Book Review: Recollections And Reflections

If I am not mistaken, this text is the last to have been competed by Dr Bettelheim before his death in 1990. It stands as a suitable, and moving, summary of many of the principal concerns of his life; even better, it makes an excellent introduction to this great psychologist's life and work. The eighteen essays contained in the text are all lucid, illuminating and stylishly written in that easy-going, unique and immediate manner that Dr Bettelheim's readers have come to expect.

Much of the material has never been published before; all of it is rich in autobiographical detail. Indeed, this text represents the closest we can expect to a proper autobiography.

The essays are divided into three main sections: 'On Freud and Psychoanalysis', 'On Children and Myself', and 'On Jews and the Camps'. Although my initial interest was focused on the first section, I was pleased to find all three to be always more than interesting, and, at times containing deeply insightful and moving passages. The section on Freud and psychoanalysis contains a number of important essays. Bettelheim on Jones (and Fromm) is an important critical essay on the influence of the biographer on biographic studies. Similarly, the essay on Freud and Jung's relationship to Sabina Spielrein brings an important perspective to this controversial chapter in the development of psychoanalytic thought. The essays on Freud's Vienna, Bergasse 19, and on Bettelheim's own discovery of psychoanalysis (at the age of thirteen) are all of historical significance. Bettelheim is rightly famous for his founding of the Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago and the chapters in the second section of the text focus on many of his conclusions derived from his years as its Director. To me, however, the most interesting essay in this section deals with Bettelheim's account of Anne Sullivan's work with Helen Keller and its relationship to Bettelheim's 'milieu therapy'. The final section, dealing with, among related topics, Bettelheim's return to Dachau, is both challenging and deeply moving. It seems to me to be the most passionately written of the three sections and, I would suggest, the section of the text that held the most personal significance to Bettelheim.

The text is dedicated to Bettelheim's wife, Trude, whose death seems to have been a central factor in Bettelheim's decision to take his own life. Trude, and her relationship with Bettelheim, permeate the space 'between the lines' of the text.

For anyone interested in Bettelheim's work, and it's relationship to his personal and professional life, this book is indispensable.

Ernesto Spinelli.