Letter

To the Editor: As someone who knew Bruno Bettelheim very well (I worked with him as a counselor for thirteen years and succeeded him as Director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago for twenty years), I was glad to see your review (Spring 2010) by Professor Kenneth Kidd of David James Fisher's Bettelheim: Living and Dying. Dr. Fisher, more than any of Bettelheim's three biographers, has captured the essence of the man that I knew. Fisher was able to acknowledge both the angel and the devil in Bettelheim.

I am moved to write because I am concerned about the continuing repetition of some of the fallacies of Richard Pollak's book, The Creation of Dr. B. Perhaps most troubling is Professor Kidd's assessment of the book as a reliable document, largely because of the extensive research that Pollak did. Since I was part of his evidence (we talked for many hours) and personally know the people from the Orthogenic School who talked with him, I also know that the presentation of the results of his research was not always accurate. He repeatedly reported only the negative that was told him, or he reported what he was told in such a way that distorted it. For example, he called the Orthogenic School a house of fear, and quoted me in the same paragraph as saying that Bruno could be a bastard, giving the impression that I thought the school was sometimes a house of fear. I, in fact, thought it was the warmest haven I could imagine. And I still think Bruno was, sometimes, a bastard. But he also was, sometimes, one of the most empathic, supportive people I've ever known.

Throughout the whole book it was as though Pollak would shout the bad (a former parent's report that Bruno made his wife feel guilty and miserable), and whisper or not say the good (that this man and his wife were endlessly grateful for saving their daughter's life and enabling her to be the most mature, reliable, and emotionally stable of their children).