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Bruno Bettelheim considered his ideas about the functional etiology of “childhood schizophrenia” one of his major contributions (private communication, ). We have found that aspects of Bettelheim's therapeutic approach ostensibly designed for autistic children work surprisingly well with children who were neglected or who were severely maltreated physically, sexually, or emotionally. This correspondence is not accidental. Bettelheim was vitally interested in the effects of severe maltreatment. He hypothesized that children became autistic because their experience with their mother was psychologically analogous to the severe abuse and degradation he himself had suffered in concentration camps.
His treatment strategy was aimed specifically at undoing the psychological damage parental maltreatment had caused. While in his writings Bettelheim emphasized his work with autistic children, at any one time the Orthogenic School had no more than 5-10% autistic children. Most of the students were maltreated. We are not referring to minor incidents. For instance, Bettelheim spoke of children at the school whose parents had tried to murder them, of a father who tried to cut off his son's penis, and parents who treated their children sadistically or with total indifference.
Although we did not work with Bettelheim at the Orthogenic School, we spoke with him extensively in the last 13 years of his life. Others can speak with more authority about what actually transpired at the school. But we had the unique opportunity of knowing Bettelheim's last thoughts about maltreated children, what in the school's approach he felt had been constructive for them, and how he viewed his life's work.