Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim was a brilliant man but, faults or not, he has been the victim of some extraordinary character assassinations, enough to make one wonder about the sanity of his inquisitors. Consider the evaluation below and wonder what was really on their minds...

Executive summary: Fraudulent child psychologist

Many of his theories have been discredited, most prominently that which tried to assign blame of autism to poor parenting. Further issues arose when it was discovered that he did not actually have any credential from the University of Vienna, in fact never studying there at all; and in 1991 plagiarism revealed by stories in both Newsweek and the Washington Post. Extensive allegations of sexual abuse are documented in Richard Pollak's work, The Creation of Dr. B, which also delves further into Bettelheim's deceptions.