Freud's Vienna & Other Essays

by Bruno Bettelheim

Overview

From one of history's most famous child psychologists comes a collection of wide-ranging essays in which he reflects on the people, events, and cultural influences that shaped him and his work.
 
“Combining humanistic wisdom and clinical insight, the volume reflects eminent psychoanalyst Bettelheim's concerns as both child therapist and Holocaust survivor.”—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679731887
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/02/1991
Edition description:	1st Vintage Books ed
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Bruno Bettelheim was born in Vienna in 1903. He received his doctorate at the University of Vienna and came to America in 1939, after a year in the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. He was a distinguished professor of education and professor of both psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago. He died in 1990.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
Part I.	On Freud and Psychoanalysis	1
	Freud's Vienna	3
	Berggasse 19	18
	How I Learned About Psychoanalysis	24
	Two Views of Freud (Jones's and Fromm's)	39
	A Secret Asymmetry	57
	Lionel Trilling on Literature and Psychoanalysis	82
Part II.	On Children and Myself	95
	Essential Books of One's Life	97
	The Art of Motion Pictures	112
	The Child's Perception of the City	127
	Children and Museums	141
	Children and Television	149
	Master Teacher and Prodigious Pupil	156
	Feral Children and Autistic Children	166
Part III.	On Jews and the Camps	189
	Janusz Korczak: A Tale for Our Time	191
	Hope for Humanity	207
	Children of the Holocaust	214
	Returning to Dachau	230
	Freedom from Ghetto Thinking	243
	Index	273

Editorial Reviews

Combining humanistic wisdom and clinical insight, this gathering of 18 essays reflects eminent psychoanalyst Bettelheim's concerns as both child therapist and Holocaust survivor. One provocative piece profiles Sabina Spielrein, who supposedly had a secret affair with her therapist Carl Jung, a relationship said to have played a role in Jung's breakup with Freud. Other outstanding pieces cover Bettelheim's visit to Dachau extermination camp in 1955, where he had been a prisoner; and explore sex and death in his native Vienna, birthplace of psychoanalysis. Bettelheim writes movingly of Miep Gies, the woman who sheltered Anne Frank from the Nazis. Articles on movies as an art form, and on children in relation to TV, museums and cities are bland. Bettelheim concludes with a revision of his 1962 attack on ``Jewish ghetto thinking,'' which he claims led to passivity and resignation on the part of Holocaust victims--a viewpoint challenged by many historians. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A well-known child psychoanalyst and survivor of two Nazi concentration camps, 85-year-old Bettelheim ( The Uses of Enchantment , LJ 6/1/76) reveals his life influences. In 18 essays collected under three headings--Freud, children, and the Holocaust--the author recalls how he got involved in psychoanalysis, influential books and movies, how Annie Sullivan's work with the severely handicapped Helen Keller foreshadowed his ``milieu therapy'' with autistic children, and how the psychological scars of children of Holocaust survivors rarely heal due to an inability to mourn adequately. This readable collection, which is nostalgic, personal, and informative, evokes strong feelings, especially the essay on Jewish ``ghetto thinking,'' which describes an ethnic inertia that helped march ``millions of people, like lemmings . . . to their own deaths.'' Recommended for larger psychology collections.-- Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix

Library Journal

Eighteen essays by the late psychoanalyst and child psychologist. The broad topics are grouped into three categories: Freud and psychoanalysis, raising and educating children, and the Jews during and after the Holocaust. They are written with professional as well as personal experience and insight. The tone of the essays is non- technical and directed towards a general audience. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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