by Richard Pollak ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 8, 1997
A thorough demolition of the reputation of Bruno Bettelheim, who is depicted here as tyrannical, arrogant, cruel, and above all a consummate liar. Unlike Nina Sutton, who approached the subject of her recent sympathetic psychobiography (Bettelheim, p. 589) as a noble old gentlemen, Pollak initially regarded him as ``the evil Doctor Sivana, arch-nemesis of Captain Marvel.'' A former executive editor of the Nation, Pollak first met Bettelheim in 1969 when he sought to learn more about his brother, who had attended the self-styled psychotherapist's Orthogenic School, a residential treatment center for disturbed children. The negative impression that Bettelheim made in this decidedly unfelicitous meeting was not greatly altered by Pollak's research. He examines several areas of Bettelheim's life especially closely. He questions the veracity of Bettelheim's published accounts of his concentration camp experience, upon which he built a reputation as an international authority not only on the camps but on the Holocaust itself. And after interviewing former residents and counselors at the Orthogenic School and examining Bettelheim's writings, Pollak concludes that his subject created a climate of fear there through his use of ``Nazi-Socratic methods'' and that his claims of success in treating disturbed children are largely unsubstantiated. Pollak is especially critical of his work on autism, which Bettelheim mistakenly attributed to bad mothering and for which he claimed remarkable but unproven treatment success. As for Bettelheim's well-known work on child- rearing on the Israeli kibbutz, Pollak characterizes it as ``a sea of prose that, like most of the author's previous works, lacks any systematic source notes, producing a vague scholarship blurred further by the dense fog of anonymity that envelops the book.'' Further, Pollak asserts that Bettelheim plagiarized parts of The Uses of Enchantment, his 1976 study of the psychological meaning of fairy tales, and he backs up this claim with convincing quotes. While hard on Bettelheim, Pollak is equally hard on the lay press for what he sees as its gullibility in accepting Bettelheim's self-created image. Strong, well-documented charges that are certain to stir rebuttals.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-80938-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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