Bettelheim: A Life and a Legacy

by Nina Sutton and Out Of Print

Book Overview

Who was Bruno Bettelheim? The brilliant discoverer of a unique method of treating psychotic children, justly acclaimed the world over? Or the brutal and despotic bully who was denounced after his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465006353
• ISBN13: 9780465006359
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 606 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

kudos for forgotten psychoanalyst

I found this book used in a bookstore, not knowing how riveting it would be. Bettleheim was indeed troubled for a number of reasons, but his insights and writings on childhood mental illness are astounding to me as a physician even now in 2009. Ms. Sutton has an amazing insight into the psyche for a layperson. She artfully portrays both the negative and the positve aspects of this incredibly talented man. Despite the onslaught of aspersions to his character after his death, Ms. Sutton conveys so well the contributions that he made, in spite of his faults. A wonderful read.

Fair, scholarly, close to the final opinion

The Uses of Enchantment (Penguin Psychology) First, it is good to get all evidence and opinion out and above board. This should be true of everyone no matter if one is an ethnical or religious person Jew or Christian. Then, there is a matter of how this should be done? Where it should be done? When it should be done? Why? For instance, if persons or person passionate few agrieved against a group or political body they should attack prudently but immediately. Strike when the iron is hot as the old adage goes. No time to waste! Whistle blowing on companies are best done by individual(s) when their is enough information and evidence to find guilty in a court of law. And so should it be with doctors and hospitals, persons and people of positions of extra-ordinary trust and power over others. Not only for the patient-personal reasons but so the rest of us can be aware of malpratice and the knowledge that all that is white and professional fascade is NOT okay. Put on guard by those who are insiders. However, and this is how the case of trying to destroy the reputation and thereby Dr. Bettelheim was done, it was done long after the fact, after the doctor was dead(and as it handily happened for his detractors by his own hand) and in such a dramatic concerted media trial like ganging

The gift and tragedy of a surviver as child psychologist

I simply wish to say that there would no controversy if thoughtful, sensitive people were in control of their own emotions and were objective enough to put Bruno Bettelheim and his times in perspecitve. This is one of the implicit themes of the book.The author, a journalist, has study the facts and has the intuition to understand as much as any biographer can at this time a complex suffering personality. I hope only that the time will come when such a understanding can be objectively drawn. But meanwhile the biographer has made at least this attentive and by no means unskeptical reader understand the controversy and the facts of the case are not always one and the same...

This is insightful biography

Nina Sutton has accomplished a difficult task. She writes an insightful biography which is respectful to truth and to her numerous extensive sources. Her ability to comprehend the complexity of his life and his motives and the unique therapeutic milieu which he created are amazing. Moreover, her account of his work, is a brilliant intellectual biography which is thoroughly integrated with knowledge of his personal life. Sutton demonstrates a very complex and sophisticated understanding of the concepts of psychoanalysis, in her treatment of his writing and in her understanding of his purposes. She applies her deep and appropriate insights to his life. The book is illuminating even to those who knew him well. Her treatment is deeply researched, and very balanced. While fully aware of his sometimes difficult personality, she at the same time maintains a larger vision of his achievements and purposes. Anyone would want their biography written by a biographer of such intellectual scope and insightful humanity.

Review quotes & other comments, submitted by the translator

I consider this a truly excellent book, written and researched with great honesty - but as I am its translator, I cannot be considered a disinterested party, or even less an average reader! For that reason, I prefer to simply quote from some of the very many favourable comments that the book has attracted: "A well-written, magnificent, and fascinating book about a fascinating personality." Elie Wiesel, Boston, March 1996 "Not long after she started to research her biography, Nina Sutton found herself wondering whose life it was she was writing (...) Odd conditions, indeed, for a biographer to meet at the start of her work - but Sutton has dealt with them magnificently. In her excellent book she has not only done the usual painstaking work, written it up with the grace that distinguishes the exciting from the boring biography, and well understood the psychoanalytic and the European background; she also has that extra touch of biographer's intuition that enables her to put all the differing views of the man into one whole." Rosemary Dinnage, New York Review of Books, New York, June 20, 1996 "Nina Sutton has accomplished a triumph of biographical fair-mindedness. She not only closely scrutinizes Bettelheim's whole life, but at the same time she judiciously weighs all the tragic implications of the controversies over his work that broke out after his suicide in 1990." Paul Roazen, author of "How Freud worked", March 1995 "This is the most unusual, exciting and disturbing biography I have read... Sutton's idealized image of Bettelheim was brutally shattered soon after she begun... To her credit, she persisted in her research... Her result is a truly remarkable portrait of a very complex, brilliant, but haunted man." Dr. Ruth Bennett, Reflections (London) Winter 1996 "Nina Sutton's biography of Bettelheim, the first to appear, is admirable in every respect: without concealing any of his weaknesses or the sometimes odious sides of his behaviour, she pieces together a portrait that carries the ring of truth." Roland Jaccard, Le Monde (Paris) May 12, 1995 "Bettelheim was widely canonized while he lived and demonized after he died, but in this book Nina Sutton has taken the far more difficult course of seeking to capture the entire man, all his flaws and all his virtues. (Her) "Bettelheim" is more than a remarkable biography; it is a model of the biographer's art." Walter Kendrick, coeditor of "Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey 1924-25" "A rigorous work, and a passionate one. While hiding none of the most unpleasant aspects of Bettlehim's character, it stays away from any scandalous intent, always bringing to light the complexity of a life that experienced success and glory, but also drama and suffering" Fabio Gambaro, L'Espresso (Rome) June 2, 1995 "Nina Sutton has produced a well-researched psychobiography that makes engrossing reading. She tells the sory of this protean life as if she were wri