Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Released on February 27, 2025 | Host: Robert Evans and Allyson Raskin | Produced by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In this gripping second installment of Behind the Bastards, hosts Robert Evans and Allyson Raskin delve deep into the controversial life of Bruno Bettelheim, a Holocaust survivor whose post-war career as a psychologist and director of the Orthogenic School has sparked intense debate. The episode meticulously uncovers Bettelheim's methods, ideologies, and the lasting impact of his work on the treatment of emotionally disturbed children.

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Bruno Bettelheim's Early Life and Arrival in the United States

Bruno Bettelheim escaped the horrors of the Holocaust and arrived in the United States with little to his name after his family business was destroyed. Initially settling in Portland, Oregon, he soon relocated to Chicago, drawn by its European-like layout and vibrant academic environment. His early career focused on child development and educational reform, aiming to reshape the lives of troubled children.

Notable Quote:

“There’s no wrong way to react to having been in a concentration camp.” – Robert Evans [00:04]

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Establishment and Policies of the Orthogenic School

In 1944, Bettelheim became the director of the Orthogenic School, a residential facility established in 1915 intended for emotionally disturbed children of above-average intelligence. Under his leadership, the school underwent significant changes that reflected his rigid and racially biased ideologies.

Key Transformations:

• Racist Policies: Bettelheim formally instituted a whites-only policy, explicitly excluding non-white children under the guise of maintaining a conducive environment for recovery. He stated that racial diversity would "confuse the white kids and harm their recovery" [10:18].

• Affluent Demographics: By setting high tuition rates ($8,000 to $12,000 annually), Bettelheim ensured that only wealthy families could afford admission, effectively excluding poorer children.

• Christian Acculturation: The school emphasized Christian values, celebrating only Christmas and attempting to acculturate children from non-Christian backgrounds into white Christian norms [10:55].

Notable Quote:

“We are racist as fuck. Just say it's whites.” – Bettelheim via Robert Evans [10:18]

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Bruno's Methods and Abuse Allegations

Despite advocating for understanding the internal logic behind children's behaviors, Bettelheim's methods were anything but empathetic. Allegations of physical and emotional abuse are pervasive, with numerous former students recounting harrowing experiences.

Abusive Practices:

• Physical Violence: Bettelheim employed unpredictable and brutal physical punishment, including slaps and neck chops, under the pretense of correcting behavior. One student described living in "terror of his beatings and abject animal terror" [17:25].

• Emotional Manipulation: He discouraged regular contact with parents, insisting that prolonged separation was essential for the child's recovery. This policy fostered dependency and control [23:18].

• Cult-like Environment: The school is described as having cult-like dynamics, with Bettelheim as the authoritarian leader who redefined medical terminology to fit his eugenic agenda [43:32].

Notable Quote:

“These beatings... stick in my memory as a grand performance of exultant rage.” – Ronald Angres, former student [36:07]

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Defenders vs. Critics

Bettelheim's legacy is a battleground between defenders who cite his high success rates in sending students to higher education and critics who highlight the severe abuse endured by students.

Defenders' Arguments:

• High Success Rates: Proponents argue that despite the harsh methods, many graduates achieved significant academic and professional success due to the school's rigorous discipline.

• Minimal Use of Violence: Some defenders acknowledge occasional physical interventions but frame them as necessary and less severe compared to other institutions of the time [21:49].

Critics' Counterpoints:

• Eugenic Ideologies: Critics assert that Bettelheim's work was steeped in eugenic beliefs, labeling non-white and physically disabled children as irreformable.

• Psychological Harm: Accusations that his treatment inflicted long-term psychological damage, reinforcing negative self-perceptions in children [42:42].

Notable Quote:

“He is the only person judging these kids.” – Robert Evans on Bettelheim's authority [43:34]

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Legacy and Final Years

Bettelheim's contributions to psychology, particularly his book The Empty Fortress, positioned him as a leading expert on autism. However, his theories, which wrongly attributed autism to "refrigerator mothers," have been thoroughly debunked. His later years were marred by professional backlash and personal turmoil, culminating in his suicide in 1990 shortly after his wife's death.

Legacy Highlights:

• Influential Work: The Empty Fortress popularized the now-discredited theory that autism originates from emotionally distant mothers.

• Ongoing Controversy: Posthumous criticism has continued to unravel the complexities of his methodologies and personal vendettas, particularly his unsubstantiated blame of parents for their children's conditions.

Notable Quote:

“Perhaps this sudden reversal helped me first to understand how the camps could destroy personality and later to resume with, I hope, greater insights and empathy.” – Bruno Bettelheim [55:41]

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Critical Reception and Historical Context

Academic figures like Terence Deprez have criticized Bettelheim for his egotistical and skewed interpretations of camp experiences and their application to psychology. Deprez argued that Bettelheim's perspectives were tainted by his sense of superiority and lack of genuine empathy for fellow survivors [65:37].

Notable Criticism:

“Bettelheim had felt superior to his fellow sufferers, and his account was factually marred by his egotistical obsession with autonomy.” – Paul Rosen Deprez [65:37]

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Conclusion

Bruno Bettelheim's life is a chilling example of how trauma and personal biases can distort professional practices, leading to widespread abuse under the guise of therapeutic intervention. This episode of Behind the Bastards serves as a sobering reminder to critically evaluate the legacies of influential figures and remain vigilant against the manipulation of vulnerable populations.

Final Reflections:

“There are so many choices that he makes that it's like, well, I don't really get where from.” – Robert Evans [71:46]

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Notable Quotes Summary

• Robert Evans at 00:04: “There's no wrong way to react to having been in a concentration camp.”

• Allyson Raskin at 10:18: “We are racist as fuck. Just say it's whites.”

• Ronald Angres at 36:07: “These beatings... stick in my memory as a grand performance of exultant rage.”

• Robert Evans at 43:34: “He is the only person judging these kids.”

• Bruno Bettelheim at 55:41: “Perhaps this sudden reversal helped me first to understand how the camps could destroy personality and later to resume with, I hope, greater insights and empathy.”

• Paul Rosen Deprez at 65:37: “Bettelheim had felt superior to his fellow sufferers, and his account was factually marred by his egotistical obsession with autonomy.”

• Robert Evans at 71:46: “There are so many choices that he makes that it's like, well, I don't really get where from.”

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Key Takeaways

• Ethical Violations: Bruno Bettelheim's tenure at the Orthogenic School was marked by severe ethical breaches, including racial discrimination and physical abuse.

• Misguided Theories: His flawed theories on autism have had lasting negative impacts, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and victim-blaming narratives.

• Cult-like Leadership: The Orthogenic School operated under a cult-like structure, with Bettelheim exerting absolute control over students and staff.

• Legacy Debunked: Subsequent research and survivor testimonies have largely discredited Bettelheim's methodologies and theories, highlighting the need for ethical reforms in psychological practices.

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Behind the Bastards continues to shed light on the dark corners of history, revealing how influential figures like Bruno Bettelheim can wield power destructively. This episode is a must-listen for those interested in the intersection of psychology, ethics, and historical atrocities.

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Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Coal Zone Media. Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people and problematic people. And we've got both this week with the story of Bruno Bettelheim, a man who is really, really testing my previous conclusion that, like, there's no. There's no wrong way to react to having been in a concentration camp. Maybe this way, Bruno might have. Might have been the gu. To figure out the wrong way.

[Allyson Raskin]

Had to lose all sympathy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. My guest with me again, as in part one, Allyson Raskin. Allison, how are you doing? It's the same day, but we pretend it's a separate one.

[Allyson Raskin]

I'm good. I didn't reveal in episode one, which I feel like will be more relevant for this part, of what of his life story is that I actually have had OCD since I was 4 years old. So I was someone who was treated for pretty severe mental illness as a young child and was put on Prozac when I was 4 and was actually incredibly thankful for my parents being proactive in that way and getting me the help that I needed. So I'm like, not someone that is at all against taking children's mental health seriously. And it's like, kind of a lot of the activism I do, but I think we're about to explore a scenario where that goes wrong.

[Robert Evans]

Horribly, horribly wrong.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yes, exactly.

[Robert Evans]

Well, it's also, you know, it's interesting because a big part of Bruno's story and a big part of, like, where people go wrong. Cause, like, as you said, it's good to be involved and care about your children's mental health and the mental health of children in general. Bruno, as a young man, takes this kid in who is, like, neurodivergent and her mom just like, I don't wanna raise a kid right. Find someone else to do it for me. And Bruno's whole business as an adult is not just, I'm helping kids who are having problems. It's I am taking these kids away from their rich parents who do not want to deal with them and handling them, you know, which is very different from the healthy version of this where you just. Because I have a lot of empathy. Even in this time, right. Where we talk about, like, he's diagnosing kids as things that we would not today, because they just don't. I'm not judgmental of someone who legitimately is trying to help kids. And it's just like, we called things by different names then. We didn't know as much as we know now. It's one thing to make errors. It's another thing to have your whole goal be what if a concentration camp, but nice for children, which is again, part of the motivating factor here.

[Allyson Raskin]

And also, we're still getting stuff wrong now.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Tons of them.

[Allyson Raskin]

Then it was. But it's still a flawed system. And there's also a lot of debate about the merits of diagnosing at all.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

I'm someone that has found comfort and, and sort of clarity in being diagnosed and have had my diagnosis my pretty much my whole life. But a lot of people don't feel that way. And so it's an interesting debate.

[Robert Evans]

And they feel totally, totally different about it than in the 40s. Like, one thing they do constantly is diagnose kids as psychotic. Right. Which you cannot today. That is not something that happens because like, like, like you. The idea that, like, you would diagnose a child as being a psychopath. Right. Is very normal then. Right.

[Allyson Raskin]

And then, well, now they'll do oppositional defiant disorder.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Right.

[Allyson Raskin]

Which is. Which is like a pathway or whatever towards that eventual diagnosis.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

But there are certain restraints around what age you can call people certain what age you can give them certain things.

[Robert Evans]

And that just like it's the wild west in Bruno's era.

[Kyle Tequila]

My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast, Crook County.

[Robert Evans]

I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old.

[Nancy Grace]

People are dying. Is he doing this every night?

[Kyle Tequila]

Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret double life as a mafia hitman.

[Robert Evans]

I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything.

[Maria Tremarke]

He was a freaking crazy man.

[Kyle Tequila]

He was my father and I had no idea about any of this until now. Crook county is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Welcome to the Criminalia podcast.

[Allyson Raskin]

I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Robert Evans]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Allyson Raskin]

Each season we explore a new theme.

[Robert Evans]

From poisoners to art thieves, we uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the end of.

[Allyson Raskin]

Each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nancy Grace]

Need the latest crime news fast. Whether it's the latest developments in a high profile case or urgent alerts about missing person, crime alert hourly update delivers the news you need to know as it happens, I'M Nancy Grace. And with our team of investigative reporters and experts, we bring you the top crime headlines you need to know every hour on the hour. Listen to Crime Alert, hourly Update on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here in Marion, Illinois.

[Nancy Grace]

An 11 year old girl brutally stabbed.

[Robert Evans]

To her father's longtime live in girlfriend, maintaining innocence but charged with her murder.

[Allyson Raskin]

I am confident that Julie Beverly is guilty.

[Robert Evans]

They've never found a weapon, Never made sense.

[Allyson Raskin]

Still doesn't make sense.

[Nancy Grace]

She found out she was pregnant in jail.

[Robert Evans]

The person who did it is still out there. Listen to Murder on Songbird road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.

[Nancy Grace]

You get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Now, Bruno has at the time we've, you know, we're starting up here, he has just gotten over to the US he has escaped the Holocaust and he has gotten a job. He started out as an academic. He had, you know, lost his family business. At this point he has no money. But this lady who, you know, he had helped raise her daughter is kind of taking care of them. Right. And the understanding is that they need to figure out something, but like they're not immediate, they're not like on the streets or whatever. Right. And Bruno very quickly is able to get work for himself, although there's also some problematic aspects because his initial gig, he gets hired to be an English teacher in Portland, Oregon, and then World War II starts and suddenly the idea of having an Austrian man teaching English is like, we're not really bullish on the Austrians right now. Even though you were a victim of the Nazis, we don't actually have a teaching position for you.

[Allyson Raskin]

It just feeds his, the persecution and everything that's happened to him until then.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Although it's also, there's a degree to which this works out well for Bruno because he doesn't really want to be an English teacher and he doesn't want to be in Oregon. He falls in love with the idea of the city of Chicago in part because it has a more European layout. So he finds it kind of more similar to where he'd come up. He is very interested in child development and educational reform. These are like academic interests. He's not a professional in these yet, but this is what he wants for himself. So he kind of works as an academic for a few years until in 1944, he receives his U.S. citizenship. That same year he gets the job that will be responsible for most of his fame and for most of the problematic things he's going to do in his life, which is directing the orthogenic school. Now, I know what you're saying, Robert. Orthogenic school sounds dystopian as fuck. That is a scary name for a school, and it is a scary name. The word orthogenic comes from Greek and it literally means straightening out. So the school for straightening out kids, That's a scary thing to call a school. It had been established in 1915, and it was a residential facility where kids were interned until their behavior was deemed to be fixed, Right? Like, that's the. Like where it is. So this is a. When you talk about a residential facility, some of them have elements, and this is certainly the case at the time of like a prison, right? Now, this is not one of those. This is for kids with resources, right? These are for kids with whose parents have money. So this is not like the. This is not like the worst versions of these facilities, right? And in fact, from the beginning, this is kind of viewed as a response to those facilities, which are a lot uglier. It was a unique place geared not just for emotionally disturbed kids, but for. And these are the terms they use at the time, but specifically for emotionally disturbed children of, quote, above average intelligence, right? Now, this means rich white kids, right? Ah, yes, yes. That when we say above average intellect, right? These are kids whose parents have money and thus we're. Our goal is to make sure they have a future, right?

[Allyson Raskin]

It would be fun to go through history and find all the different euphemisms.

[Robert Evans]

For rich white kids. And when the school is founded in 1915, they use these. They don't say, this is a school for rich white kids. They say, like, this is emotionally disturbed but above average intelligence kids, right? As soon as Bruno takes over, he's like, no, no, no. Let's just say it's a school for rich white kids. That's what we're doing, right? That's what we wanna do here, you know? And as soon as he takes over, his first job as director is to turn this into policy. Prior to him taking the director job, the school had not had a whites only policy on paper. Bruno institutes one. He's like, look, let's call a. We're racist as fuck. We're racist as fuck. Just say it's whites. And again, this school in 1915 isn't willing to say that in 44. Bruno's like, oh, obviously we're whites only.

[Allyson Raskin]

Like, you go right from a Concentration camp to like a whites only. Instituting a whites only policy. I mean, it feels so like directly a. I need to align myself with the people in power.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Allyson Raskin]

Like I can no longer be viewed as other. And so it's like this, right? Because I mean, some people at that time probably didn't, definitely didn't view Jews as white like that it would be like, you're not allowed to be at.

[Robert Evans]

This school, especially not at this time.

[Allyson Raskin]

No, it's his way of, of like making sure that he's in with the, with the people in power.

[Robert Evans]

And he does a lot of writing about his attitudes that like, he doesn't like Christianity either because he's not a religious guy, but he thinks it's better than Judaism. And so the school will be specifically a Christian school. Even when it sort of is educating kids who don't come from Christian families. He like tries to acculturate them. The only holiday they celebrate at the school is Christmas. So his attitude is very much. Even when the students are, you know, not from a Christian background, I want to acculturate them as white Christians. Right. And that is me.

[Allyson Raskin]

A Jewish man would love to do that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I know exactly how to celebrate Christmas now. Bruno justifies his whites only policy by arguing that racialized children, that means non white kids, would confuse the white kids and harm their recovery. The term racialized to describe kids that just aren't white. No, these kids, they can't handle the shock of seeing someone elicit white, that'll fuck up their recovery.

[Allyson Raskin]

That person doesn't look exactly like me. I have to commit a crime.

[Robert Evans]

I can't handle it. I can't handle it. I'm gonna go rob a bank. Now. Bruno also wrote that he was only interested in white students from quote, good high class stock. That meant kids whose families could afford to send them to college. He instituted a tuition of 8,000 to $12,000 a year to ensure that no poor children were educated. The orthogenic school, if you're curious, that's in the 40s. That's in the 40s.

[Nancy Grace]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

That is. This is like really, really like high grade. University education is what this costs per year. And the expectation is that you will put them in there at least for two years and many of them for like something like 10 to 12. Right. He really wants you to give your kid to him for that kid's entire childhood, otherwise he can't fix them. Right. That's his motivation.

[Allyson Raskin]

But then if you do, they come out. Great.

[Robert Evans]

But then, then they come out but.

[Allyson Raskin]

If they see a person with different color skin, they will start screaming.

[Robert Evans]

No, they've. You got to give. You got to let me have them until they're like 20, you know, make sure they don't see anybody else.

[Allyson Raskin]

They can't see anyone else or they will lose it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, there's like 40 to 60 kids at this institution at a given time. Now, the. Bruno also has another issue with the school. As soon as he takes over, you know, first job, make it expensive as shit, only white kids. Second job, he has a real issue with the fact that the Orthogonic School, you know, the motto is a place to go grow straight and tall, allows disabled kids to be educated there. And he doesn't like that because somebody with a physical disability can never go grow straight and tall in Bruno's eyes, right? So, again, what. The first things the Nazis do is go after people with dis. Specifically children with disabilities. This is how they test the gas chambers, right. Which are initially mobile execution vans for disabled people. What is one of the first things Bruno does when he starts this school? No more. Get those disabled kids out of here. None of them.

[Allyson Raskin]

I mean, he's really telling on himself, right, that he wrote that paper that people's reaction to being in a concentration camp is to become a Nazi.

[Robert Evans]

That was kind of your reaction, huh, Bruno?

[Allyson Raskin]

He was just like, no, I've just become a Nazi. Therefore everyone else must have as well, okay?

[Robert Evans]

In an article for Disability Studies Quarterly, Griffin Epstein writes, whereas prior to his tenure, the school offered a residential program for children with epilepsy and cerebral palsy, Bettelheim was certain that public institutions could handle such cases. This was a bold claim, given that public schools weren't mainstreamed in the United States until the Education for All Handicapped Children act of 1975 in the 40s. Thus, those public institutions handling children with epilepsy and CP were abusive. State institutions, group homes and hospitals. So he just kind of lies and says, ah, the schools can handle them. And the schools are like, oh, no, we just lock those kids up. We don't know what to do with them, you know?

[Allyson Raskin]

Well, in his opinion, that's handling them right.

[Robert Evans]

That's handling them right. Because it can't be fixed, you know, in his attitude, right? Bruno's second act as director of the Orthogenic school was to recruit a new population of students. And he focuses mostly on children with autism and others who he calls, quote, young victims of extreme psychosis. And the reason he picks these kids, and again, we would not diagnose them the same way today. But these are all kids that he sees as not having visible physical disabilities. Right. That is the key point. Right. That's what he means by autism. Right. Is something is not neurotypical about this kid. But they are not, in my eyes, physically disabled. That is what he means by this. Right.

[Allyson Raskin]

They're not like developmentally delayed in a physical way of any kind.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes. That's certainly how he sees it. To continue with that article and constructing a dialectical opposition between epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and palsy and autism, Bettelheim helped to tacitly promote a eugenic logic of unreformable versus reformable bodies. You know, and yes, that is some very, very Nazi adjacent shit.

[Allyson Raskin]

The whole time he was in that camp, he was like, these are good ideas.

[Robert Evans]

These are good. If it wasn't the Nazis doing them, I wouldn't have like, yeah, that's what.

[Allyson Raskin]

He'S taking a lot of notes on.

[Robert Evans]

He's taking some wild things from his experience. The medical logic behind all of this is also rooted in Bruno's writing about concentration camps. In a letter to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Bruno's friend Alvin Rosenfeld explained of Bruno's beliefs. Quote, bettelheim showed the world how extreme abuse, such as concentration camp incarceration, could severely distort personalities that formed the basis of his treatment model and laid the foundation for much of our thinking about child abuse and post traumatic stress disorder. And there is aspects of this that are positive and that are undeniably accurate. One of Bettelheim's legitimate achievements is that he is an early proponent of the idea that if you are working with emotionally disturbed or mentally ill children and they are engaging in behavior that you. You don't want them to engage in, your first task is to understand the internal logic of the child. Why do they think this is a good idea? Right. Why are they choosing to act in this way? Right. That you should seek to figure out why they want to do things. Right. In other words, what's going on in the kid's head is important. That is a fairly unique idea at the time. Right. And that's a legitimate positive step.

[Allyson Raskin]

And also, I imagine, what are they getting out of it? What is reinforcing this behavior?

[Robert Evans]

Yes, I think that's a big part of it and overall, like a good direction to be going. Unfortunately, Bettelheim has another belief, and it's one that he will talk openly about this idea that like, you need to understand why the child is making the. Is doing the things that they're doing, their internal logic. He will also say the whole time, you should never use physical punishment on kids. You, you don't do it, there's no cause for it. The entire time he is working at this, he is running this school, he is physically punishing these kids. He just lies about it to parents and to academics by saying, don't do this, we never do this. The whole time he is using physical and. And mental abuse to be very clear. Right. And it's interesting to me that he knows he, he has to deny it. Right.

[Allyson Raskin]

Cognitive dissonance of.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

Because. Because I, it's one thing to, to believe, like, I think physical, you know, punishment gets good results, but to know that, to like, also know enough to be like, no one will like that, or that's actually maybe not true, but that's what I want to do to get the quickest results or. Yeah, it's horrifying. I mean, it is very interesting. Like, all research shows that any form of physical punishment is not helpful.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Allyson Raskin]

Even, even spanking has been like, proven that it is not good.

[Robert Evans]

It's interesting to me that if he were to have said at this time, obviously you spank kids, you know, sometimes you slap em a little bit, that would not have been controversial. That would have been in the 40s, well within the standards of like normal childhood education. Right. The fact that he's like, no, no, no, you should never do this, but is still doing it is so interesting to me.

[Allyson Raskin]

He's a deeply troubled man.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. This guy, Alvin Rosenfeld, who was Bruno's colleague and friend, defends the fact that kind partly defends the fact that Bettelheim uses physical violence. He argues that unlike most institutions at the time, the orthogenic school didn't use shock therapy, it didn't have restraints or any other violent tools. But sometimes the kids were so out of control that they needed physical intervention. And Bruno courageously handled that unpleasant task for his subordinates, assuring that, quote, they were free to be far more nurturing. He admits that Bettelheim sometimes meted out punishment that included slaps, but he frames this as minor for the era. Now, I won't say that, like, what he did was extreme for the era, but it wasn't mild. Right. And we have a lot of reports from kids who were with him during this period of time, and they do not report a mild experience. And I don't talk about this a lot on the show because I'm not an expert or an educator, but I did work in special ed as a paraprofessional for the better part of two years. And I'm unwilling to give detailed stories on the air for reasons that should be obvious and relate primarily to the privacy rights of those children. But I will say that I dealt with primarily kids who were frequently violent and who were about my size. Right. These are 17, 18, 19, 20 year olds. And many of them are non. The term we would use at the time was non verbal. And because of my size, I worked with these kids very closely. Cause I could take a hit. And I was hit every day on that job. Right. One of my colleagues suffered a near fatal injury, a tbi. Another had a broken jaw. So this was a. I understand sometimes you have to use restraints to protect yourself and others. Right. With kids who. And some of the kids were what we would call emotionally disturbed. There were a variety of diagnoses that you had there. I'm aware of the need sometimes to restrain kids. And so I want to emphasize that's not what's going on with Bruno. Right. For one thing, restraining is. Sometimes there's force involved in restraining a kid. It's not violent. Your job is not to harm them physically. Your job is to stop them from causing harm to themselves and others. And some. Sometimes the only way to do that is to like physically hold them so that they can't hit somebody or whatever. Right. This is like a very difficult thing to do and to talk about. I really don't know how to get across. Like, I'm very empathetic to the people who are good at this job. And I want to emphasize I had no training in it. We simply don't get training. Like, that's another. A major massive problem.

[Allyson Raskin]

That's horrifying.

[Robert Evans]

It's very like I had a four hour class on like physical restraint and none of it was functional stuff.

[Allyson Raskin]

And there's also different types of restraints and some are more harmful than others.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes. And you know, as it was 15 years ago, I think it was very primitive and not. We were not adequately trained to do the job. I can only imagine how bad it was in the 40s. But again, what Bruno is doing here, none of the stories that I have from other kids are he had to make difficult choices because a kid was violent and presented a danger to others. They are all. He was annoyed at a behavior and so he hid a child. You know, that is what Bruno and I really want to emphasize. I'm not naive about like the complex choices that have to be made sometimes here. That's not what's going on with Bruno. What he is doing to these kids is sadistic physical abuse on a level that I have trouble comprehending. One of Bruno's students is a kid named Ronald angres. He spent 12 years at the Orthogenic School, during which he rarely saw his family. Bruno believed it was bad for students to have regular contact with loved ones, and he pushed heavily for parents to keep their kids enrolled there for the entirety of their childhood. Right. You are abusing your kid. If you try to take them back and raise them in your home, that's bad for them. I have to have total control over them for the whole time they're children. Not a great sign there.

[Allyson Raskin]

Anytime, anytime there's an encouragement for a child not to have direct communication with their parents, something bad is happening.

[Robert Evans]

That's such a good point. That, like, anytime someone is being like, no, no, no, you really shouldn't see your kid. They're doing something fucked up. Right? That's just. That's just. Yeah, very probably a very durable truth. Speaking of durable truths, here's some ads. It takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle. Who thinks he can just get on a microphone on a podcast and start public eye. Musicians.

[Kyle Tequila]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Maria Tremarke]

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[Nancy Grace]

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[Kyle Tequila]

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[Maria Tremarke]

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[Robert Evans]

We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people.

[Allyson Raskin]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, that is beyond creepy.

[Maria Tremarke]

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[Robert Evans]

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

[Maria Tremarke]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Nancy Grace]

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[Robert Evans]

We're back. So we're talking about this. An article written by one of Bruno's students, Ronald Angres. Ingres was diagnosed by Bettelheim as autistic. I will say, certainly, I think would not apply that diagnosis to Ingres today because his primary symptoms were that he was bad at sports, he was a little slow learning how to read, and he fidgeted sometimes. He had a thing for daydreaming. Everything that he describes is what I would call like, okay, well, you're just a kid. Some kids take longer to learn to read than others. Some kids aren't good at sports. I wasn't good at some kids fidget. You know, none of that is what I would call like or what I think any expert would say, like diagnostic criteria for anything really. Right. Like they're not saying like he was not incapable of like learning how to read or anything. He's just a little slower than others. Fairly normal kid. Right. But Angra's father was a psychoanalyst himself and a rich one at that. And he'd diagnosed his child as disturbed for a variety of utterly anodyne reasons. Sometimes I skipped while I paced. I had other unacceptable mannerisms too. I sometimes talked to myself, lips moving when lost in thought. Again, these just sound like things people do.

[Allyson Raskin]

Like such an urge to over pathologize.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, your kid's like just talking to himself like children do.

[Allyson Raskin]

And I also feel like there's sometimes what happens is like the expectations people have for how children should behave is not realistic. So that it's like, oh, your kid didn't sit through a four hour movie without like wanting to get up and fidgeting. Something's wrong with them. It's like, no, developmentally they're not going to be able to do that. That's a normal reaction, totally normal for.

[Robert Evans]

And that so much of what's going on here is that these are rich parents and they are annoyed that their kids maybe need a little bit of extra help, maybe aren't immediately ready to go to fancy dinner parties or the Met or something. Right. And so they're like, well, I'm just gonna have you. I'm gonna lock you up with this guy, this weirdo that seems like.

[Allyson Raskin]

Cause they're children and they're only interested in adults. They just want their kid to act like an adult, but like look cute.

[Robert Evans]

I am a rich professional in the 1940s. I have highballs to drink and benzos to eat, you know, like I have no time to raise my own children. So Ronald's father's sense of professional ethics meant that he couldn't treat his own son. The Orthogenic school has a reputation. Had a reputation. Has a reputation. It's still around for feeding children very well. This is a, again, this is a high dollar institution. They have excellent food, it is an excellent space. It is a very immaculately clean. There is every kind of like piece of educational equipment, is all state of the art. Right. Very nice furniture. This is a nice place. Right. I really need to emphasize that if you look at it as a rich guy, you will be impressed at the quality of the facility itself. Now Bruno would claim all his Life that no child was ever admitted to the Orthogenic school without having a chance to visit and decide for themselves to consent to come. Ronald says, bullshit. He was interviewed. Yeah, he says, I was interviewed by Bruno, but I would never have consented to go to that school because from the moment we met, he was cruel and belittled me. I drew for him a picture of a man. I don't remember now if he asked me to, but all the psychologists seem to crave such pictures, and I may have tried in this fashion to break the ice. What a stupid and ugly picture he snapped. I did not yet know he fancied himself an art connoisseur. You did not draw his hands. They're behind his back. I explained. You just did that because you can't draw hands. Do you know what it means when a boy can't draw hands? I did not. I still don't. What the fuck does that mean? What does it mean, Bruno?

[Allyson Raskin]

Hands are, like, hard.

[Robert Evans]

It's really difficult to draw hands.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah. Wow. So much anger. Just like such a. Such a angry view of the world. And like such a. It's so funny, these people that, like, their whole goal is to, like, get people to act correctly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

Are so emotionally unregulated themselves.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Yes.

[Allyson Raskin]

Right. Like, he got so outraged that this little boy didn't draw hands.

[Robert Evans]

He didn't draw hands.

[Allyson Raskin]

You need to go do some deep breathing.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

Bruno, these are not appropriate reactions that you're having.

[Robert Evans]

What does it mean when a child can't draw? And I want to continue that write up to appease him. I redrew the picture and added some hands, carefully, showing all five fingers. Preposterous. You drew the hands entirely out of proportion. They're bigger than his head. Once more, he scowled darkly, as if I were expected to know the sinister significance of such a reversal of normal proportions. He asked what I hoped to become when I grew up. A scientist. I replied. Ridiculous. He spat. You want to be a scientist? You can't even read. Again, this is a child. Oh, my God.

[Allyson Raskin]

He's like, holy fuck, a villain out of a Bond movie.

[Robert Evans]

What is. What is going on here, Bruno? Like from the standards of a period of time in which parenting was, shall we say, rough, like that is bad child rearing.

[Allyson Raskin]

It's also very funny to imply that the children were allowed to give consent and had to give consent. Given that at that time period, I think the idea that children could give consent or should was not a normal concept.

[Robert Evans]

The idea that adults could give consent wasn't really A normal concept.

[Allyson Raskin]

But I feel like very few families, like, viewed children at that time as autonomous individuals who were worthy of giving consent, you know, so, like, no way was that happening.

[Robert Evans]

And it's such a weird thing that he would insist on, like, telling. The lies he chooses to tell are always very strange to me, but they also.

[Allyson Raskin]

They also are revealing of how much he actually knows of what he's doing is wrong.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes, that's a very good point. That he does understand that this should be a thing the child consents to. He just doesn't give a fuck.

[Allyson Raskin]

Or maybe it's some guilt that he is. He has. And so his lies are around the things he feels shame or regret around. And so he's lying to himself. Who knows?

[Robert Evans]

If I tell the lie, I can normalize the behavior I know is good, even if I've fallen short. Right. Maybe it's something like that.

[Allyson Raskin]

Oh, yeah. Like, maybe I. Well, I'm not doing it, but I'm. But I'm putting that out in the world or whatever. But I actually think this guy might think he is doing it. I mean, I think there might be just such a disconnect between his actions and who he thinks he is.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I think that may in fact be the case. Angres calls him rude after this point. Fair point to the kid. And he later wrote that he would have been utterly shattered if he'd known then that he was about to spend the remainder of his childhood in Bruno's care. So his parents send him to the school when he starts at the orthogenic school, he's allowed to bring his favorite toys and the like with him. His prized possessions are his comic books. And as soon as Bruno sees them, he announces a new rule. No comic books. He also takes issue with one of Ronald's toys, a wooden train, which he called stupid, man. It's a train. What the fuck, dude? Now, this is all pretty abusive, but by far the worst thing. Well, honestly, I don't know if the. Like, it's all pretty bad. But he also uses physical violence against little kids. Here's how Angres later described his treatment at Bruno's hands. I lived for years in terror of his beatings and abject animal terror. I never knew when he would hit me or for what, or how savagely Bettelheim prized his unpredictability, no less than his unconventionality as someone who saw the secret depths of men's souls he glorified in defying ordinary notions of which offenses were important, important, or even what constituted an offense. What Hostile character, he would say of me and countless other boys as he beat us publicly. These beatings, which made the greatest impression on me of anything that I have known in life, stick in my memory as a grand performance of exultant rage. Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

I mean, look, I think we're learning that. That going through the amount of trauma that. That Bruno went through.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

When you don't, like, treat. Treated or in any way deal with it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

And. And when you then kind of claim psychology as something that you have ownership over when you actually haven't done any work on yourself, can be a really. A really nasty outcome.

[Robert Evans]

And it. Yeah, it's. It's interesting to me. It is probably worth really re emphasizing that he is not this way with that first kid. Now, he doesn't really spend much time parenting her. Right. He's working. But that kid that he helps to raise in Austria, he's not hitting. At least she doesn't resp. She does not recall him being anything like this. Right.

[Allyson Raskin]

Well, he hadn't been in the camp yet.

[Robert Evans]

He hadn't been in the camp yet. Yeah. I wonder how much of it is the camp and how much of it is, like, he hadn't remade himself as a psychoanalytic expert yet. Right. And I don't think you'll ever. You can ever, like, know, you know, which of these did more. But he's obviously. He's a very different guy in terms of how he treats children after the camps. And that's something that, like, really deserves to be kind of re. Emphasized. To continue with Angres's story, once some. All school games were organized. We played musical chairs. A boy I shall call Seymour jumped into a seat before I could. And from then on until the end of the game, which I had to watch, watch from the sidelines, he silently taunted me, smirking and wiggling his behind in time to the music, which bumps in my direction. After the game finished, Seymour approached me with that gloating smirk still on his face. I said, I wish I could chop your head off. The counselor promptly told Bettelheim, who just as promptly beat me, adding neck chops to his standard slaps and a denunciatory monologue in case I missed the poetic justice of it all. And again, you see, like, pretty normal kid to say something like that. Not a weird thing for a kid to say. This is a thing where you need to sit both of those kids down and talk to them. He, like, mock cuts his head off by hitting him in the neck, which also, you just. I mean, you shouldn't hit kids at all, but you certainly shouldn't hit children in the neck.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah, my dog likes to. To, like, walk on me in the morning, and when he puts his paw on my neck, I'm like, ow. That's such a sensitive. I. Yeah, luckily, until I got this dog, I did understand how much neck. Neck pressure hurts.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And, like, the fucking. I mean, we could talk about choke chains and the like, which are also common at the time. But, like, the kind of immediate willingness where he's. Like, this kid talked about cutting another kid's head off. Obviously the right thing to do is hit him in the neck. You know, like, that's a very telling, logical leap that he makes there. Now, these stories that Angres tells are very consistent with the stories multiple other former students saw give of their time under Bruno's tutelage. And they are also. They also comport with the stories of employees who work as teachers and staff members at the Orthogenic School during this time. One of those former staff members was a guy who wrote about his experiences for the Chicago Reader under the pseudonym wb. I find his account valuable in part because Bruno's friend and defender, Alvin Rosenfeld, acknowledges that Bruno used physical violence, but also insists that most of the complaints from students which he views as unfair came from later in Bruno's career. And so he's like, well, they were angry because, like, he was. You know, he kind of died before their education could finish. And so they, you know, they're transmitting their feelings of abandonment to, like, claiming he was abusive. And this guy's account puts the lie to that. For one thing, WB comes to work at the school early on in Bruno's tutelage there, and he is a World War II combat veteran. So this is not a guy who is inclined to be shocked by violence. Right? Like, if this guy reacts to your violence, you're really out of fucking pocket. Right? Quote, a number of us were veterans who had probably seen more of life by age 21 than Bettelheim had seen at age 40. I do disagree with that, because he was in the camps, man. But this guy's got. That definitely has, like, a bit of an axe to grind with Bettelheim. That fact never seemed to penetrate Bettelheim's low threshold of awareness of the true nature of the world around him. He tried to bully the counselors as much as he did the defenseless children in the school. He was just a bit more circumspect with us veterans. Now, he notes this guy, that most orthogenic School employees were women. And that is a real thing Bruno does. He likes to be surrounded by women. And these folks are very loyal to Bruno. WB describes the female employees at the school as like his Roman cohorts. So these are like his power base, these female counselors who Rosenfeld is like. That's why Bruno had to do all the physical violence, was so that these. These women could be free to be more nurturing. Which is a very odd vibe, but that's the way people describe it. Quote, and this is from wb. The understanding that most of the men had was that Bettelheim tried to seduce to relating to him as their therapist. This was a condition of job tenure. Our general feeling was that most of the women accepted this relationship, but we never knew for sure. Their job tenure was certainly longer than most of the men's. I would characterize the atmosphere at the Orthogonic School at that time as the beginnings of a cult, with Dr. B as the cult leader. And I find that interesting because he notes accurately, this guy, that part of cult dynamics is the creation of new vocabulary and the redefinition of existing vocabulary to create a new reality in which cult members live under. And this is how WB explains Bruno's use of terms like emotionally disturbed, autistic, and schizophrenic. These are not real medical diagnoses, but these are terms reinvented by Bruno to create a reality that's convenient to him. Right. And he will say he has an 85% success rate in treating schizophrenia and autism, and that 85% of the kids that came into his school left it without these diagnoses. He's not curing these people. He is declaring them to have a thing and then declaring them cured when they behave in a way that he describes as idealized. Right. And that's kind of key to it, is that he gets described as brilliant for a while because of this big 85% success rate. He is the only person judging these kids.

[Allyson Raskin]

Well, it's. I mean, this is like a thing that happens in society. These, like the troubled teen industry. Like, this is not like an isolated incident of this kind of group where these kids are declared as so problematic and then taken into this extreme environment. And then you sort of have a cult like figure at the helm and. And all of these employees sort of just like go along with this, even though it's like. It is like this dynamic that sort of has. That continues to sort of play out. And so there are definitely, like, I'm someone who finds, like, I don't think it's so wild to describe things as cults or as cult. Like if they follow certain, you know, descriptors. This definitely feels, feels rather culty to me.

[Robert Evans]

If the Kool Aid bowl fits. Right?

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah. I mean, the difference is that the. These kids are not, are not members of the cult in the way you would see in other situations. They're sort of the prisoners of the cult.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And I think WB is trying to describe a lot of the employees. The employees are the members, although the financial relationship again. And he's like, I don't really know how much did they buy it? Did they just need the job? Right. Like, it was unclear to him and it will be forever to us. But I do find it noteworthy that he says this Bettelheim was a professional success. Why? Simple. He defined a child's problem without any meaningful critical peer review and then proceeded to solve the problem again without critical review. A generally compliant and emotionally dependent staff then put their imprimature on his self declared and widely proclaimed success. And yeah, and it's.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah, he's creating the rules of the world.

[Robert Evans]

He gets to. And the world is a lot. It's a lot easier. Life is much easier when you get to do that. Now, while when Bruno directs the Orthogenic School, he's also kind of the Dr. Phil of like the 40s through the 50s, 60s to some extent in like the 70s, in that he's a constant presence on TV and he is brought in as an expert on disturbed children when there's a horrible crime, you know, when there's. He's also brought in to talk about concentration camps, anti Semitism. And this is deeply unfortunate because Bruno is. He's not really an expert on disturbed children. And he's increasingly identifies himself as white and identifies his old Jewish identity as problematic. And so the fact that he is a major public figure on all of these things is a real issue. Near the end of the 1940s, he's asked to speak at Hillel House on modern antisemitism. And he told the assembled, almost entirely Jewish audience, antisemitism? Whose fault is it? Yours. Because you don't assimilate, it's your fault. If you assimilated, there would be no antisemitism. Why don't you assimilate now? People, don't take this lying down. This is offensive to the audience.

[Allyson Raskin]

This is like satire, at least, like.

[Robert Evans]

Holy shit, man, what? And one member of the audience, Eric Schopter, is like, wait a second. If you're saying the solution to anti Semitism is to end Jewishness. What makes you different from an antisemite? And Bruno responds, I'm only a doctor prescribing the cure, not an answer.

[Allyson Raskin]

Well, he is 100% an anti Semite.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's, that's, that's. I mean, problematic.

[Allyson Raskin]

I had this great professor in grad school who's, you know, because psychology is a tricky field, like we were alluding to, like, there can really be an unequal level of power. And these people that claim to, like, know everything, and he, he was always like. Like, if anyone tells you that they're certain about anything, like the way he goes on these TV shows and is, like, certain about these disturbed children, do not trust them.

[Robert Evans]

That is very good advice. And it's particularly in Bruno's case because as the years go on, he becomes one of the first public intellectual experts on autism. Right. In 1967, he publishes a book called the Empty Fortress, which is one of the first influential and famous books on the treatment of children with autism in US history. Again, let me remind you, Bruno's PhD is not in any relevant medical discipline. And that so far as we know, he mostly lied about his psychoanalytic credentials in Austria. The Empty Fortress in his book's title relates to what Bruno saw as the cause of autism. And I'm going to quote from a write up by the Autism History Project. Children took shelter there from the cruelty and indifference of their parents, mothers especially, who were supposed to love them, but instead denied their humanity. The cost was impossibly high. Forced into rational solitude behind walls that shielded them from the very people whose attention they craved. Babies were frozen out of normal development. In other words, he believed autism came from your mom ignoring you. Right? Yep.

[Allyson Raskin]

Wow, that's so original. Yeah, that's like, you know, out of nowhere for somebody.

[Robert Evans]

Out of nowhere, blaming the moms. Yeah. So he saw the primary cause of autism as refrigerator mothers. These are emotionally cold and distant women. And again, he'll describe his mom as one of these later in life. You know, I mean, he starts to at around this time. Now, one allegation that you'll find here is that Bruno takes his mommy issues and turns them into what was for years. This is never the standard explanation for the origins of autism in the medical sense, but because of Bruno's prominence, it's a very common explanation. Right. Because people hear this on tv, they see the book, and they're like, oh, okay, that must be it. Now, responsible articles today will note accurately that this is horseshit. The origins of Autism are almost certainly genetic and 100% not caused by your mom being a refrigerator.

[Allyson Raskin]

Or vaccines.

[Robert Evans]

Or vaccines. Very important to note. Also not caused by that.

[Allyson Raskin]

I also feel like historically people often blame schizophrenia on mothers, too.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Allyson Raskin]

And it makes sense that those are the two main things that he.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes. And it's also worth noting that autism was often called childhood schizophrenia at the time, too. Like, these terms are very much. Again, I really need to re. Emphasize that. I also should emphasize that even articles today often say very fucked up things about autism. I want to read an Excerpt from a 2021 article in the Chicago Tribune about Bruno Bettelheim and about him getting the causes of autism wrong. Quote, even a quick look at children who were abused or neglected by parents should make it obvious that autism is a completely different kind of problem. Eventually, autism will probably be treated with gene therapy or effective medications will be developed to counter the defect. Now, that's just eugenics, right? That's just eugenics that you wrote in 2021, Guy at the Chicago Tribune. That's just eugenics.

[Allyson Raskin]

Gosh, call it, like, explicitly calling it a defect.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah, it's, it's a, I mean, I, I. There continues to be so much debate about, like, ABA therapy for children in autism. I'm. I'm sure you probably, in the work you did in special ed, experienced a lot of that. And, and it's, it's the difference of approaches between we have to change this person to interact with the world as we see fit versus maybe we allow this person to be who they are and create a world where that's okay.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. And there's. Yeah, this is something that is still developing. I just, I want to note, I just read that in that article and was like, oh, my God, man, you're not any better than Bruno was, dude. I mean, I guess, like, this is still a real problem that this podcast is not going to kind of deal with in all of the depth that it deserves. But I wanted to make a note of that. In his piece for Commentary magazine, Ronald Angres makes a note that even though the state of autism treatment and knowledge was more primitive at the time, there was ample evidence in the early days to suggest that Bruno's empty fortress hypothesis was nonsense. Quote, in fact, there was always evidence that autism may be at least partially neurological. Everyone before Bettelheim believed it was. No one but Bettelheim and his most fervent followers ever believed otherwise. And even on Bettelheim's assumption that the origins were psychological rather than biological or neurological, why Go on. As he did to accuse parents of such crimes, such schizophrenic symptoms as wishing their child did not exist. Bettelheim made an art of accusation. He did not sort of blame Victoria. He set himself up as their special prosecutor. Right, yeah. Which is an interesting and a damning way to describe that. I think this is our second ad break, so let's just go for Takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle? Who thinks he can just get on a microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this.

[Kyle Tequila]

From I Heart Podcast and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County.

[Robert Evans]

I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old.

[Kyle Tequila]

Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit.

[Robert Evans]

And that was my mission, to snuff the life out of this guy.

[Kyle Tequila]

He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department.

[Robert Evans]

I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything.

[Nancy Grace]

People are dying. Is he doing this every night?

[Kyle Tequila]

Torn between two worlds.

[Robert Evans]

I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing.

[Maria Tremarke]

He was a freaking crazy man.

[Nancy Grace]

We don't know who he is, really.

[Kyle Tequila]

He is. My father and I had no idea about any of this. Until now. Welcome to Crook County. Series premiere February 11th. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maria Tremarke]

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the COVID of night. Silent, unseen, watching. They may be right above your car. Late when one night, as you cruise down the road or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they?

[Robert Evans]

We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people.

[Allyson Raskin]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, that is beyond creepy.

[Maria Tremarke]

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Robert Evans]

Yes, Absolutely.

[Maria Tremarke]

Listen to Obscurum. Invasion of the Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Arturo Castro]

Hi, I'm Arturo Castro, and I've been lucky enough to do stuff like Broad City and Narcos and Roadhouse and so many commercials about back pain. And now I'm starting a podcast because, honestly, guys, I don't feel the space is crowded enough. Get ready for Greatest Escapes, a new comedy podcast about the wildest true escape stories in history. Each week, I'll be sitting down with some of the most hilarious actors and writers and comedians to tell them a buck wild tale from across history and time. People like Ed Helms, Diane Guerrero, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoe Chow, Titanic, Charles.

[Maria Tremarke]

Manson, Alcatraz, Assata Shakur, the sketchy guy named Steve.

[Arturo Castro]

It's giving funny true crime.

[Robert Evans]

I love storytelling and I love you so I can't wait.

[Arturo Castro]

Listen and subscribe to Greatest escapes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nancy Grace]

Stay on top of Breaking Crime News with Crime Alert Hourly Update available now. I'm Nancy Grace. Our team of reporters and experts is dedicated to bringing you the top crime headlines you need to know. Every hour on the hour. From missing people to trial updates and true crime stories, we bring you the latest real time news and analysis. Whether it's the latest developments in a high profile case or urgent alerts about missing persons, Crime Alert Hourly Update delivers the news you need to know as it happens. Stay informed, Keep yourself and your family safe with Crime Alert Hour, the only podcast delivering hourly true crime updates. Subscribe now to Crime Alert Hourly Update and never miss a moment of breaking crime news. Listen to Crime Alert Hourly Update on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

We're back. So it has been noted that Bruno's victim blaming of concentration camp internees bore more than a little resemblance to the way he talk talked about the parents of quote unquote autistic children. The identification of the aggressor which he saw as core to the behavior of inmates is also what he believed went on with autism. Kids with so called refrigerator moms aped that behavior and locked away their emotions from the empty fortress. This is Bruno who's writing here. I had experienced being at the mercy of forces that seemed beyond one's ability to influence and with no knowledge of whether or when the experience would end of living isolated from family and friends, of being severely restricted in the sending and receiving of information. Perhaps this sudden reversal helped me first to understand how the camps could destroy personality and later to resume with, I hope, greater insights and empathy. My earlier task that of creating a milieu which would favor the reconstruction of personality, right, and this is him literally being like the camps taught me that I could cure autism by making my own camp right now. Violence was not his only tool for reconstructing personality, but insults and mockery were among his go to tactics and behind every effort he made was the promise violence. This is why he pushed parents to enroll their children in his facility for the entirety of their childhood. He needed the privacy of total control to ensure he was not stopped. From that write up in Disability Studies Quarterly, one former student called it a dumping ground for young people who were different in some way or who for whatever reason, didn't match their parents expectations. Bettelheim was known to slap and punch children. He would often tell his students that they were at the orthogenic school because their parents. Parents couldn't stand them. He called them megalomaniacs and neurotics and forced them into uncomfortable or violent situations against their will. Children were expected to shower naked in front of the staff and one another throughout their stay, regardless of age or comfort level. And many students and staff were physically or and sexually abused. Jacqueline Sanders worked for Bettelheim for 13 years and became the director of the school after Bettelheim left. She writes, we became the abusers of abused children.

[Allyson Raskin]

I mean, sort of going back to what we were saying, like the, the victims are not just the kids there. It's probably also the staff that are sort of in, like under this man's like, control and manipulation. And it's, I mean, it's a mini little hell that he has that he has built.

[Robert Evans]

He has created a little hell for kids and for staff members. Yeah, yeah. Now, students at this school were expected to work towards admission to higher education, and the school had an excellent record for this, which has led some defenders, including former students, who like most will say his violence was unacceptable, to declare the school overall still a success. And this brings me to the book, the creation of Dr. B by Richard Pollock. One criticism that he will get from Bettelheim's defenders is that given his own history with the school, he can't be objective. You see, Richard's brother Stephen started out as a day student at the Orthogenic School, But Bettelheim insisted, as always, that he come to live there full time. Richard writes, over the months he made fewer and fewer visits home, becoming for me a kind of spectral sibling even before his death in 1948. Now, Stephen's death occurred when he was away from the school on a rare holiday visit with his family. He and his brother were staying at a farm owned by a friend of the family, and he fell through a hay shoot several stories to the ground and died on impact. If you grew up on a farm, you immediately are like, oh, yeah, that's absolutely how a little kid could die. Right? It's one of the most dangerous things in any kind of farm is a hay chute. It's just this hole that's gonna be covered by hay a lot of the time. And if you go through it, you could fall quite a distance. So Bettelheim refuses to accept, oh, a tragic accident occurred. Right. He blames Rick and Steven's parents for killing their son because they wanted to spend time with him and they should have just left him at the school full time. Now, decades later, Bettelheim still holds onto this grudge. Because in the late night again, this happens in 48. In the late 1980s, Polak, who's writing a book about Bettelheim, calls on him. And Bettelheim still remembers these parents and is still angry at them. Quote my father, he dismissed as crude and somewhat simple minded, a schlemiel who played the bills and stayed out of emotional problems. My mother was the village, he said, she paraded as a saint and a martyr, when in fact she was almost entirely responsible for my brother's problems. With astonishing anger, he said she had rejected Stephen at birth and that to cope with this lockout, he had developed pseudo feeblemindedness. He said that my brother was a lovely child who manifested a sensitivity my mother wished she possessed. And he castigated her for never conceding that she was responsible for Steven's distress and for insisting, against the school's wishes, that he be allowed periodic home visits. Visits.

[Allyson Raskin]

It's interesting that everyone has the exact same problem.

[Robert Evans]

That everyone has the same problems he.

[Allyson Raskin]

Has with his parents is the exact same dynamic.

[Robert Evans]

He's the only kind of person.

[Allyson Raskin]

And it's weird that it's also the dynamic he came from.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, their dad was like his dad. Their mom was like his mom. Wild stuff. So Bettelheim declares in this conversation, with no evidence. No, your brother committed suicide because he was so unhappy with your parents. And again, he fell through a hay chute. He insinuated the fact that their mom worked full time was part of why their brother killed himself. And he ranted, what is it about these Jewish mothers? Mr. Polak, in his book, Richard continued, In 1956, I would discover he had written that the school had warned my parents that a home visit for Steven was ill advised because he might harm himself. Despite our objection, the visit took place and the child died in a carefully contrived accident. Bettelheim told me with utter confidence that Steven had once purposefully fallen out of a speedboat near the propellers, and it was only a matter of time before he found a situation like the loft in which his efforts at killing himself would succeed. In fact, my brother had never fallen out of any boat. And that anecdote really says a lot that he just, he just will lie to this kid about his brother's death for no reason. Not for no reason. Because inventing fiction lets him redefine reality. And that's the essence of his pedagogy. Right. Is you get to define the reality for these children and thus of the world. Like that's how maybe this is to some extent him taking back control over the world, which was so chaotic for him. But I don't know. That's fascinating to me.

[Allyson Raskin]

If something doesn't fit his narrative, then he will create the details to make it fit.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly.

[Allyson Raskin]

Which is a really great strategy for you. But it's for him.

[Robert Evans]

It works.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah. It also allows him to never have to confront any of his own demons.

[Robert Evans]

No. And he's such a. So during the Vietnam War, Bruno makes a name for himself as an anti. Anti war activist. And confoundingly he describes the kids protesting against Vietnam as neo Nazis who were very sick and paranoiacs trying to beat down father to show they are a big boy.

[Allyson Raskin]

Oh my God.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know if that's what's. Maybe they don't want to get drafted and go die and Da Nang, man.

[Allyson Raskin]

Like I feel like this is like, should be like a learning, like a learning moment about these people that take over our media today.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

Like there are so many people like with these kinds of characteristics and these, these like really abhorrent personalities who people fall for.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Allyson Raskin]

And who become like really influential and claim to have a lot of knowledge around wellness and psychology and the right way to be a person. And it's just a. It's just a reminder to be, to be more skeptical of what people present to you as the truth.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe don't trust those people. Yeah. Yeah. In 1976, you had asked in part one, when does the backlash against a lot of what he's saying about the Holocaust begin? And as I said, there's some immediately, but kind of. There's a big chunk of academic backlash starts in the late 70s when American Holocaust scholar Terence Deprez writes a book about the survivors of death camps and concentration camps. His book the Survivor was partly a broadside against the misinformation Bettelheim had contributed to the discussion. And I want to quote now from an article by Paul Rosen throughout the Survivor Depressed criticized Bettelheim for having supposed that it was correct to have thought that prisoners ever regressed to infantilism. Depressed believed that the survivors should be viewed as reminders not of human weaknesses, but of evil circumstances that were objectively Powerful. Both the Nazis and Stalin's regime subjected prisoners to filth for the sake of humiliation and debasement. Depress argued that prisoner behavior in response to such circumstances was not childish, but rather a heroic response to dreadful necessities. He cited one camp where the inmates burned it down and found throughout the literature instances of people who somehow managed to maintain their inward sanctity. Resistance took subtle shapes, and Deprez explored the way human dignity endured in the form of freedom from the entire control by external forces. Survivors helped one another, engaged in acts of sabotage, and from Buchenwald made contact with the Allies for a bombing raid on SS parts of the camp. Camp Depress pointed out that Bettelheim was imprisoned during a special period when criminals among inmates wielded power. He disputed Bettelheim's notion that social bonding among prisoners was absent. Nor was it true, Depress argued, that they did not hate their oppressors and did not sometimes revolt. According to Depress, Bettelheim had felt superior to his fellow sufferers, and his account was factually marred by his egotistical obsession with autonomy that blinded him to the extent of the mutual. Mutual support that existed within the camps.

[Allyson Raskin]

Sounds right to me.

[Robert Evans]

Sounds accurate to me.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Now Bettelheim responds with an article in the New Yorker arguing that Depress book missed the realities of the experience. And Depress responds a little later with an article of his own called the Bettelheim Problem. He links Bruno's conclusions about the causes of autism and schizophrenia to his supposed observations about camp life. In a way, he seemed to be taking at out his righteous anger on the SS guards, on the parents of his students. The ultimate product of this was that these people who lived for years without their children had to do so believing they were the ultimate cause of their children's problems. Right? Like, which is bad in 1980.

[Allyson Raskin]

It's also a great manipulation tactic, Right? Because as soon as you're like, hey, maybe I shouldn't let this kid be in the school for their entire childhood, it's like, oh, well, actually, though I'm the person causing them harm. If I were to reunite with my kid, I'd actually be doing them more harm.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Right, exactly. That's a very good point. Right. And that's such a key part of what Bettelheim is saying is that, like, you have fucked your kids up. You gave them these conditions, only I can fix them. Right.

[Allyson Raskin]

It becomes dangerous for you to be involved in their life.

[Robert Evans]

And that's why when this mom, when Richard, his biographer's mom, insists that her other son at gets some time with the family. Bruno has to turn around and make that kid's death be the. Be caused by that. Right? In 1985, Bruno's wife, Trudy, passed on. Despite his early. Some early infidelities, he was, by all accounts, dedicated to his wife. And most people who knew him will say that her passing broke him. He was, by this point, an old man in poor health. And so on March 13, 1990, Bruno Bettelheim took his own life. Now, the fact that he committed suicide was just about the most understanding thing he ever did. He was old, he was ailing. He would write a lot about the fact that he no longer felt he could be of service to society. And so I don't have trouble understanding why he did this. But the fact that he killed himself sent a shock through the psychoanalytic and educational community. And while the criticism of him for committing suicide was unjust, which is a big part of the initial reaction to his is people being like, oh, well, the fact that a psychoanalyst would do this must have meant that he was never. He wasn't as healthy as he portrayed himself as being. And that's bad. That's a bad way to look at the suicide of an old man whose wife just died and who was in poor health. It also weirdly opens up the floodgates for the survivors of his teaching practices to talk about what they had endured. And that's why things are kind of messy, is that the first wave of criticism of Bettelheim happens alongside people criticizing him for committing suicide, which is messy. But you do get a lot of these survivors start talking in 1990 and continue talking up to the present day. Like, there's, again, some of the writings that I found on this was, like, much more recent as a result of the fact that, like, you know, people are still processing this. There's folks who initially were like, well, but no, the school was a good thing for me overall, who kind of come to different conclusions. There's also still plenty of schools who are like, yeah, it was brutal at times, but it. Students who were like, it was brutal, but it prepared me for success. I'm not gonna judge how anybody interprets their own experience at this school. I will say one of the things people say for Bruno, which is that so many of his graduates went on to have excellent careers. Well, yeah, but also, all their parents were super rich. I don't know if we give that to Bruno. Right? Like, their parents were all rich as hell. Maybe that had more to do with it. I don't know, like, not to take anything away from them, but I just don't know that I give that to Bruno. Take well.

[Allyson Raskin]

And I also, I'm not surprised, like you that he died by suicide because I don't think he was mentally well his whole life.

[Robert Evans]

No. God, no.

[Allyson Raskin]

I don't think that he was ever at peace with himself or had like, the ability to emotionally regulate or, you know, live a values driven life. Like, I. I think he wasn't in constant turmoil since his childhood. And so this, unfortunately, the outcome is not. Is not so shocking to me.

[Robert Evans]

Nope, nope, not at all. Well, that's the story. How we feel it.

[Allyson Raskin]

Oh, I guess I'll do my annoying mental health advocacy thing of saying I veer away from using the term committed suicide because it implies that it's a crime. That's a good point. Yeah. So I prefer like the language of died by suicide.

[Robert Evans]

Sure.

[Allyson Raskin]

Just. But, you know, who would I be if not someone to say that?

[Robert Evans]

No, you know, and honestly, like, it's interesting because I never really thought about the fact that like, yeah, using the term committing does imply that, like, there's a crime. That's because we only use that word. Right. You wouldn't say like, I committed lunch to today, Right? Yeah, it's just so normalized. Yeah. Interesting.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah, I think that's a good point.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah, that's like, it's interesting. Like as a writer and as a. Also, then it's someone in the mental health field. I am always thinking about, like, the, the impact of the word choice that we use and like, how. How we are actually like, subtly sending these, like, messages to ourselves and to other people. But then sometimes I'll be like, I don't get why that's a problem. But then you listen to someone where it's, you know, their point of view and it's like, okay, well, even if I still don't get it, I'll. I'll make the change. But that the, the phrase, when someone explained it to me in that way of that it's like a crime. Then it finally clicked for me about why I. I don't want to use that term anymore.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no, no. I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I. It's like the most understandable, like, thing about his whole story. Like, there's so many choices that he makes that it's like, well, I don't really get where from. Like, it's interesting that the first thing he gets criticized for is that and not anything about, like, how he treated children or whatever.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah, it's. It just feels like a very, like, pertinent topic to be talking about. Like, I think that there's this sense that, like, he died in 1990. We have, like, a different understanding of autism now, but I feel like we're on a cusp of, like. Like, of really not having made the progress that we think we have made in psychology and in, like, homeless culture. And so it's like a reminder to be, like, very vigilant about, like, falling for these people who have such extreme takes and claim to have the only way to handle things and are very victim blaming and, you know, separate. Separate people as a means of control.

[Robert Evans]

Especially now. We are heading into a whole new golden era for that. Anyway, you got anything you want to plug kind of at the end here?

[Allyson Raskin]

Well, we have to keep going, so if you're in the mood for something light, I have a rom com novel called Save the date coming out April 8th that you can order wherever books are sold. It's a kind of auto fiction based off of my own broken engagement and what could have happened if I had tried to find a new groom time for my original wedding. I didn't do that in real life, but it's based off a joke my dad made, and I turned it into a book. And then I also have my substack called Emotional Support lady, which is all about mental health. And you can also hire me as a relationship coach for both individuals or couples.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on today. This was a hard one to listen to, and I appreciate.

[Allyson Raskin]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You doing so much to try and, like, explain. Yeah. What. What was happening. Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

And how long it took for society to catch up to the lies.

[Robert Evans]

Geez. Like, half a century. Literally almost half a century. Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

Even though the people he was talking about were saying this is wrong while it was happening.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Allyson Raskin]

And that wasn't enough.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. All right, well, that's the episode, everybody. Thank you so much. And thank you, Allison. All right, have a good week. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us.

[Allyson Raskin]

Out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube.

[Nancy Grace]

New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards.

[Kyle Tequila]

My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast Crook County.

[Robert Evans]

I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old.

[Nancy Grace]

People are dying. Is he doing this every night?

[Kyle Tequila]

Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret double life as a mafia hitman.

[Robert Evans]

I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything.

[Maria Tremarke]

He was a freaking crazy man.

[Kyle Tequila]

He was my father and I had no idea about any of the this until now. Crook county is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Allyson Raskin]

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Robert Evans]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Allyson Raskin]

Each season we explore a new theme.

[Robert Evans]

From poisoners to art thieves, we uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching.

[Allyson Raskin]

And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nancy Grace]

Need the latest crime news fast. Whether it's the latest developments in a high profile case or urgent alerts about missing persons, Crime Alert Hourly Update delivers the news you need to know as it happens. I'm Nancy Grace and with our team of investigative reporters and experts, we bring you the top crime headlines you need to know every hour on the hour. Listen to Crime Alert Hourly Update on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here in Marion, Illinois.

[Nancy Grace]

An 11 year old girl brutally stabbed to death.

[Robert Evans]

Her father's longtime live in girlfriend maintaining innocence but charged with her murder.

[Allyson Raskin]

I am confident that Julie Beverly is guilty.

[Robert Evans]

They've never found a weapon. Never made sense.

[Allyson Raskin]

Still doesn't make sense.

[Nancy Grace]

She found out she was pregnant in jail.

[Allyson Raskin]

The person who did it is still out there.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to Murder on Songbird road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.

[Nancy Grace]

You get your podcasts.