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
BOOK REVIEW
A fascinating memoir that helps laypeople understand the therapeutic process. Veteran psychotherapist Akeret (Photoanalysis, 1973, etc.) introduces five former patients, including a Jewish woman who is intent on remaking herself into a Spanish flamenco dancer; a man in love with a polar bear who literally wants to consummate the relationship; and a very gifted, if highly narcissistic and promiscuous, French writer who, when the author visits him after many years, reveals that he intends to make his suicide the subject of his last novel. In recalling his work with these five, Akeret reveals a great deal about his humanistic and existential approach to psychotherapy—one of his teachers was Erich Fromm—and illustrates how often it requires verbal restraint so that the practitioner may enter the patient's emotional and imaginative worlds. At other times, however, Akeret uses intuition and countertransference (the therapist's deepest emotional responses to the patient) to make unconventional, sometimes startling, interventions. With the polar bear's lover, this includes accompanying the patient to the circus cage where the object of his adoration dwells. Does psychotherapy ``work''?—i.e., make better the lives of individuals who often have invested enormous emotional energy and pain, not to mention money, in it? Akeret vaguely reports that of the five patients, three ``generally feel much better''; two don't. His sample is obviously too small for these results to be meaningful, and therapy is in any case more an art practiced between two idiosyncratic individuals than a science. Also, as Akeret rightly notes, there may be a values conflict between what the therapist thinks the patient needs and what the latter wants. Like Irvin Yalom's Love's Executioner, which it resembles, this book takes readers into the interpersonal nuances and occasional drama of psychotherapy—and into the human comedy—in a colorful, accessible, insightful way.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03779-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
A persuasive if belabored dissent from the traditional theory that people are motivated to learn by reward and punishment. Deci (Psychology/Univ. of Rochester) and Flaste (former science and health editor of the New York Times; editor of The New York Times Book of Science Literacy, 1990) argue that what most motivates people to learn, complete a task, or change behavior is a strengthening of their sense of acting autonomously, i.e., due regard for their needs, perspectives, and working style. In developing this point, the authors make some important distinctions, arguing, for example, that encouraging autonomy must at times be carefully balanced with limit-setting and that autonomy is not the same as individualism. (Individualists, they maintain, easily can become narcissistic ``loners'' while truly autonomous individuals balance self-fulfillment and interpersonal concerns.) Unfortunately, the authors nearly beat their point to death through repetition and resort to generalizations. Rarely do they cite quantitative results from the many psychology studies to which they refer, and they inadequately distinguish among the needs and pressures of various educational, industrial/corporate, social, and other settings. Most frustratingly, their book is limited largely to theory; they only vaguely limn some possible methods for helping individuals draw on and develop intrinsic creative energy rather than submitting to internal compulsions or extrinsic demands. At times, this results in conclusions that seem self-evident, e.g., ``People who are more autonomy oriented have higher self-esteem and are more self-actualized.'' Deci and Flaste thus develop a fairly good case for autonomy's key role in increasing motivation—particularly in helping people persist despite frustrations in trying to reach a goal—but their argument is blandly written, overstated, overgeneralized, and overlong.
Pub Date: June 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14047-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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