Speaker 3: he was always like, if anyone tells you that they're
Speaker 3: certain about anything, like the way he goes on these
Speaker 3: TV shows and is like certain about these disturbed children,
Speaker 3: do not trust them.
Speaker 2: That is very good advice, and it's in particularly in
Speaker 2: Bruno's case because as the years go on, he becomes
Speaker 2: one of the first public intellectual experts on autism. Right
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven he publishes a book called The
Speaker 2: Empty Fortress, which is one of the first influential and
Speaker 2: famous books on the treatment of children with autism in
Speaker 2: US history. Now again remind you Brunos, PhD. Is not
Speaker 2: in any relevant medical discipline and that, so far as
Speaker 2: we know, he mostly lied about his psychoanalytic credentials in Austria.
Speaker 2: The Empty Fortress, in his book's title, relates to what
Speaker 2: Brunos saw as the cause of autism. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote from a write up by the Auto as
Speaker 2: a History Project. Children took shelter there from the cruelty
Speaker 2: and indifference of their parents, mothers especially, who were supposed
Speaker 2: to love them but instead denied their humanity. The cost
Speaker 2: was impossibly high. Forced into rational solitude behind walls that
Speaker 2: shielded them from the very people whose attention they craved.
Speaker 2: Babies were frozen out of normal development. In other words,
Speaker 2: he believed autism came from your mom ignoring you.
Speaker 3: Right, yep, Wow, that's so original. Yeah, that's like, you know,
Speaker 3: out of nowhere, the moms.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he saw the primary cause of autism as refrigerator mothers.
Speaker 2: These are emotionally cold and distant women. And he again,
Speaker 2: he'll describe his mom as one of these later in life,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, he starts to do it around this time. Now.
Speaker 2: One allegation that you'll find here is that Bruno takes
Speaker 2: his mommy issues and turns them into what was for years.
Speaker 2: This is never the standard explanation for the origins of
Speaker 2: autism in the medical sense, but because of Bruno's prominence,
Speaker 2: it's a very common explanation. Right, because people hear this
Speaker 2: on TV. They see the book and they're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: that must be it. Now. Responsible articles today will note
Speaker 2: accurately that this is horseshit. The origins of autism are
Speaker 2: almost certainly genetic and one not caused by your mom
Speaker 2: being a refrigerator vaccine. It's very important to note also
Speaker 2: not caused by that.
Speaker 3: I also feel like historically people often blame schizophrenia on
Speaker 3: mothers too. Yes, and it makes sense that those are
Speaker 3: the two main things that he's treating.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And it's also worth noting that autism was
Speaker 2: often called childhood schizophrenia at the time too, Like these
Speaker 2: are these terms are very much again, I really need
Speaker 2: to re emphasize that. I also should emphasize that even
Speaker 2: articles today often say very fucked up things about autism.
Speaker 2: I want to read an excerpt from a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one article in the Chicago Tribune about Bruno Bettelheim and
Speaker 2: about him getting the causes of autism wrong. Quote. Even
Speaker 2: a quick look at children who are abused and neglected
Speaker 2: by parents should make it obvious that autism is a
Speaker 2: completely different kind of problem. Eventually, autism will probably be
Speaker 2: treated with gene therapy or effective medications will be developed
Speaker 2: to counter the defect. Now, that's just eugenics, right, that's
Speaker 2: just eugenics that you wrote in twenty twenty one, guy
Speaker 2: at the Chicago Tribune, that's just eugenics.
Speaker 3: Gosh, call it like explicitly calling your dmail no heh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a I mean, there continues to be so much
Speaker 3: debate about like ABA therapy for children and autism. I'm
Speaker 3: sure you probably in the work you did in special
Speaker 3: had experienced a lot of that. And it's the difference
Speaker 3: of approaches between we have to change this person to
Speaker 3: interact with the world as we see fit, versus maybe
Speaker 3: we allow this person to be who they are and
Speaker 3: create a world where that's okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's yeah, this is something that is still developing.
Speaker 2: I want to note I just read that bad article
Speaker 2: and was like, oh my god, man, you're not any
Speaker 2: better than Bruno was, dude. I mean, I guess like
Speaker 2: this is still a real problem that this podcast is
Speaker 2: not going to kind of deal with in all of
Speaker 2: the depth that it deserves. But I wanted to make
Speaker 2: a note of that. In his piece for Commentary magazine,
Speaker 2: Ronald Andres makes a note that even though the state
Speaker 2: of autism treatment and knowledge was more primitive at the time,
Speaker 2: there was ample evidence in the early days to suggest
Speaker 2: that Bruno's empty fortress hypothesis was nonsense. Quote. In fact,
Speaker 2: there was always evidence that autism may be at least
Speaker 2: partially neurological. Everyone before Bettelheim believed it was. No one
Speaker 2: but Bettelheim and his most fervent followers ever believed otherwise.
Speaker 2: And even on Bettelheim's assumption that the origins were psychological
Speaker 2: rather than biological or neurological, well, why go on as
Speaker 2: he did to accuse parents of such crimes, such schizophrenic symptoms,
Speaker 2: as wishing their child did not exist. Bettelheim made an
Speaker 2: art of accusation. He did not sort of blame victims.
Speaker 2: He set himself up as their special prosecutor. Right yeah,
Speaker 2: which is an interesting and a damning way to describe that.
Speaker 2: I think this is our second ad break, so let's
Speaker 2: just go for it. We're back. So it has been
Speaker 2: noted that Bruno's victim blaming of concentration camp attornees bore
Speaker 2: more than a little resemblance to the way he talked
Speaker 2: about the parents of quote unquote autistic children. The identification
Speaker 2: of the aggressor, which he saw as core to the
Speaker 2: behavior of inmates, is also what he believed went on
Speaker 2: with autism. Kids with so called refrigerator moms aped that
Speaker 2: behavior and locked away their emotions from the empty fortress.
Speaker 2: This is Bruno was writing here. I had experienced being
Speaker 2: at the mercy of forces that seemed beyond one's ability
Speaker 2: to influence, and with no knowledge of whether or when
Speaker 2: the experience would end. Of living isolated from family and friends,
Speaker 2: of being severely restricted, and the sending and receiving of information.
Speaker 2: Perhaps this sudden reversal helped me first to understand how
Speaker 2: the camps could destroy personality, and later to resume with
Speaker 2: I hope greater insights and empathy. My earlier task that
Speaker 2: of creating a milieu which would favor the reconstruction of personality.
Speaker 2: Right And this is him literally being like the camps
Speaker 2: taught me that I could cure autism by making my
Speaker 2: own camp. Right Now. Violence was not his only tool
Speaker 2: for reconstructing personality, but insults and mockery were among his
Speaker 2: go to tactics, and behind every effort he made was
Speaker 2: the promise of violence. This is why he pushed parents
Speaker 2: to enroll their children and his facility for the entirety
Speaker 2: of their childhood. He needed the privacy of total control
Speaker 2: to ensure he was not stopped. From that write up
Speaker 2: and Disability Studies Quarterly. One former student called it a
Speaker 2: dumping ground for young people who were different in some
Speaker 2: way or who for whatever reason, didn't match their parents' expectations.
Speaker 2: Bettelheim was known to slap punched children. He would often
Speaker 2: tell his students that they were at the Orthogenic School
Speaker 2: because their parents couldn't stand them. He called them megalomaniacs
Speaker 2: and neurotics and forced them into uncomfortable or violent situations
Speaker 2: against their will. Children were expected to shower naked in
Speaker 2: front of the staff and one another throughout their stay,
Speaker 2: regardless of age or comfort level, and many students and
Speaker 2: staff were physically and sexually abused. Jacqueline Sanders worked for
Speaker 2: Bettelheim for thirteen years and became the director of the
Speaker 2: school after Bettlheim left. She rights we became the abusers
Speaker 2: of abused children.
Speaker 3: I mean sort of going back to what we were saying,
Speaker 3: like that the victims are not just the kids there,
Speaker 3: it's probably also the staff that are sort of in
Speaker 3: like under this man's control and manipulation. And it's I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a mini little hell that he has been built.
Speaker 2: He has created a little hell for kids and for
Speaker 2: staff members. Yeah yeah. Sudents at this school were expected
Speaker 2: to work towards admission to higher education, and the school
Speaker 2: had an excellent record for this, which has led some defenders,
Speaker 2: including former students, who like most will say his violence
Speaker 2: was unacceptable, to declare the school overall still a success.
Speaker 2: And this brings me to the book The Creation of
Speaker 2: Doctor b by Richard Pollock. One criticism that he will
Speaker 2: get from Bettelheim's defenders is that, given his own history
Speaker 2: with the school, he can't be objective. You see, Richard's brother, Stevens,
Speaker 2: started out as a day student at the Orthogenic School,
Speaker 2: but Bettelheim insisted, as always, that he come to live
Speaker 2: there full time. Richard writes, over the months, he made
Speaker 2: fewer and fewer visits home, becoming from me a kind
Speaker 2: of spectral sibling, even before his death in nineteen forty eight. Now,
Speaker 2: Stephen's death occurred when he was away from the school
Speaker 2: on a rare holiday visit with his family. He and
Speaker 2: his brother were staying at a farm owned by a
Speaker 2: friend of the family, and he fell through a hayshoe
Speaker 2: several stories to the ground and died on impact. If
Speaker 2: you grew up on a farm, you immediately are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's absolutely how a little kid could do. Right. It's
Speaker 2: one of the most dangerous things in any kind of farm,
Speaker 2: as a hayshoot. It's just this hole that's going to
Speaker 2: be covered by hay a lot of the time, and
Speaker 2: if you go through it, you can fall quite a distance.
Speaker 2: So Bettelheim refuses to accept Oh, a tragic accident occurred, right.
Speaker 2: He blames Rick and Stephen's parents for killing their son
Speaker 2: because they wanted to spend time with him and they
Speaker 2: should have just left him at the school full time.
Speaker 2: Now decades later, Bettelheim still holds onto this grudge because
Speaker 2: in the late night again this happens in forty eight.
Speaker 2: In the late nineteen eighties, Pollock, who's writing a book
Speaker 2: about Bettelheim, calls on him, and Bettelheim still remembers these
Speaker 2: parents and is still angry at them. Quote my father,
Speaker 2: he dismissed his crude and somewhat simple minded, a Schlemiel
Speaker 2: who played the bills and stayed out of emotional problems.
Speaker 2: My mother was the villain. He said she paraded as
Speaker 2: a saint and a martyr, when in fact she was
Speaker 2: almost entirely responsible for my brother's problems with astonishing anger.
Speaker 2: He said she had rejected Stephen at birth and that
Speaker 2: to cope with this locke out, he had developed pseudo
Speaker 2: feeble mindedness. He said that my brother was a lovely
Speaker 2: child who manifested a sensitivity my mother wished she possessed,
Speaker 2: and he castigated her for never conceding that she was
Speaker 2: responsible for Steven's dispress distress and for insisting against the
Speaker 2: school's wishes that he'd be allowed periodic home visits.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that everyone has the exact same problem.
Speaker 2: That everyone has the problem.
Speaker 3: Is the same. Yeah, and it's weird that it's also
Speaker 3: the damanic he came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean their dad was like his dad, Their
Speaker 2: mom was like his mom. Wild stuff, so Bettelheim declares
Speaker 2: in this conversation with no evidence, No, your brother committed
Speaker 2: suicide because he was so unhappy with your parent. Again,
Speaker 2: he fell through a hayshoot man. He insinuated the fact
Speaker 2: that their mom worked full time was part of why
Speaker 2: their brother killed himself, and he ranted, what is it
Speaker 2: about these Jewish mothers, mister Polock and his book. Richard
Speaker 2: continued in nineteen fifty six, I would discover he had
Speaker 2: written that the school had warned my parents that a
Speaker 2: home visit for Stephen was ill advised because he might
Speaker 2: harm himself. Despite our objection, the visit took place, and
Speaker 2: the child died in a carefully contrived accident. Bettelheim told
Speaker 2: me with other utter confidence that Stephen had once purposefully
Speaker 2: fallen out of a speedboat near the propellers, and it
Speaker 2: was only a matter of time before he found a
Speaker 2: situation like the loft in which his efforts at killing
Speaker 2: himself would succeed. In fact, my brother had never fallen
Speaker 2: out of any boat, And that anecdote really says a
Speaker 2: lot that he just will lie to this kid about
Speaker 2: his brother's death for no reason, not for no reason,
Speaker 2: because inventing fiction lets him redefine reality, right, And that's
Speaker 2: the essence of his pedagogy, right, is you get to
Speaker 2: define the reality for these children and thus of the world.
Speaker 2: Like that's how maybe you know this is to some
Speaker 2: extent him taking back control over the world, which was
Speaker 2: so chaotic for him, But I don't know, Like that's fascinating.
Speaker 3: If something doesn't fit his narrative, then he will create
Speaker 3: the details to make it fit exactly, which is a
Speaker 3: really great strategy for you, but it's for him. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It also allows him to never have to confront any
Speaker 3: of his own demons.
Speaker 2: No, and he's such a so. During the Vietnam War,
Speaker 2: Bruno makes a name for himself as an anti anti
Speaker 2: war activist, and confoundingly, he describes the kids protesting against
Speaker 2: Vietnam as neo Nazis who were very sick and paranoias,
Speaker 2: trying to beat down father to show they are a
Speaker 2: big boy. Oh my god, I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: what's to me. They don't want to get drafted and
Speaker 2: go die and denanying man.
Speaker 3: Like I feel like this is like should be like
Speaker 3: a learning like a learning moment about these people that
Speaker 3: take over our media today. Yeah, Like there are so
Speaker 3: many people like with these kinds of characteristics and these
Speaker 3: really abhorrent personalities who people fall for, yep, and to
Speaker 3: become like really influential and claim to have a lot
Speaker 3: of knowledge around wellness and psychology and the right way
Speaker 3: to be a person. And it's just a reminder to
Speaker 3: be more skeptical of what people present to you as
Speaker 3: the truth.
Speaker 2: Maybe don't trust those people. Yeah, in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: you had asked it in part one, when does the
Speaker 2: backlash against a lot of what he's saying about the Holocaust?
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 2: And as I said it, there's some immediately, but kind
Speaker 2: of there's a big chunk of academic backlash starts in
Speaker 2: the late seventies when American Holocaust scholar Terence de Prez
Speaker 2: writes a book about the survivors of death camps and
Speaker 2: concentration camps. His book, The Survivor was partly a broadside
Speaker 2: against the misinformation Bettelheim had contributed to the discussion, and
Speaker 2: I want to quote now from an article by Paul Rosen.
Speaker 2: Throughout The Survivor criticized Bettelheim for having supposed that it
Speaker 2: was correct to have thought that prisoners ever regressed to infantilism.
Speaker 2: Depress believed that the survivors should be viewed as reminders
Speaker 2: not of human weaknesses, but of evil circumstances that were
Speaker 2: objectively powerful. Both the Nazis and Stalin's regime subjected prisoners
Speaker 2: to filth for the sake of humiliation and debasement. Depress
Speaker 2: argued that prisoner behavior in response to such circumstances was
Speaker 2: not childish, but rather a heroic response to dreadful necessities.
Speaker 2: He cited one camp where the inmates burned it down
Speaker 2: and found throughout the literature instances of people who somehow
Speaker 2: managed to maintain their inward sanctity. Resistance took subtle shapes,
Speaker 2: and Dupress explored the way human dignity endured and the
Speaker 2: form of freedom from the entire control by external forces.
Speaker 2: Survivors helped one another, engaged in acts of sabotage, and
Speaker 2: from Bukenwald made contact with the Allies for a bombing
Speaker 2: rate on ss parts of the camp. Depress pointed out
Speaker 2: that Bettelheim was imprisoned during a special period when criminals
Speaker 2: among inmates wielded power. He disputed Bettelheim's notion that social
Speaker 2: bonding among prisoners was absent, nor was it true. Depress
Speaker 2: argued that they did not hate their repressors and did
Speaker 2: not sometimes revolt. According to Depress, Bettelheim had felt superior
Speaker 2: to his fellow's sufferers, and his account was factually marred
Speaker 2: by his egotistical obsession with autonomy that blinded him to
Speaker 2: the extent of the mutual support that existed within.
Speaker 1: The camps.
Speaker 3: Sounds right to me.
Speaker 2: Sounds accurate to me now. Bettelheim responds with an article
Speaker 2: in The New Yorker arguing that Press's Depress's book missed
Speaker 2: the realities of the experience, and Depressed responds a little
Speaker 2: later with an article of his own called the Bettelheim Problem.
Speaker 2: He links Bruno's conclusions about the causes of autism and
Speaker 2: schizophrenia to his supposed observations about camp life. In a way,
Speaker 2: he seemed to be taking out his righteous anger on
Speaker 2: the ss guards on the parents of his students. The
Speaker 2: ultimate product of this was that these people who lived
Speaker 2: for years without their children had to do so believing
Speaker 2: they were the ultimate cause of their children's problems, right,
Speaker 2: which is bad.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty And also it's also a great manipulation tactic,
Speaker 3: right because as soon as you're like, hey, maybe I
Speaker 3: shouldn't let this kid be in the school for their
Speaker 3: entire childhood, it's like, oh, well, actually, though I'm the
Speaker 3: person causing them harm, if I were to reunite with
Speaker 3: my kid, I'd actually be.
Speaker 2: Doing them more harm, right, right, exactly, that's a very
Speaker 2: good point, right, And that's such a key part of
Speaker 2: what Beddlheim is saying is that like you have fucked
Speaker 2: your kids up. You gave them these conditions. Only I
Speaker 2: can fix them, right, it.
Speaker 3: Becomes dangerous for you to be involved in their life.
Speaker 2: And that's why when this mom, when Richard his biographer's
Speaker 2: like mom, insists that her other son at least gets
Speaker 2: sometime with the family, Bruno has to turn around and
Speaker 2: make that kid's death be caused by thealy right. In
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, Bruno's wife, Truday passed on, despite his
Speaker 2: early some early infidelities, who was by all accounts dedicated
Speaker 2: to his wife, and most people who knew him will
Speaker 2: say that her passing broke him. He was by this
Speaker 2: point an old man in poor health, and so on
Speaker 2: March thirteenth, nineteen ninety, Bruno Bettelheim took his own life. Now,
Speaker 2: the fact that he committed suicide was just about the
Speaker 2: most understanding thing he ever did. He was old, he
Speaker 2: was ailing. He would write a lot about the fact
Speaker 2: that he no longer felt he could be of service
Speaker 2: to society, and so I don't have trouble understanding why
Speaker 2: he did this, But the fact that he killed himself
Speaker 2: sent a shock through the psychoanalytic and educational community. And
Speaker 2: while the criticism of him for committing suicide was unjust,
Speaker 2: which is a big part of the initial reaction to
Speaker 2: his death as people being like, oh, well, the fact
Speaker 2: that a psychoanalyst would do this must have meant that
Speaker 2: he was never He wasn't as healthy as he portrayed
Speaker 2: himself as being, and that's bad. That's a bad way
Speaker 2: to look at the suicide of an old man whose
Speaker 2: wife just died and he was in poor health. It
Speaker 2: also weirdly opens up the floodgates for the survivors of
Speaker 2: his teaching practices to talk about what they had endured.
Speaker 2: And that's why things are kind of messy, is that
Speaker 2: the first wave of criticism of Bettelheim happens alongside people
Speaker 2: criticizing him for committing suicide, which is messy, But you
Speaker 2: do get a lot of these survivors start talking in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety and continue talking up to the present day.
Speaker 2: Like there's again some of the writings that I found
Speaker 2: on this was like much more recent as a result
Speaker 2: of the fact that, like, you know, people are still
Speaker 2: processing this. There's folks who initially were like well, but no,
Speaker 2: the school was a good thing for me overall, who
Speaker 2: kind of come to different conclusions. There's also still plenty
Speaker 2: of schools who were like, yeah, it was brutal at times,
Speaker 2: but students who were like, it was brutal, but it
Speaker 2: prepared me for success. I'm not going to judge how
Speaker 2: anybody interprets their own experience at this school. I will
Speaker 2: say one of the things people say for Bruno, which
Speaker 2: is that so many of his graduates went on to
Speaker 2: have excellent careers. Well yeah, but also all their parents
Speaker 2: were super rich. I don't know if we give that
Speaker 2: to Bruno a right, like their parents were all rich
Speaker 2: as hell. Maybe that had more to do with it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, like not to take anything away from them,
Speaker 2: but I don't. I just don't know that I give
Speaker 2: that to Bruno.
Speaker 3: Like I also, I'm not surprised like you that he
Speaker 3: died by suicide, because I don't think he was mentally
Speaker 3: well his whole life. No, God, no, I don't think
Speaker 3: that he was ever at peace with himself or had
Speaker 3: like the ability to emotionally regulate or you know, live
Speaker 3: a values driven life like I think he wasn't in
Speaker 3: constant turmoil since his childhood and so unfort the the
Speaker 3: outcome is not is not so shocking to me?
Speaker 2: Nope, nope, not at all. Well that's the story, uh
Speaker 2: how we feel it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I guess I'll do my annoying mental health advocacy
Speaker 3: thing of of saying I veer away from using the
Speaker 3: term committed suicide because it implies that it's a crime,
Speaker 3: and so I prefer like the language of died by suicide. Sure,
Speaker 3: just but you know, who would I be for not
Speaker 3: someone to say that.
Speaker 2: You know, And honestly, like, uh, it's interesting because I
Speaker 2: hadn't I never really thought about the fact that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: using the term committing does imply that, like there's a crime.
Speaker 2: That's because we only use that word, right, you wouldn't say,
Speaker 2: like I committed lunch today, right, Yeah, it's just so normalized.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like it's interesting like as a writer and
Speaker 3: as a also then it's someone in the mental health field.
Speaker 3: I'm always thinking about like the impact of the word
Speaker 3: choice that we use and like how how we are
Speaker 3: actually like subtly sending these like messages to ourselves and
Speaker 3: to other people. But then sometimes I'll be like I
Speaker 3: don't get why that's the problem. But then you listen
Speaker 3: to someone where it's you know, their point of view,
Speaker 3: and it's like, okay, well even if I still don't
Speaker 3: get it all, I'll make the change. But that the phrase,
Speaker 3: when someone explained it to me in that way of
Speaker 3: that it's like a crime, then it finally clicked for
Speaker 3: me about why I don't want to use that term anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, I mean I think that makes a
Speaker 2: lot of sense. And yeah, I it's like the most
Speaker 2: understandable like thing about his whole story, Like there's so
Speaker 2: many choices that he makes that it's like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't really get where that comes from. Like it's interesting
Speaker 2: that the first thing he gets criticized for is that
Speaker 2: and not anything about like how he treated children or whatever. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: It just feels like a very like pertinent topic to
Speaker 3: be talking about. Like I think that there's a sense that,
Speaker 3: like he died in nineteen ninety, we have like a
Speaker 3: different understanding of autism now. But I feel like we're
Speaker 3: on a cusp of like of really not having made
Speaker 3: the progress that we think we have made in psychology
Speaker 3: and like moonless culture, and so it's like a reminder
Speaker 3: to be like very vigilant about like falling for these
Speaker 3: these people who have such extreme takes and claim to
Speaker 3: have the only way to handle things and are very
Speaker 3: victim blaming and you know, separate, separate people as a
Speaker 3: means of control.
Speaker 2: Especially now like we are heading into a whole new
Speaker 2: golden era. For for that. Anyway, you got any anything
Speaker 2: you want to plug kind of at the end here.
Speaker 3: Well you have to keep going. So if you're if
Speaker 3: you're in the mood for something light. I have a
Speaker 3: rom com novel called Save the Date coming out April
Speaker 3: eighth that you can order wherever books are sold. It's
Speaker 3: a kind of auto fiction based off of my own
Speaker 3: broken engagement and what could have happened if I had
Speaker 3: tried to find a new groom in time for my
Speaker 3: original wedding. I didn't do that in real life, but
Speaker 3: it's based off a joke my dad made and I
Speaker 3: turned into a book. And then I also have my
Speaker 3: self stack called Emotional Support Lady, which is all about
Speaker 3: mental health and you can also hire me as a
Speaker 3: relationship coach for both individuals and couples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome, awesome, Well, thank you so much for being
Speaker 2: on today. This was a hard one to listen to.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: I appreciate yeah, you doing it so much to try
Speaker 2: and like explain, yeah, what what was happening here? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right, and how and how long it took for society
Speaker 3: to catch up to the lies?
Speaker 2: Geez, like half a century literally almost half.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even though even though the people he was talking
Speaker 3: about were saying this is wrong while was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that wasn't enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well that's the episode. Everybody, Thank you
Speaker 2: so much, and thank you Allison. All right, have a
Speaker 2: good week.
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