Speaker 1: Alsome Media.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. I'm
Speaker 2: Robert Evans, and I am again alone without my producer,
Speaker 2: Sophie Lichterman.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: She is recovering from a health thing of a jig
Speaker 2: and we all wish you the best. She will be
Speaker 2: back soon. But you know who's not back soon, because
Speaker 2: they're here today, Alison Raskin. Allison, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for being on. You and I are
Speaker 2: going to have a long conversations about a very weird
Speaker 2: dude today. But before we get into that, we should
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about you. You are a writer, director, comedian.
Speaker 2: You are the co author of the book I Hate
Speaker 2: Everyone But You, which was a New York Times bestseller. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is there anything else you want to kind of plug
Speaker 2: up at the top here?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yes, that feels like an outdated bio a little bit.
Speaker 5: I do a lot of a lot of different stuff
Speaker 5: these days. I primarily prote myself as a writer still
Speaker 5: and then a relationship coach, a mental health advocate. So
Speaker 5: I've had two nonfiction books come out about sort of
Speaker 5: the intersection of mental health and relationships and then I
Speaker 5: have a rom com novel coming out in April called
Speaker 5: Save the Date, which is loosely based off of a
Speaker 5: multiverse version of my own broken engagement, so a fictionalized
Speaker 5: version of what could have happened afterwards.
Speaker 2: Well, that is very appropriate that you work in mental health,
Speaker 2: because the guy we're talking about today is one of
Speaker 2: the worst things that ever happened to the mental health
Speaker 2: field in the.
Speaker 3: Entire really bad at that.
Speaker 2: We are talking about a fella named Bruno Bettelheim. Have
Speaker 2: you heard of Bruno Bettleheim.
Speaker 4: No, I don't.
Speaker 5: I actually do have a master's in psychology. But he
Speaker 5: did not come up along that journey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 2: He would have described himself as, and was usually described as,
Speaker 2: an expert in child psychiatry and the treatment of autism. Now,
Speaker 2: oh no, here's the thing. Number one, absolutely not in
Speaker 2: any like legitimate way an expert in child psychiatry, and
Speaker 2: also not at all an expert in the treatment of autism.
Speaker 2: His primary thing was to declare kids to have autism
Speaker 2: and then treat them in a way that we would
Speaker 2: just describe as hitting them. Primarily, that's the way this
Speaker 2: guy worked. There's a lot more to him than that.
Speaker 2: Even he was a very very strange man. It's kind
Speaker 2: of important that you know that the outset that when
Speaker 2: we talk about again, the kids that he was working
Speaker 2: with were described as having autism and schizophrenia. Today, most
Speaker 2: of them we would just describe as kids with like
Speaker 2: mild behavioral problems like like twitching a little bit in
Speaker 2: class or something, or not being good at doing math.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: These were not terms that meant the same thing that
Speaker 2: they do today, because diagnostic criteria in the early nineteen
Speaker 2: hundreds was just not what it is now.
Speaker 5: So it's just a history of misdiagnosing children and also
Speaker 5: a lot of racism when it comes to misdiagnosing children.
Speaker 2: Oh, and a lot of racism in the Bruno Bettlelheim's story.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there is, yeah, both as a victim and
Speaker 2: as a perpetrator, because Bruno came He's an Austrian like
Speaker 2: most of the really fascinating like early twentieth century mental
Speaker 2: health professionals, and his family he came from this like
Speaker 2: wealthy subset of the Austro Hungarian Jewish population. That's like
Speaker 2: his family comes from money and comes from money within
Speaker 2: like the Austro Hungarian Empire's Jewish population, which is like
Speaker 2: a whole separate subset of like the imperial population. He
Speaker 2: would later claim, because he makes a lot of statements
Speaker 2: about his background, again almost none of which are true,
Speaker 2: that his paternal grandfather had been an orphan who had
Speaker 2: been raised and educated as a rabbi, and like he
Speaker 2: got the attention of the Baron Rothschild, who made him
Speaker 2: a tutor to his heirs, and he was so good
Speaker 2: at teaching these kids that they gave him command of
Speaker 2: the family bank, and he made the family fortune doing that.
Speaker 2: Definitely not true, almost certainly is not what happened. That said,
Speaker 2: the actual real story of his family name is.
Speaker 3: A lot cooler.
Speaker 2: And I don't know why he tells this bullshit story
Speaker 2: about like him being a banker, because the name Bettelheim
Speaker 2: came from sometime in the seventeen hundreds, the Slovakian nobleman
Speaker 2: named Count Bethlin fell for the wife of a Jewish
Speaker 2: citizen and tried to kidnap her on his horse, and
Speaker 2: her husband charged in and beat the count in hand
Speaker 2: to hand combat. And given like the racial politics at
Speaker 2: the time, this was a ballsy move right for this
Speaker 2: guy to come in and just like wail On, a
Speaker 2: major member of the nobility, and so he got the
Speaker 2: nickname Bethlen from the guy he beat up Judah, which
Speaker 2: is like you know Jewish, right, And that was like
Speaker 2: where the name Bettelheim came from. After a few decades later,
Speaker 2: the Habsburg's decreed everyone had to have a last name,
Speaker 2: and so that became Bettelheim for reasons I'm not that
Speaker 2: don't entirely make sense to me, but it's a pretty
Speaker 2: cool origin story.
Speaker 4: It's very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, beating the hell out of account, beat it like
Speaker 2: a guy on horseback too, which.
Speaker 4: Is like, you have some sounds like a tall Jews
Speaker 4: itself guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did disclaim here that I am Jewish.
Speaker 2: So that's where probably where the name Bettelheim cut. Like
Speaker 2: any sort of this is a mid seventeen hundred's family
Speaker 2: last name origin story. Maybe none of this is true, right,
Speaker 2: we'll never really know whatever the case. Bruno's father and
Speaker 2: grandfather kind of make their fortune trading wood. That's where
Speaker 2: the family money comes from, right, They like own forests
Speaker 2: that they plant and chop down.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: And they're in just kind of like the wood product business,
Speaker 2: you know, and they do very well as a result
Speaker 2: of that, the Bruno's dad, Anton, starts a lumber business
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh seven with another guy, and Anton and
Speaker 2: Paula Bettleheim, Bruno's parents. They first have a daughter, Margaret,
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety nine, and then on August twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen oh three, they welcome Bruno into the world. By
Speaker 2: this point, Anton's lumber business was doing very well and
Speaker 2: the family was probably maybe not in the top one
Speaker 2: percent because like this is an empire and they're not
Speaker 2: in the nobility, but like that super far from the
Speaker 2: top one percent, right, They're very wealthy, as is customary
Speaker 2: for the rich in this period of time. Bruno's mother
Speaker 2: refused to nurse him. He suffled from a professional wet
Speaker 2: nurse for the first three years of his life, and
Speaker 2: later wrote that his mom was too much the Victorian
Speaker 2: lady to do it herself. This is again super normal
Speaker 2: at the time, although it also seems to have kind
Speaker 2: of messed with Bruno because he's never he's never cool
Speaker 2: with his mom, and he will later project a lot
Speaker 2: of his issues with her onto mothers in general.
Speaker 5: Yes, that is also a common theme in early psychology early.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, especially for Austrians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe a whole deal going on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now again it's kind of he's going to later talk
Speaker 2: a lot about his mother being cold and like not
Speaker 2: a very kindly person, but in other writings from a
Speaker 2: like while he's a young man, he'll describe her as
Speaker 2: loving and attentive. And again, he's a guy who makes
Speaker 2: up a lot of stories about the past. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if he actually had his mom was actually
Speaker 2: cold to him when he was a kid, or if
Speaker 2: something happened later that made him kind of retroactively decide that.
Speaker 2: But it's very different from how like other people who
Speaker 2: knew them when he was a little kid described their relationship. Too,
Speaker 2: We'll never know. Like most boys in the late Victorian era,
Speaker 2: he had several brushes with death. He like, he has
Speaker 2: this classic thing where he eats poison berries. No, and
Speaker 2: this doctor just gives him a shitload of coffee to
Speaker 2: fix it. I think the idea is that, like, we
Speaker 2: just need to have him pee all of this out
Speaker 2: right old time.
Speaker 5: So wait, so other people thought that his mother was loving,
Speaker 5: hecounts was that okay? Got it?
Speaker 1: Got it? Yes?
Speaker 2: And he will describe at varying points very different kinds
Speaker 2: of relationships with his mom, like as a young man,
Speaker 2: he writes that quote, while he was sick, my mother
Speaker 2: sat up my bedside, sponging my feverish body and changing
Speaker 2: the cold compresses to give me relief. In moments like these,
Speaker 2: I learned to understand and appreciate that a mother makes
Speaker 2: all the difference in the world when one is in need,
Speaker 2: in great pain, deeply worried, or even desperate. Now this
Speaker 2: is noteworthy, the fact that he has these kind of
Speaker 2: two different attitudes about his mom, because, as his biographer
Speaker 2: Richard Pollock notes, no prominent psychotherapist of his time was
Speaker 2: as antagonistic to mothers. And that is.
Speaker 6: Saying something, Wow, Freud, He's beating Freud in the issues
Speaker 6: mom game.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's like dunking on Jordan's. So again, there's
Speaker 2: not really a clear explanation forthcoming as to this. Bruno
Speaker 2: does recall later being raised as an older boy by
Speaker 2: his aunt as much as his mother, and often hiding
Speaker 2: at her place to avoid his sister Margaret, who he
Speaker 2: described as.
Speaker 3: A busy body.
Speaker 2: This is all pretty normal kids stuff, you know.
Speaker 3: At any rate.
Speaker 2: The overwhelming recollections of the people who knew Bruno and
Speaker 2: his family was that his parents were doting and involved
Speaker 2: and if anything, his mother may have smothered him a bit.
Speaker 2: His father, Anton was a peculiar man. For the era.
Speaker 2: Germanic fathers are known as being stern and strict, often
Speaker 2: like well past what we would describe as abusive. What's
Speaker 2: weird about Anton is that, like even today we would
Speaker 2: call him kind of a permissive dad, like we would
Speaker 2: say today, like this guy could have maybe could have
Speaker 2: stood to be a little bit more like strict with
Speaker 2: his kids, which is very rare for an Austrian father.
Speaker 2: One anecdote Bruce later gave was that he got in
Speaker 2: trouble for cursing in front of his mother and she
Speaker 2: like went to it. She was like, Anton, your son
Speaker 2: just you know, cursed in front of me and her father.
Speaker 2: His father became upset, not that Bruno had cursed, but
Speaker 2: that he now had to punish his son, and he
Speaker 2: even asks Bruno, do I really have to punish you
Speaker 2: to get you to stop cursing in front of your mother?
Speaker 2: Which you know, the norm would have been probably to
Speaker 2: smack him right like, just based on sort of the
Speaker 2: standards of the time. Bruno's education is fairly strict, but
Speaker 2: that's normal for his social class and the era. He
Speaker 2: attends the finest school in Vienna, and he was an
Speaker 2: excellent student, one of five out of fifty four in
Speaker 2: his year to be noted as having been excellent. He
Speaker 2: spent the war years World War One, that is, in school,
Speaker 2: which is another mark of his good luck. You know,
Speaker 2: he's born in this sweet spot where he doesn't have
Speaker 2: to go die in on the Italian border, or in
Speaker 2: Serbia or in Russia, all of which were like beloved
Speaker 2: pastimes of Austrian teenage boys in these years.
Speaker 4: And he's just like, my mom's too nice.
Speaker 3: My mom, my mom's two is too nice to me.
Speaker 4: My dad let me get away with.
Speaker 2: Stuff, just daydreaming about charging a machine gun nest. No,
Speaker 2: he's not a super militant kid, but he does get
Speaker 2: very lucky right now. The war years are difficult even
Speaker 2: for the rich. Bruno is better off than most of
Speaker 2: the populace. He's never he and his family are never
Speaker 2: in danger of starving to death, but they do go hungry.
Speaker 2: Everybody does right with it, with the exception of like
Speaker 2: the top of the royal family. Everybody in Austria is
Speaker 2: going hungry at least a little bit during the war years.
Speaker 2: It's just a terrible time, right this. The war is
Speaker 2: bad for his family fortunes. Huge tracks of their Bettelheim
Speaker 2: land get lit like burnt down own by artillery bombardment
Speaker 2: right at the start of hostilities. But his family doesn't
Speaker 2: lose everything, and Anton seems to have been an unusually
Speaker 2: tenacious and brilliant businessman. By the time the war ended
Speaker 2: and the Habsburg Empire with it, the Bettelheims were still
Speaker 2: comfortably wealthy, right, which is takes a lot that's not
Speaker 2: easy to maintain in this period of time. So it
Speaker 2: says a lot about Anton.
Speaker 4: This guy seems great that that seems he seems.
Speaker 2: Like a pretty good dad for the era, about as
Speaker 2: good as you get out for Bruno's schooling was mixed
Speaker 2: as a again that he is not going to he's
Speaker 2: going to an integrated school, which in itself in Austria
Speaker 2: is a pretty new thing. That like you would have
Speaker 2: Jewish and Christian boys at the same school. There were
Speaker 2: some like you have religious education as part of your
Speaker 2: normal schooling. Obviously, the small number of Jewish kids have
Speaker 2: a rabbi. Most of the other boys are being talked
Speaker 2: to by like members of the Catholic clergy because it's
Speaker 2: a majority Catholic country. Bruno would later describe most of
Speaker 2: his fellow classmates as anti Semitic bastards, which is almost
Speaker 2: certainly accurate.
Speaker 3: Austria.
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, probably kinds of racism that you would
Speaker 2: need like a NASA calculator to rate today. He recalled
Speaker 2: often the case of a classmate who he had consented
Speaker 2: ORed a friend and walked to school with daily, who
Speaker 2: out of nowhere one morning, punched him in the face
Speaker 2: in revenge for the crucifixion of Christ. So that kind
Speaker 2: of racism. Yeah, your best friend just hits you one
Speaker 2: day because of something that happened two thousand years ago.
Speaker 5: But it does like bring up this thing that I
Speaker 5: think is happening now, where like these kids will just
Speaker 5: be friends with kids, but then they go home and
Speaker 5: their parents tell them things and then suddenly they're acting
Speaker 5: out and they're deciding this is someone needs to be
Speaker 5: punched in the face.
Speaker 2: I guess I need to be a huge asshole now,
Speaker 2: Okay he.
Speaker 4: Learned that somewhere that day.
Speaker 2: Before, right, Yeah, that kid didn't come up with the
Speaker 2: idea on his own. It was a parent or like
Speaker 2: probably a member of the Catholic clergy who was talking
Speaker 2: shit one day. Now, this was the tip of the
Speaker 2: iceberg in terms of the racism that Bruno endured as
Speaker 2: a kid. He would later say, quote, there were the
Speaker 2: boys who extorted money, who beat us if we handed
Speaker 2: it over because we were dirty cowards, and who beat
Speaker 2: us if we didn't because we were miser le Jews.
Speaker 2: So really can't win, you know. One of the key
Speaker 2: moments of Bruno's education came when he and several other
Speaker 2: boys attacked one of their school teachers, again very different era,
Speaker 2: who he described later as a simpering fool who spoke
Speaker 2: with the voice of a eunuch.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: In other words, he and a bunch of his other
Speaker 2: students beat the hell out of a school teacher because
Speaker 2: he was a feminate, you know. In the Creation of
Speaker 2: Doctor b a biography by Richard Pollock, Pollock rights, so
Speaker 2: weak and inadequate was the schoolmaster that one day Bruno
Speaker 2: egged on several of his classmates and together they bodily
Speaker 2: removed the offending instructor from the room. Bettelheim recalled that
Speaker 2: he immediately began to tremble as he contemplated the consequences
Speaker 2: of this rash act, and indeed, the next day the
Speaker 2: schools authoritarian director castigated the class and especially Bruno, as
Speaker 2: the leader in this unprecedented and nefarious deed. But the
Speaker 2: director did not as the troublemaker feared, expel him. On
Speaker 2: the contrary, at the end of the scolding, his demeanor
Speaker 2: suddenly softened, and in a quiet voice, he said, of course,
Speaker 2: I know that if doctor X had behaved as I
Speaker 2: expect all masters of this institution to behave, nothing like
Speaker 2: this could have happened. So again, he like beats up
Speaker 2: a teacher, he like leads a mob to force a
Speaker 2: teacher violently out of the classroom. And the director's like,
Speaker 2: we yeah, but he shouldn't have been such a girl
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: He was asking for it. And then we.
Speaker 5: Wonder, like, oh, how did this guy then go on
Speaker 5: to perpetuate harm?
Speaker 7: Pardiculuses, Yeah, why was this guy a problem later in life?
Speaker 3: Well, and it's also.
Speaker 2: White in Austria get involved in so much fucked up shit,
Speaker 2: you know. It really like the fact that this is
Speaker 2: the country that is going to like produce Hitler and
Speaker 2: that just like gets does the things it does in
Speaker 2: World War One, it's like, oh yeah, everybody was like
Speaker 2: like this. This is a culture that's kind of out
Speaker 2: of its mind in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: You know, I can't living in one of those.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no. Thank god.
Speaker 2: We figured it fixed all of our mental health issues. Finally,
Speaker 2: human beings are healthy. I haven't read the news in
Speaker 2: about eight years, but I think it's going well. So
Speaker 2: more than two thirds of a century later, Bruno would
Speaker 2: recall this incident as key in his development as an educator,
Speaker 2: because it was the first time a figure of authority
Speaker 2: at his school had witnessed bad behavior and, in his eyes,
Speaker 2: sought to understand its root cause rather than just punishing
Speaker 2: it out right. So what he takes from this is
Speaker 2: my headmaster punished me, because he does get punished, but
Speaker 2: he sought to understand why I had acted out. And
Speaker 2: this is like a revelation to him that you wouldn't
Speaker 2: just hit a kid for not doing what you wanted
Speaker 2: a kid to do. You would try to understand what
Speaker 2: was the child thinking when it behaved When they behaved badly, right,
Speaker 2: and then you hit him, and then you hit him
Speaker 2: and then you hit me. Now, the fact that Bruno
Speaker 2: just chose to describe the teacher he disliked as sounding
Speaker 2: like a eunuch holds a little more meaning than you
Speaker 2: might guess. As an adult, Bruno reserved special disgust for
Speaker 2: the authority figures of his childhood who acted in ways
Speaker 2: he considered effeminate, and his kind and retiring father was
Speaker 2: one of these, and an excellent paper on Bettelheim for
Speaker 2: Disability Studies Quarterly Griffin Epstein seems to tie this behavior
Speaker 2: to Bruno's insecurity over anti Semitism. There was a strong
Speaker 2: heteropatriarchal thrust to the stigmatization of Jews. According to Boyarin,
Speaker 2: Jews were understood to defy Western European gender and sexual norms.
Speaker 2: Jewish men were seen as effeminate sissies unfit for labor,
Speaker 2: while Jewish women, when they appeared discursively at all, were
Speaker 2: read as phallic monsters. Jews were perceived broadly as deviant, perverse,
Speaker 2: and inbred sexual aberrations. So Bruno is really really sensitive
Speaker 2: about the idea of men not behaving in a masculine
Speaker 2: way because of the racism that he encounters right, and
Speaker 2: this is further complicated by the fact that his dad
Speaker 2: catches syphilis. In nineteen oh seven. So this idea and
Speaker 2: another anti Semites will often link syphilis to Judaism in
Speaker 2: this period, like it is a common aspect of racial politics.
Speaker 2: Hitler does it a lot. And so the fact that
Speaker 2: Bruno's dad, as kind as he is, catches this very
Speaker 2: shameful disease is a big part of why Bruno is
Speaker 2: going to be the way he is as an adult.
Speaker 2: And it's like this kind of shame that is at
Speaker 2: the core of his personality as a kid. Now, the
Speaker 2: likely reason Anton catches syphilis is that his wife goes
Speaker 2: away one weekend and he sleeps with a sex worker. Right,
Speaker 2: That's generally how this thing happened. This was apparently the
Speaker 2: only time he did it, although obviously we can't know that,
Speaker 2: but the indiscretion has a shattering impact on the family.
Speaker 2: His wife doesn't sleep with him for the last twenty
Speaker 2: years of their marriage, and she doesn't because she would
Speaker 2: get sick and die if she did, right, Like, this
Speaker 2: is an uncurable fatal illness in addition to being a
Speaker 2: stigmatized illness.
Speaker 4: So word Jilif for twenty years with syphilis.
Speaker 2: You do you off. And it takes about twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: to twenty years to hit like the tertiary stages, Like
Speaker 2: that's not it can it can go differently. But like,
Speaker 2: one of the frightening things about syphilis is that you
Speaker 2: after the quote unquote indiscretion as it would be, you
Speaker 2: know you, so you have a break in your and
Speaker 2: you and you you know, have an unrecommended liaison, you
Speaker 2: don't know for years if you got sick from it, right,
Speaker 2: And that's part of why this is such a massive
Speaker 2: thing in Austrian culture and all in all European culture
Speaker 2: in this period, is that like the entire all the
Speaker 2: men in the in the society are like constantly scared
Speaker 2: of getting syphilis, right, and so are their wives, because
Speaker 2: if your husband is sleeping around and he catches it,
Speaker 2: you'll get it.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: One of the movies that shaped me so much as
Speaker 4: a kid.
Speaker 5: Was this this movie called She's Too Young on Lifetime.
Speaker 5: Oh god, that was about alis outbreak at a high school.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it was.
Speaker 4: Look, it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 5: Not that syphilis is funny, but Lifetime's execution of the
Speaker 5: hit film She's Too Young.
Speaker 2: She's Too Young, a Lifetime movie about syphilis at high
Speaker 2: school does sound pretty rad, but also.
Speaker 5: Like it's funny because at that point you just get
Speaker 5: a shot like it's not the same because it was
Speaker 5: for them, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: No, and it's going to be a big deal until
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three, right, Like so it is like, well,
Speaker 2: like Bruno is a mature adult in like his thirties
Speaker 2: by the time it stops being something that people are
Speaker 2: terrified of.
Speaker 3: But you know what.
Speaker 2: Isn't syphilis is the sponsor of this podcast, not sponsored
Speaker 2: by syphilis.
Speaker 4: That was a really good transition.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you. A lot of people praise the
Speaker 2: transitions on this show, not our sponsors, notably, and we're back.
Speaker 2: I wonder like you could probably rebrand, given like rfk's
Speaker 2: position in our society, you could probably rebrand syphilis as
Speaker 2: a health tonic, right.
Speaker 5: And sort of a way to separate the week from
Speaker 5: the week from the chaff, Like who can who can
Speaker 5: maintain syphilis for as long as possible?
Speaker 2: That's right, You've got all these like Joe Rogan, guys
Speaker 2: who really like taking ayahuasca. Syphilis causes hallucinations. I feel
Speaker 2: like there's like a possibility here to make this work.
Speaker 5: And it's sad that that's probably more true than we think.
Speaker 3: In yeah, we're like.
Speaker 2: Six months out from this. So the fact that Bruno's
Speaker 2: dad catches syphilis is going to deepen the rift that
Speaker 2: he has with him, and Bruno will later claim that
Speaker 2: he had quote no suitable masculine figures in his life
Speaker 2: as a child. In their paper, Griffin Epstein suggests that
Speaker 2: Bruno saw his father's sickness and jewishness as a threat
Speaker 2: to his desire to assimilate to Austrian culture. Bruno is,
Speaker 2: and this is not an uncommon thing at the time,
Speaker 2: an assimilationist right like. He does not he's not particularly religious.
Speaker 2: He does not feel a strong separate identity as a
Speaker 2: Jew in Austria. He wants to be seen as Austrian,
Speaker 2: you know, which.
Speaker 4: Is understandable given the environment.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's the most normal thing in the world.
Speaker 2: Give In his childhood, as a teen, Bruno found himself
Speaker 2: in the Young Wander Vocal movement, which is a it's
Speaker 2: basically a hiking movement. This whole idea that you know,
Speaker 2: what's healthy is moving your body out in nature, very
Speaker 2: new and exciting, and so this is like a young
Speaker 2: it's a quasi socialist movement. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that's kind of noteworthy is they do a lot of
Speaker 2: co ed hiking, right, so men and women are like
Speaker 2: moving exercising outdoors together, you know, so there's both this
Speaker 2: degree of like this is kind of a cutting edge
Speaker 2: social This is like going to ravees. You know, was
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, when you and I were
Speaker 2: like like twenty something.
Speaker 4: This is wild stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wild stuff.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go a hike, you know, we might all
Speaker 2: camp together.
Speaker 4: Hey overnight. That is pretty risque.
Speaker 2: That is risque. And it is through this, at age thirteen,
Speaker 2: that he first pursues a woman. But he is this
Speaker 2: doesn't go well for him. He gets upstaged, in his
Speaker 2: biographer's words, by an older boy, Auto Finishal, who was
Speaker 2: a budding psychoanalyst and a few years older than him
Speaker 2: and was already attending Freud's lectures at the University of Vienna.
Speaker 2: And obviously this woman that that Bruno is interested in,
Speaker 2: well not woman, she's thirty, but they're all kids. This
Speaker 2: kid that he is interested in is like attracted to
Speaker 2: the fact that this older boy is going to college
Speaker 2: and listening to the great Freud's lectures. And Bruno initially
Speaker 2: develops a hatred of psychoanalysis because he's so jealous of
Speaker 2: this this older boy, which Pollock writes was quote so
Speaker 2: great he could not sleep. He's just so angry about psychoanalysis.
Speaker 3: Furious about the idea of Freud.
Speaker 5: Look, I thought the you just fan of pure psychoanalysis.
Speaker 4: But at least it doesn't keep me up at night.
Speaker 7: It just wow, I'm so pissed people are getting therapy.
Speaker 2: Just reading Freud's book on cocaine and fuming. So eventually
Speaker 2: he does settle upon method for winning the girl's heart.
Speaker 2: He would study Freud's work obsessively in order to stage
Speaker 2: this younger boy. This sparked what would become a lifetime obsession.
Speaker 2: He changes his mind on psychle analysis. He does not
Speaker 2: win this girl's heart, and in fact, she grows exhausted
Speaker 2: because he in order to impress her, he spends like
Speaker 2: a whole weekend talking to her about Freud, and she's like,
Speaker 2: I'm not interested in Freud anymore.
Speaker 3: I'm done with this.
Speaker 8: He's fucked Freud up for me.
Speaker 2: Anton Bettelheim dies in April of nineteen twenty six from
Speaker 2: a variety of illnesses and ailments that are all tied
Speaker 2: to his syphilis, right, the final stages of syphilis literally
Speaker 2: like it's boring holes through your brain like a shipworm
Speaker 2: in wood, and it causes like it's pretty unpleasant like
Speaker 2: to see. And Bruno would have been confronted directly with
Speaker 2: the final stages of his father's illness. After his dad dies,
Speaker 2: he's forced to take up his father's place running the
Speaker 2: family lumber business in order to maintain his family's position
Speaker 2: in society. He is twenty three years old, so you know,
Speaker 2: he does get like a real childhood. He gets some time,
Speaker 2: but at age twenty three, he is the head of
Speaker 2: the family. He doesn't really want to do this job again.
Speaker 2: He's very interested in psychoanalysis. He is a student at
Speaker 2: the University of Vienna, focusing on art history at this point,
Speaker 2: but he takes some business courses and he understands that,
Speaker 2: like I need to keep my mom and my sister
Speaker 2: in the kind of finery that they have become, right,
Speaker 2: Like my family is used to being rich. I have
Speaker 2: to maintain this style, right, Yes, yes, that's my job.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And he does this. He's a very like diligent head
Speaker 2: of the family. He starts courting a young woman named
Speaker 2: Regina Bruno is in love with Regina, and Regina kind
Speaker 2: of tolerates him, right, She's not super into Bruno. She's
Speaker 2: only available. There's this sexy young artist that she is
Speaker 2: in love with, and he's like, I'm a sexy young artist.
Speaker 2: I'm not getting married. It's the twenties. I am going
Speaker 2: to probably like die of consumption after getting really into Heroin.
Speaker 4: You know, some love stories never die.
Speaker 2: Some love stories never die. So Regina settles for Bruno
Speaker 2: because he's rich, right, She's like, well, he's not this
Speaker 2: sexy young artist, but he does have a shitload of money,
Speaker 2: and I guess that's as good as you can do sometimes.
Speaker 2: And in the late twenties, it kind of is. In
Speaker 2: near the end of the decade, she gets pregnant. She
Speaker 2: gets an abortion to avoid marrying Bruno, which should give
Speaker 2: you an idea of kind of where her head is
Speaker 2: at at the time, considering how much less.
Speaker 4: Common that is, you know, right, and dangerous, yes.
Speaker 2: And much more dangerous.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's a real that's a real sick burn.
Speaker 2: That is kind of a burn to Bruno, right, Like
Speaker 2: obviously I think like at the time he's going to
Speaker 2: read it that way, right, because he wants a family
Speaker 2: with this, with this lady. This feeds into a lifetime insecurity.
Speaker 2: Bruno would express over his looks. He made frequent comments
Speaker 2: about the fact that his mother had called him ugly
Speaker 2: on the day he was born, and that he never
Speaker 2: got better looking, which seems unfair to me. Because I
Speaker 2: found a picture of him as like a young man
Speaker 2: from like around the period we're talking about, and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna show it to you. You wouldn't say, like, he's
Speaker 2: not like a movie star or anything, but he looks
Speaker 2: like fine, he's like a pretty I would say, like, well, judge,
Speaker 2: this does dead man's looks as a child. But he's
Speaker 2: like a pretty normal looking guy.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Yeah, that's a standard guy.
Speaker 2: That's a standard issue Austrian man.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And you add a bunch of money to his.
Speaker 8: Portfolio, he's looking a lot better. He's looking good, no syphilis.
Speaker 8: You know, he's doing about as good as you could
Speaker 8: be doing in that period of time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a people's insecurities can really end up
Speaker 5: causing a lot of harm.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and he is.
Speaker 2: He's super insecure about like hair, and he does kind
Speaker 2: of he goes bald after this about his nose, and
Speaker 2: his ears, and he will obsess over this.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I'm bringing it up not to shit on him, but
Speaker 2: because this is like an important part of his self image,
Speaker 2: and his self in image is further harmed by the
Speaker 2: fact that Regina would vomit most of the time when
Speaker 2: he visited her, which is not super good for your ego. No,
Speaker 2: that's really just just and she would often get Yeah,
Speaker 2: she would often puwe at his presence. I think she's
Speaker 2: got like other stuff going on, Okay, she's probably. I
Speaker 2: think it's some of it is that she feels stressed
Speaker 2: out because she has to make a choice, right, Like,
Speaker 2: she knows that I've got to make a decision about
Speaker 2: whether or not to like pick this guy, and that's
Speaker 2: kind of fucking with her. I don't think she's like
Speaker 2: disgusted in him. I think it's literally just anxiety. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it fucks with his head, like obviously that's devastating. Eventually,
Speaker 2: Gina finds herself out of other options and she marries Bruno.
Speaker 2: Now she will always describe him as a wonderful friend.
Speaker 2: She genuinely likes him. She's just not into him, you know.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: They get married in nineteen thirty and during their years
Speaker 2: because they are courting for what you would call an
Speaker 2: abnormally long time, although not within their social Their social
Speaker 2: circle are like kind of bohemians and artists and intellectuals,
Speaker 2: so this is not super weird for the people they
Speaker 2: socialize with. So Gina starts like kind of near the
Speaker 2: right before they get married, taking therapy from a guy
Speaker 2: called Richard Sturba and his wife, Edith Sturba, who are
Speaker 2: a husband and wife psychoanalyst couple that are members of
Speaker 2: Freud's inner circle. These are famous psychoanalysts right within the
Speaker 2: psychoanalyst community. These are like, you know, they're big names.
Speaker 2: Urged on by Edith, Gina convinces her husband to essentially
Speaker 2: adopt a troubled young girl whose mom had abandoned her.
Speaker 2: This girl, Patricia might actually have been someone we would
Speaker 2: describe as having autism today, that's how she gets described
Speaker 2: back then. But her like, she has a lot of trouble,
Speaker 2: like you know, being social and sort of connecting and
Speaker 2: you know, making eye contact and whatnot with people. Her
Speaker 2: mom is this like wealthy writer basically who comes from
Speaker 2: like a wealthy family and is like, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to spend my time taking care of this troubled girl.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go be a wealthy, famous person. Hey,
Speaker 2: you want a kid, and you're interested in child development
Speaker 2: and psychoanalysis, figure out my kid, right, That's essentially what happens.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people don't want a kid
Speaker 5: that deviates from what they expect a kid to be. Yes,
Speaker 5: And then if that kid is different in any way,
Speaker 5: it's like, well, this isn't what I signed up for, right,
Speaker 5: So right, someone else take care of this child.
Speaker 2: And I will say this kid's mom comes through in
Speaker 2: the clutch later in this story, but at this point,
Speaker 2: she's like, yeah, would you raise my kid for me?
Speaker 2: I gotta like do stuff, And Regina says like, yeah,
Speaker 2: she really wants to do this. By all accounts, she's
Speaker 2: very loving and does like really helps this kid out.
Speaker 2: Is a good and Bruno is like Patricia will later
Speaker 2: remember Bruno fondly. He does not really take any part
Speaker 2: in raising her, which is interesting because he's later going
Speaker 2: to be a child development expert quote unquote.
Speaker 4: He is just.
Speaker 2: Working and making money. But she recalls him as like
Speaker 2: a nice man and their household as a pleasant place.
Speaker 4: How old was she when she went to live with that.
Speaker 2: I think she's like seven or eight something like that.
Speaker 2: She's a little girl. Now he is working a lot,
Speaker 2: six days a week, providing for the family, and at
Speaker 2: this time, as kind of the twenties come to an
Speaker 2: end in the early thirties start the Nazi movement is
Speaker 2: winding its way closer to power in Germany. Now this
Speaker 2: is not something that is initially of major concern to
Speaker 2: Bruno or his wife. They are not politically involved. Instead,
Speaker 2: he becomes obsessed with finishing his college degree so he
Speaker 2: could start training at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. Well, he
Speaker 2: focused on what had become a dream. Austria slipped towards
Speaker 2: a nightmare. In nineteen thirty three, the same year Hitler
Speaker 2: came to power in Germany, a Christian socialist politician named
Speaker 2: Engelbert Dolphus suspended parliament in Austria and began ruling by
Speaker 2: decree as a reaction to economic calamity and political dysfunction
Speaker 2: in Austria's First Republic. Now Dolphus again, he's a Christian socialist.
Speaker 2: This is not a Nazi party, but he is an autocrat. Right,
Speaker 2: he's ruling by decree. He's cracking down on anyone who
Speaker 2: is like this, and this provides fuel for the Nazis
Speaker 2: because it's now been normalized, this autocratic rule right Bettelheim
Speaker 2: recalled of the chaos at the time they the Nazis
Speaker 2: released tear gas and department stores to frighten off shoppers,
Speaker 2: smeared house walls with pro Hitler graffiti, set off firecrackers
Speaker 2: and patards in many places to cause panic, and eventually
Speaker 2: started outright bombings. So the Nazis are an illegal party
Speaker 2: at this point. They are literally a terrorist party in Austria.
Speaker 2: But Dolphus is not really a whole lot better. He
Speaker 2: is more concerned with using the military to crack down
Speaker 2: on left wing militias, which culminates on him using artillery
Speaker 2: to shell hundreds of apartment buildings in the capitol. He
Speaker 2: succeeds in destroying the Social Democratic Party and it's militia,
Speaker 2: which had been like the most power, the only militant
Speaker 2: force in the country that could compete with the Nazis.
Speaker 2: He destroys them so completely that in June of nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four, when one hundred and fifty four Nazis attack
Speaker 2: government headquarters, there is no organized left ring resistance against them,
Speaker 2: and Dolphus is murdered by the Nazis.
Speaker 5: Now this has remind me of a headline I just
Speaker 5: read about how the FBI is not going to be
Speaker 5: focusing on white supremacists but instead the BLM movement Anti course.
Speaker 3: Of course, yeah, it's all good.
Speaker 2: You learned nothing, no, no, no one's ever I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the lesson of history, is that no one's ever
Speaker 2: learned a lesson from.
Speaker 4: History, truly.
Speaker 2: So Bruno does not react with great concern at first,
Speaker 2: even though this is a concerning thing, right, he is
Speaker 2: very much he's very good at focusing on just what
Speaker 2: interests him.
Speaker 3: He does.
Speaker 2: He could have afforded to leave, right, he's got money.
Speaker 2: He could have bounced, but doing so would have meant
Speaker 2: he could have gotten his family out, but they wouldn't
Speaker 2: have stayed super rich, right, you know, it would have
Speaker 2: cost him too much, and so he opted to continue
Speaker 2: running his business and working on his degree, which he
Speaker 2: achieved in nineteen thirty eight. He gets a PhD in aesthetics,
Speaker 2: which is a you know, it's an accomplishment, but that's
Speaker 2: not a degree in psychoanalytics.
Speaker 4: Right, what is aesthetics?
Speaker 2: It's like art history, and you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's like art related shit. He would later lie and
Speaker 2: claim his degree had been approved personally by a council
Speaker 2: of Freud's closest confidants, including his daughter Anna, and then
Speaker 2: add that Sigmund Freud had wandered into the room and said, oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, a dude with an aesthetics degree is
Speaker 2: just what psychoanalytics needs to develop as a science. He
Speaker 2: is such a bad liar. And then Freud walked into
Speaker 2: the room and was like, you're exactly what my field needs.
Speaker 4: Smoking a cigar.
Speaker 3: He was smoking a cigar. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Within days of Bettleheim getting his PhD, the aunchlass begins
Speaker 2: and Germany annexes Austria. We're kind of YadA YadA ing
Speaker 2: a lot of that history, because that's a story for
Speaker 2: another day. But this is a major point at which
Speaker 2: the life story that Bruno will tell later diverges from reality,
Speaker 2: because the claim that he will give years later once
Speaker 2: he gets to the US is that as soon as
Speaker 2: the Nazis annex Austria, he joins the Jewish underground. Right,
Speaker 2: he becomes an officer in the underground. He stands armed
Speaker 2: guard at facilities. He's afraid the Nazis are going to destroy.
Speaker 2: He helps to hide some of the first Jews targeted
Speaker 2: by the Nazis and spirit them away to safety. He
Speaker 2: describes himself as a significant figure in the underground army
Speaker 2: and says that after demobilizing his men, he fled to Czechoslovakia,
Speaker 2: where he is arrested and sent to doc Ou. Now
Speaker 2: he definitely is sent to doc Ou, but there's no
Speaker 2: evidence that he is a part of the resistance. Gina,
Speaker 2: his wife, told Richard Pollack this story was nonsense. That like, no,
Speaker 2: we were not like he was not doing that. That's
Speaker 2: just not what was going on at the time. And
Speaker 2: what he was doing was not like like cowardly. He
Speaker 2: was trying to take care of his family, you know.
Speaker 2: He urges his wife and daughter to flee ahead of him,
Speaker 2: And at this point this is kind of like a
Speaker 2: selfless gesture. His wife is cheating on him with a
Speaker 2: married man, and he urges her to leave with that
Speaker 2: guy and his wife, thinking that they'll have better odds
Speaker 2: of escaping together at any rate. Gina and Patsy only
Speaker 2: escape because Gina's biological mother, a wealthy New York woman
Speaker 2: or not sorry, Patricia's biological mother, right, Like the woman
Speaker 2: who had kind of abandoned her kid to this couple
Speaker 2: is friends with the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull,
Speaker 2: and pull strings for them. And to her credit, this woman,
Speaker 2: I think Angie is her name, really like it puts
Speaker 2: in a lot of work to rescue them. She's like,
Speaker 2: these people save my kid. I have to get them
Speaker 2: out of Austria. So she redeems herself and my eyes
Speaker 2: there like she really does, like put in a lot
Speaker 2: of effort here more complicated people are complicated. Not a
Speaker 2: great mom, but a good friend. In nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: Bruno would later swear an affidavit for the Nurember of
Speaker 2: War crimes trial that in which he discussed the terms
Speaker 2: of his arrest and stated that he had not participated
Speaker 2: in resistance activity. This is part of why we know
Speaker 2: that this is a story he makes up later. Now
Speaker 2: the reality is that he witnessed pretty titanic racial violence
Speaker 2: in the wake of Nazi annexation. Jews were beaten and
Speaker 2: murdered in the streets. One of a common thing was
Speaker 2: that they would be forced to clean gutters on their
Speaker 2: hands and knees, often with like toothbrushes and then would
Speaker 2: be beaten by gangs of Nazi thugs. It was a hideous,
Speaker 2: hideous time. And Bruno does not leave as soon as
Speaker 2: he could because he's trying to take care of his
Speaker 2: mom and his sister, and he's also managing There's this
Speaker 2: thing that happens once the Nazis take over, Jewish businesses
Speaker 2: are demanded to be handed over to arians. This is
Speaker 2: a process called arianization. It is not a fair process.
Speaker 2: You get pennies on the dollar, you know, based on
Speaker 2: what your businesses had been worth. And Bruno is attempting
Speaker 2: to handle this manner in the most financially advantageous way
Speaker 2: so that he can get his family out, he can
Speaker 2: buy their way out of Austria. He does, however, get
Speaker 2: arrested and sent to Docou, which is a very normal
Speaker 2: thing for Jewish men in Austria, Like during this period
Speaker 2: of time, a lot of them get sent to the camps.
Speaker 2: Docou is the first of like the formal camps. Right
Speaker 2: right after Hitler takes power in thirty three, there's what
Speaker 2: are called like wild concentration camps, which are like we
Speaker 2: have occupied some government buildings and we're torturing guys there.
Speaker 2: Basically right Docau is kind of like the first of
Speaker 2: we have actually like built this camp, and while it
Speaker 2: is an awful place, I need to like emphasize it's
Speaker 2: not a death camp, right. Those are not operational yet.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the Third Reich, about thirty thousand
Speaker 2: of the two hundred and six thousand or so inmates
Speaker 2: at Dacau will perish there, right, which is like terrible.
Speaker 2: That's a nightmarish place. But it's not Auschwitz, right, those
Speaker 2: are not operational yet. Is in a death sentence, No,
Speaker 2: you probably live, right, And in fact, prisoners are generally
Speaker 2: fed enough to survive and are rarely beaten to death.
Speaker 2: It is closer to a prison camp than what is
Speaker 2: going to come later. That said, the nicest stay at
Speaker 2: a concentration camp is still among the worst things a
Speaker 2: person can experience. Bruno and everyone who is sent over
Speaker 2: with him spends days locked in a train with the
Speaker 2: heat on full blast and the stifling summer. Just to
Speaker 2: fuck with them, They're denied water during the journey. He
Speaker 2: gets stabbed with a bayonet during the drive. Jewish prisoners
Speaker 2: are regularly forced to stand at attention once they arrive
Speaker 2: in the blaze and heat for hours at a time,
Speaker 2: Bruno sees people executed for attempting to escape. When inmates
Speaker 2: would fail to make their beds properly, they would be
Speaker 2: strung from a tree by their wrists by SS guards
Speaker 2: and left there for hours. Like many Austrian Jews. The
Speaker 2: official reason for Bruno's incarceration was schutz hoftling yudah or
Speaker 2: incarcerated for his own protection. Right, he's locked up to
Speaker 2: keep him safe, right while he was from US.
Speaker 5: From just a general propaganda we've been viewing against that
Speaker 5: you should kill all Jews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he is. Now this is again he's allowed
Speaker 2: communication with his family. He's able to send letters back
Speaker 2: and forth. They're able to send him money, he's able
Speaker 2: to buy food from the commissary. And while this is
Speaker 2: going on, he's constantly talking with Gina, who is working
Speaker 2: through her friend through Cordell Hole to try and secure
Speaker 2: him a visa. So this is the whole time this
Speaker 2: is going on, he is in communication with his family
Speaker 2: who were talking with the US State Department trying to
Speaker 2: get him a visa to get him out. After three
Speaker 2: months at Dacau, he is transferred to Bukenvald, which is
Speaker 2: a much worse place. Docou had had some amenities, sufficient
Speaker 2: food and like it has a weirdly good library. None
Speaker 2: of that is present at Bukenvald, and the guards are
Speaker 2: on the whole a lot more violent now. Bruno survives
Speaker 2: in part because he gets an indoor job mending socks,
Speaker 2: which during the winter stops him from freezing to death
Speaker 2: as much as everyone else. He gets frostbite that he
Speaker 2: has to get cut off right, so he is still
Speaker 2: freezing a lot of the time, but he doesn't freeze
Speaker 2: entirely because he has this very rare indoor job, and
Speaker 2: we don't really know why. Other inmates at the camp
Speaker 2: who were friends of his will say that he was
Speaker 2: somehow protected and that his indoor job was a very
Speaker 2: very rare setup. We again, really have no idea why
Speaker 2: this is the case. He would later allude to having
Speaker 2: done things he regretted in order to survive. That is
Speaker 2: a very normal story. A lot of people did. Other
Speaker 2: inmates who knew him theorized that one of the capos
Speaker 2: or prisoners that were authorized to handle managerial tasks by
Speaker 2: the SS, had a soft spot for him. Another of
Speaker 2: Bruno's friends said that there was a quote very very
Speaker 2: nice SS officer who protected Bruno and you hear about
Speaker 2: that stuff. That doesn't mean these are good people, but
Speaker 2: it means that if you were, if you're interned at
Speaker 2: one of these camps, you're going to note some of
Speaker 2: these guys I can like work with, and some of
Speaker 2: them are just satists, you know. So maybe Bruno just
Speaker 2: kind of has one of these guys has a soft
Speaker 2: spot for him. There's different stories. We don't really know
Speaker 2: what the case was. Bruno credited foremost his luck, but
Speaker 2: would later give some other stories. What's odd is that
Speaker 2: Bruno is going to tell some stories that definitely aren't true.
Speaker 2: Later he's going to claim that he was targeted over
Speaker 2: the fact that he wore glasses and was beaten as
Speaker 2: a result of it. Bruno's fellow inmates who were interviewed,
Speaker 2: and again these are guys who were his friends, said
Speaker 2: that no, no, no, the guards were like less agro
Speaker 2: to the guys with glass. Again, I don't know who's
Speaker 2: telling the truth here, but there's two different stories, right,
Speaker 2: And this is not the only time Bruno is going
Speaker 2: to sort of stretch truths about his time at the camps,
Speaker 2: which is probably and we should probably get to why
Speaker 2: that matters.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: So Bruno spends eight months months at Boutglenwald. So he's
Speaker 2: in camps for a little less than a year, about
Speaker 2: eleven months, it's like ten and a half months something
Speaker 2: like that, and he is released due to the relentless
Speaker 2: pleading of his wife and their wealthy benefactor. He gets
Speaker 2: a visa. There's also kind of a general amnesty around
Speaker 2: this time for Jews who are willing to leave the
Speaker 2: Reich immediately, and so he gets out during this period
Speaker 2: of time. He makes his way to the United States
Speaker 2: in short order. He is really eager to retake up
Speaker 2: his marriage, but the marriage breaks up as soon as
Speaker 2: he gets to the States, right like, they spend a
Speaker 2: night together and it becomes clear this is not going
Speaker 2: to work out obviously. The whole like spending a year
Speaker 2: in a concentration camp and then your marriage breaking up
Speaker 2: pretty stressful, like probably one of the worst things I
Speaker 2: can imagine going.
Speaker 8: Through some long term damage that's gonna fuck you up
Speaker 8: a bit.
Speaker 2: But he gets an academic job with Rockford College in Illinois,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen forty three he publishes the earliest influential
Speaker 2: detailed account of life in a concentration camp. This is
Speaker 2: like the first influential publication about life in a camp right,
Speaker 2: and it is a huge yes. It is titled Individual
Speaker 2: and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations, and it is a
Speaker 2: work of titanic influence.
Speaker 3: Dwight D.
Speaker 2: Eisenhower is so impacted by it that it's made required
Speaker 2: reading for all US military government officials in Europe after
Speaker 2: the war. This is a big accomplishment, and that's a
Speaker 2: problem because he makes some conclusions about what happens to
Speaker 2: people in concentration camps that are problematic to say the least.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna we're gonna get to that, but I
Speaker 2: think it's probably time we transmit to ads one last time,
Speaker 2: so we're back. Bruno has become probably the first academic
Speaker 2: to establish himself as an expert on the concentration camp
Speaker 2: system from the inside. And this is an issue because
Speaker 2: number one, Bruno doesn't know much about the overall system
Speaker 2: and he's going to fib about some of what he sees.
Speaker 2: And I want to quote from that article by Griffin
Speaker 2: Epstein again he attributed the success of camp tactics and
Speaker 2: traumatizing Jews not to Nazi torture, but to inherent Jewish weakness.
Speaker 2: Bettelheim claimed that Jewish prisoners were more likely than others
Speaker 2: to regress under repression to types of behavior characteristic of infas,
Speaker 2: infancy or early youth because of failings of the Jewish character.
Speaker 2: He claimed that concentration camps disintegrated the personality of the prisoner.
Speaker 2: In the final stage of disintegration, Jews would actually become Nazis,
Speaker 2: changing their personalities so as to accept the various values
Speaker 2: of the SS.
Speaker 5: Problem problemat Anti Semitism do a number on you.
Speaker 3: Oh, Bruno, you got fucked up, buddy.
Speaker 9: No, no, now, he would later claim, And this is
Speaker 9: what's really problematic to me, is that he was the
Speaker 9: unique inmate who is able to objectively analyze what was
Speaker 9: happening in the camp.
Speaker 2: No one else could do it. They didn't have the
Speaker 2: strength of mind, right, Only I had.
Speaker 7: The psychoanalytical Frankel didn't know what he was fucking.
Speaker 4: He was other people's lives. But you know, he was
Speaker 4: really a wist.
Speaker 2: He is interned with in his friends at Buchenwald and
Speaker 2: at Dacau are psychoanalysts, prominent ones like he's good. He's
Speaker 2: there with them, right, and they survive, you know. Pollot
Speaker 2: continues quote. He wrote that he asked hundreds of German
Speaker 2: Jewish prisoners why they had not left Germany rather than
Speaker 2: submit to the degradation inflicted upon them by the Nazis,
Speaker 2: and he asked more than one hundred older political prisoners
Speaker 2: if they would reveal the horrors of camp life if
Speaker 2: they were freed and managed to reach safe territory, and
Speaker 2: that in collecting data for his psychological observations, he came
Speaker 2: into personal contact with at least fifteen hundred prisoners in
Speaker 2: the two camps. He was able to interact with so
Speaker 2: many inmates, he said, because he worked in at least
Speaker 2: twenty different labor details and slept in five different barracks.
Speaker 2: Given his sockmanning assignment. The first claim seems unlikely. The
Speaker 2: second is untrue. Prisoners were required to write their block
Speaker 2: numbers on their correspondence, and Bettlheim marked all his letters
Speaker 2: from Dacou Block twenty two and from Bukenwald Block seventeen.
Speaker 2: So again he makes this claim about I was at
Speaker 2: all of these different locations, and so I talked to
Speaker 2: and that's why that's why there's academic rigor, because I
Speaker 2: talked to a representative sample and we just know that
Speaker 2: he didn't, right, because we know where he marks his
Speaker 2: letters from.
Speaker 4: When do people start to get skeptical about what he
Speaker 4: had said it?
Speaker 2: Really there is a lot of the Jewish community is
Speaker 2: immediately skeptical, Like people get pissed at this because he's
Speaker 2: blaming them, right, But it's like kind of modern Holocaust
Speaker 2: scholarship really starts to come after And we'll talk about
Speaker 2: this some in part two in I think the seventies
Speaker 2: is when that becomes much more common. But this is
Speaker 2: this essay and Bruno, because Bruno writes other things about
Speaker 2: the Holocaust, he is the primary source for the movie
Speaker 2: Sophie's Choice. Really yes, yes, And one of the things
Speaker 2: that's really problematic about that is Sophie's Choice is about
Speaker 2: a death camp, and Bruno doesn't know anything about the
Speaker 2: death camps, and he's very much generalizing his experience in
Speaker 2: this period of time about it to a later period
Speaker 2: of time in a way that transmits a lot of
Speaker 2: inaccuracies down you know, as a result, because I've.
Speaker 5: Never seen Sophie's Choice, is it?
Speaker 4: Is it worth it?
Speaker 7: Don't?
Speaker 2: I don't know how to answer that question. It's not
Speaker 2: my my I think the Holocaust movie that I find
Speaker 2: like most intellectually interesting is this old Soviet era one
Speaker 2: called The Shop on Main Street that is a out
Speaker 2: the air like a village that gets taken by the
Speaker 2: Nazis and the arianization process. But I don't know, like
Speaker 2: that's such a Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: I feel like I prefer to get my examination of
Speaker 5: like fascism through sci fi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 4: It's just too it's.
Speaker 5: Too upsetting to watch a thing that is actually about
Speaker 5: the Holocaust. Yeah, Whereas like the lessons and the morals
Speaker 5: and like the psychological dilemmas and stuff, I'd rather like
Speaker 5: see through the frame of like Aliens the Cardassians.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, it's much easier to to just the Nazis
Speaker 7: through Cardassia.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So very little complaint is made initially about the
Speaker 2: time that all of these sources go unnamed. He'll just say, oh,
Speaker 2: believe me because all these guys said this, right, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to tell you who they were, even though again,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of other people who survive and his
Speaker 2: analysis of how camp inmates react to their situations. One
Speaker 2: of the things people point out is that, rather than
Speaker 2: comporting with other accounts from inside the camps. His analysis
Speaker 2: of how people behave and why comports with Freudian psychiatry. Right,
Speaker 2: and that's worth noting. In a critical article about Bettleheim
Speaker 2: for Psychohistory Review, Paul Rosen writes, it is still memorable
Speaker 2: and shocking how Bettelheim, in his nineteen forty three article
Speaker 2: thought that a prisoner had reached the final stage of
Speaker 2: adjustment to the camp situation when he had changed his
Speaker 2: personality so as to accept as his own the values
Speaker 2: of the Gestapo. In nineteen thirty six and a Freud
Speaker 2: in a book written while her father was alive and
Speaker 2: in the spirit of the work of his disciples, Sandor
Speaker 2: Farinsky described the defense of identifying with the aggressor, and
Speaker 2: Bettelheim was giving concrete illustrations of this unconscious, self defeating process.
Speaker 2: So the allegation is he is massaging his experiences so
Speaker 2: that they fit this psychoanalytic framework, right, that he is
Speaker 2: already accepted as valid, and that he wants to be
Speaker 2: respected in right, look.
Speaker 5: For evidence to support the ideas they already believe.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And one of the real issues here is
Speaker 2: that you know, it's not It's not the case that
Speaker 2: no one in the camps reacted this way, right, there
Speaker 2: are there were prisoners who attempted to ingratiate themselves with
Speaker 2: the SS who you know, who did stuff like what
Speaker 2: Bruno describes. That is a thing that happens. You can
Speaker 2: find cases like that in all of the camps. But
Speaker 2: he one of the things so claim is that like
Speaker 2: there isn't prisoner resistance, and there's a ton of prisoner resistance.
Speaker 2: Prisoners are constantly acting to sabotage the camps, to sabotage
Speaker 2: the SS guards. That is a thing that happens at
Speaker 2: every camp. It's a thing that happens at Bukenvald while
Speaker 2: he's there, Right, he knows that there's prisoner resistance, and
Speaker 2: he he erases that from his story because it doesn't
Speaker 2: comport with psychoanalytically what he thinks he should be reporting
Speaker 2: on there.
Speaker 4: Right, he's a very unethical, unreliable guy.
Speaker 3: Yes and yes, yes in ways.
Speaker 5: There's like not enough other voices to be able for
Speaker 5: people to be able to recognize that as quickly as
Speaker 5: you would hoped they would be able to.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: And he's also going to he does a lot of
Speaker 2: victim blaming. He will repeatedly criticize Jews for taking acts
Speaker 2: that provoke anti Semites, and in nineteen forty seven work,
Speaker 2: he describes anti Semitism as being caused in part by
Speaker 2: the failure of Jewish people to see anti Semites as
Speaker 2: individuals and to understand them. One scholar, Peter Bloss, Doctor
Speaker 2: Peter Bloss, has stated many Jews were offended because he
Speaker 2: felt that to some degree the Jews provoked the actions
Speaker 2: of the Nazis. So he is criticized again at the time,
Speaker 2: but a lot of folks like Eisenhower, who certainly aren't
Speaker 2: plugged into the community of Jewish survivors, are like, this
Speaker 2: sounds right to me.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, I am misunderstood.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The issue here isn't that Bruno has no right to
Speaker 2: a different opinion about these things. Right, Every inmate has
Speaker 2: a different experience, and everyone reacts. And I'm not even
Speaker 2: blaming if prisoners attempt to befriend SS guards to survive.
Speaker 2: I'm certainly not blaming anybody for doing that. You do
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck you have to do to get it
Speaker 2: through that experience, and that's going to include a lot
Speaker 2: of ugly things, you know, and.
Speaker 5: Also acting like you support them is different than what's
Speaker 5: maybe going on internally.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am.
Speaker 2: I am strongly of the opinion that when it comes
Speaker 2: to what people do in the camps, we certainly can't
Speaker 2: judge any what it was in that position that said,
Speaker 2: I think we can judge the stuff that Brunoa is afterwards, right,
Speaker 2: And he's going to give a lot of contradictory stories
Speaker 2: enough that we can't really say in every instance what happened,
Speaker 2: but we can safely say he twisted his experiences later
Speaker 2: in recollection to make points that he wanted to make.
Speaker 2: And again, this is going to have a big influence
Speaker 2: on early Holocaust scholarship. The film Sophie's Choice is heavily
Speaker 2: based upon his recollections of camp life, and much of
Speaker 2: writing on the matter seems to exist not to reveal
Speaker 2: truths about the Holocaust, but to separate himself as an
Speaker 2: individual from the massive Jews who suffered and were annihilated.
Speaker 2: Bruno even admitted later that the quote main problem for
Speaker 2: him during his time incarcerated was to safeguard his ego
Speaker 2: in such a way that, by if any good luck,
Speaker 2: he should regain liberty, he would be approximately the same
Speaker 2: person he was when deprived of liberty.
Speaker 5: I wonder though also that he knew that people were
Speaker 5: working on the outside to get him out. Yes, yes,
Speaker 5: but that probably really impacted how he viewed himself in
Speaker 5: the camp because he was like, no one else has
Speaker 5: like this into the American government trying to get them
Speaker 5: a visa, Like I am special, I do deserve to
Speaker 5: be freed in this way that other people don't, because
Speaker 5: that's been sort of his m his whole life is, yes,
Speaker 5: you know, to view himself as better than those that
Speaker 5: other people assimilate him or view him as being like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's a really good like this
Speaker 2: this need for him to feel special and better even
Speaker 2: than like his fellow inmates. Colors how he writes about
Speaker 2: this in a very interesting way.
Speaker 4: And it allowed him to keep that belief.
Speaker 5: Yeahs, because there was an element that he was special
Speaker 5: and different because he had these people working for him.
Speaker 5: So it was it completely unfounded.
Speaker 2: And that's another reason why. Also it's so problematic that
Speaker 2: because obviously his experiences this is a portion of the
Speaker 2: Holocaust that's super important to understand the period of time
Speaker 2: when he's in these camps, that's a part of the
Speaker 2: concentration camp story. But the experience of this guy who
Speaker 2: number one has a good chance of surviving, knows that
Speaker 2: from the outset pretty much, and has people working for
Speaker 2: him on the outside, as opposed to Hungarian Jews in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, right who there's no one coming, right like,
Speaker 2: we have fallen off the edge of the planet.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 2: His experience is as different from that person's as a
Speaker 2: regular person not in camps is from his Bruno's experience, Right.
Speaker 4: Like these are you're not forced to face the same thing.
Speaker 5: You're not forced to face the same level of despair
Speaker 5: and yeah, and certain death and abandonment. And you know,
Speaker 5: you can avoid this stuff that I think creates it
Speaker 5: makes you different in your brain that just like fundamentally
Speaker 5: changes who you are.
Speaker 4: He was able to like avoid that, and.
Speaker 2: He's He's going to come to one other very weird
Speaker 2: conclusion because one of the results of this is he
Speaker 2: becomes obsessed with the idea of the total institution, which
Speaker 2: the constant tration camp is a total institution, right, one
Speaker 2: that completely dominates your life right while you're in it.
Speaker 2: And he starts to wonder, obviously, the Nazis created a
Speaker 2: total institution to destroy people. What if you did the
Speaker 2: same thing for what if you made a good concentration camp.
Speaker 2: Oh god, and this is going to be his chief
Speaker 2: motivation as a child development expert.
Speaker 3: That's a leap. I don't know that I'd go there.
Speaker 3: Seems kind of problematic.
Speaker 4: Buddy's but I can't.
Speaker 2: I did a good one. Well that sucked, but I
Speaker 2: think I can fix it.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: That is the end of part one. How are you feeling, Allison?
Speaker 5: I feel like I know where we're going and I'm
Speaker 5: and I'm terrified.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's uh. Next episode we will be Bruno
Speaker 2: in the United States and we will be talking about
Speaker 2: how he redefines the care of children with autism. And again,
Speaker 2: he is not treating kids with autism almost exclusively. Not
Speaker 2: I mean, presumably some of them are are children with autism,
Speaker 2: but most of them are just rich kids that he
Speaker 2: is abusing. He's abusing all of the kids. Let's be
Speaker 2: clear about that.
Speaker 5: And I think it's also I would urge people to
Speaker 5: look into rfk's wellness farms that he has been speaking about.
Speaker 4: And there is a there is a an.
Speaker 5: Instinct that that remains throughout history, that that we could
Speaker 5: just shake certain things out of certain people, and it
Speaker 5: is incredibly harmful and false.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is that is absolutely like the tactic
Speaker 2: he is going to take, is that, like, if you
Speaker 2: this is because that's that's his attitude about the total institution.
Speaker 2: I saw how concentration camps altered the personalities of the
Speaker 2: people interned there. You can alter a child who is
Speaker 2: acting in a way that you see as problematic by
Speaker 2: creating a total institution to reform them, right, And that's
Speaker 2: his attitude towards what he calls autism, what he calls schizophrenia.
Speaker 2: We can cure all of these by changing by creating
Speaker 2: a total institution, you know, So that's problematic? All right, Allison,
Speaker 2: do you want to plug anything right at the end?
Speaker 2: Here for where people can find you.
Speaker 5: Yes, you can order my new romcom novel Save the
Speaker 5: Date anywhere books are sold.
Speaker 4: And you can also follow my.
Speaker 5: Substack Emotional Support Lady for weekly writings about all things
Speaker 5: mental health. And I'm also available as relationship coach seeing
Speaker 5: individuals and couples.
Speaker 2: All right, awesome, Well Alison, thank you so much. We
Speaker 2: will be back on Thursday. Until then, everybody, try not
Speaker 2: to do this.
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